Black holes do not wander around the universe, randomly swallowing worlds. They follow the laws of gravity just like other objects in space. The orbit of a black hole would have to be very close to the solar system to affect Earth, which is not likely.
If a black hole with the same mass as the sun were to replace the sun, Earth would not fall in. The black hole with the same mass as the sun would keep the same gravity as the sun. The planets would still orbit the black hole as they orbit the sun now.
Will the Sun Ever Turn Into a Black Hole?
The sun does not have enough mass to collapse into a black hole. In billions of years, when the sun is at the end of its life, it will become a red giant star. …show more content…
An accretion disk is matter that is drawn to the black hole. In rotating black holes and/or ones with a magnetic field, the matter forms a disk due to the mechanical forces present. In a Schwarzschild black hole, the matter would be drawn in equally from all directions, and thus would form an omni-directional accretion cloud rather than disk.
The matter in accretion disks is gradually pulled into the black hole. As it gets closer, its speed increases, and it also gains energy. Accretion disks can be heated due to internal friction to temperatures as high as 3 billion K, and emit energetic radiation such as gamma rays. This radiation can be used to "weigh" the black hole. By using the doppler effect, astronomers can determine how fast the material is revolving around the black hole, and thus can infer its mass.
Jets form in Kerr black holes that have an accretion disk. The matter is funneled into a disk-shaped torus by the hole's spin and magnetic fields, but in the very narrow regions over the black hole's poles, matter can be energized to extremely high temperatures and speeds, escaping the black hole in the form of high-speed …show more content…
A: You get one bigger black hole.
You can extrapolate from there. Black holes can eat other objects, including other black holes, so they can grow. We think that early on in the Universe, when galaxies were just forming, matter collecting in the center of the nascent galaxy can collapse to form a very massive black hole. As more matter falls in, the hole greedily consumes it, and grows. Eventually you get a supermassive black hole, one with millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun.
However, remember that as matter falls in it can get hot. It can be so hot that the pressure from light itself can blow off material that’s farther out, a bit like the solar wind but on a much grander scale. The strength of the wind depends on many things, including the mass of the black hole; the heftier the hole, the windier the, uh, wind. This wind prevents more matter from falling in, so it acts like a cutoff valve for the ever-increasingly girthy