It can't really "gobble" anything any more than a star "gobbles" things that fly into its photosphere or a planet "gobbles" things that crash into it.
Unless you cross its event horizon, its gravity works just like any other celestial object. Maybe at worst it slingshots you off in a different direction.
If I was going to be afraid of an invisible killer, I would be far more concerned with gamma-ray bursts. It covers a much larger area than that a black hole and could crisp our planet like some kind of sci-fi intergalactic superweapon laser beam. And some might consider getting turned to ash in mere moments a mercy compared to the potential of a near "miss" that would give half the planet instant cancer and completely fuck our weather patterns beyond any comprehension.
Still not super likely, but I would think far more likely than a direct hit by a black hole.
A mass of 6x to 7x our sun (size of this object) would start messing with solar system orbits well before it got here. Not that that would be much better for us!
We would most likely freeze to death. As the black hole crossed the asteroid belt we would be pulled away from the sun as it started to compete with the black hole's gravity. Depending how fast the black hole was moving we might die over a few months or we might freeze to death in a few days. Probably there are paths where the earth would briefly be pulled into an elliptical orbit, and then we would be burnt to a crisp as we circled back close to the sun.
> wouldn’t want society to know we were about to collide with a star-sized mass
I may be misunderstanding the distances involved but wouldn't such a collision take centuries if not thousands of years to play out? For the most part it would just look like we had 2 suns, one of which gets a few millimeters bigger (to the naked eye) every year.
ah dammit I didn't think of that
you're right it would be more of a disturbed orbit, weird ass days and nights
but hey atleast there's a chance the scientists could have close up real life simulation of the three body problem
Fortunately space is really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY big. The chance of this happening is so infinitesimal we might as well worry about spontaneously transforming into a whale or potted flower manifested a mile above the surface of our planet.
I'd wager such an encounter is way more likely to result in any of:
1) the Earth being flung out of the Sun's orbit
2) planetary orbits becoming disrupted such that an encounter with another planet over the coming years or millennia becomes likely,
2.1) which could eventually have the same "flinging away from the Sun" effect,
2.2) or (unlikely, but possible) result in a collision
2.3) or result in the Earth being shredded into asteroids
2.4) or other planets suffering that fate and then showering the Earth with dangerously-large asteroids over a period of decades or centuries until it's nearly, or actually (think: outright crust liquefaction from impacts) lifeless.
than the Earth actually getting swallowed up, by at least an order of magnitude.
IOW, the most-likely "we're all dead" outcomes for us, from a close encounter with a massive rogue anything really, including a black hole, might take years and years to play out.
Detection typically requires exceptionally rare circumstances - which if looking at a dataset the size of the visible universe, typically turns up several examples if we look hard enough.
But any specific random example, is often brutally hard to see.
I'm pretty sure it would be something like even if a star was coming and we saw it what the fuck could we even do
it would just create mass panic, hysteria and would make everyone hella religious
depending on how early we detect it though we might have some time to make good memories before we die.
atleast I would prefer a black hole smashing into us unbeknownst to us instead of a known star. Also no one would want to show up to jobs and stuff
That brings me memories of Cosmos 1999. The moon left Earth's orbit to outer space because explosions, but being slingshoted away because a nearby massive enough object passing by looks like a more possible scenario, not explored enough by sci-fi.
The basic premise of the show that an explosion at a nuclear waste dump could produce enough energy to push the Moon out of the Solar System to wander the galaxy is an interesting product of its time. Concerns over the power of nuclear explosions was high and casual access to knowledge about the plausibility of such a scenario was somewhat limited.
There's a fan driven update called Space: 2099 that improves some of the more dated aspects of the show, including showing the Moon enter some type of portal or wormhole to make suspension of disbelief easier. While the Special Edition releases of Star Wars often suffered from updating certain aspects, especially special effects, the Space: 2099 changes were generally good for the show. Too bad they're unable to fund raise enough and get permission to do the entire series.
Space: 1999. Do you happen to be french or polish?
In Germany they called it "Mondbasis Alpha". As I child I really liked this series and it's predecessor UFO made by the same team (Gerry and Sylvia Anderson of Thunderbirds fame).
Unless you cross its event horizon, its gravity works just like any other celestial object. Maybe at worst it slingshots you off in a different direction.