re: The official Interstellar thread (spoilers)

quote:

---

Gargantua was purported to be a smaller black hole, as Romilly told Cooper when they were on Dr. Mann's planet. For smaller black holes, it's likely that matter is shredded at, or just before, one crosses the event horizon.

---

If you are referring to the part I am thinking of, where Romilly is talking about the viability of sending a probe, you have it backwards. Although to be fair, its counter intuitive.


Supermassive blackholes, and especially supermassive rotating blackholes, are less violently destructive than their smaller counter parts.


And that ties to my point: I was just correcting the statement regarding the survivability being tied to the event horizon at the slightest.

It isn't. It is just the threshold where events within can't be seen by an observer without.


In a smaller black hole, whose event horizon is a lot closer to the singularity than a super massive black hole, you would be torn apart by tidal forces long before you hit the event horizon. But in a rotating supermassive black hole, you can theoretically pass the event horizon for hours depending on your speed and direction before being destroyed


But all that is tied to how close are you to that singularity....not the event horizon.