What If a Gamma-Ray Burst Hit a Black Hole? interesting facts
what would happen if you took the most energetic light source in the universe and smashed it into a massive gravitational monster well you might reverse the flow of time how would this event unfold how could it affect time as we know it and what would happen if you got too close this is what if and here's what would happen if a gamma ray burst hit a black hole meet your first fighter a black hole not so different than your average object with mass except that it's extremely dense.
Most black holes are the remnants of massive stars and they have lots of gravity the mass of this black hole is compressed to a point called a singularity at this infinitely small point in the center conceptions of space and time break down today's challenger is a gamma ray burst not so different from your average burst of visible light oh yeah except way more energetic gamma ray bursts are the strongest and brightest explosions in the universe in one second gamma ray bursts emit as much energy as the sun will emit during its entire 10 billion year life span so if these two powerful phenomena collide would space and time cease to exist no matter what happens.
Black hole releases a burst of gamma-ray light when it's created this burst spreads out evenly in all directions across the universe so some of these gamma-rays will certainly encounter another black hole or two and these gamma-ray bursts happen about once a day they could flash for less than two seconds or they could last for up to 30 seconds the difference is whether the burst results from two neutron stars colliding to form a black hole or whether it's the result of a star collapsing directly into a black hole without a supernova explosion so if you managed to observe these phenomena would you witness a magnificent explosion about a million trillion times brighter than the sun well not quite while some photons have just the right amount of frequency to be visible to your eyes the frequency of gamma rays is way too high your eyes aren't advanced enough to see their beautiful bursts but if you could see them this insane amount of light would probably leave you blind now surely this explosion must be loud right well once again i come bearing bad news it would technically sound like nothing yeah sound doesn't travel in the vacuum of space it needs a medium with particles to carry sound waves but thanks to the scientists at nasa a gamma ray burst would sound a little something like this okay not exactly like this these beautiful cello and piano notes translate the gamma-ray frequencies into musical notes pretty mellow for such a massive explosion right but if you were close to this explosion things would be anything but mellow for you gamma rays are hazardous they can penetrate lead concrete and certainly whatever space suit you'd be wearing as they passed through your body they'd deliver an extremely high dosage of radiation you'd suffer radiation sickness you'd become nauseous lose your hair and even bleed the energy could cause damage to your tissue and your dna leading to cancer or worse death the gamma rays could cook you from the inside out so you'd want to back up a little bit or better yet reverse time in 2018 researchers observing gamma-ray burst pulses found that some events repeated themselves in reverse that's right it was as if they were moving backward so what does this mean for you did you just stumble on a way to travel back in time again i have bad news this is merely an optical phenomenon light has the fastest speed in the universe but this is only true for the speed of light traveling through empty space in other mediums like water it would be possible for electrons to travel faster that means if gamma rays could travel faster than the speed of light they would give the illusion of reversing time so yeah it's possible i oversold you a bit on the idea that if a gamma ray burst collided with a black hole it would result in the brightest loudest time destroying explosion of all time but in some ways it's all true now until our sun collapses into a black hole and sends a burst of gamma rays in your direction you don't have to worry but if a black hole swallowed our sun gamma rays wouldn't be your only problem but that's a story for another what if you
