Dinosaurs and Man

[Autumnlicious]

[Anomalocaris]

Near an event horizon wouldn't be much of a problem, as long as you're moving quickly enough and on a path that would take you across it as opposed to into it. You would simply slingshot around. (Of course, it depends on how near is near). Within the event horizon - now you're in trouble.

Actually, near the event horizon of any reasonably sized black hole would be a trememdous problem because of tidal effect. The difference between the force the blackhole exert on one end of you would be different from the the force excerted by the same black hole on the other side of you by many more orders of magnitude than the force required to split you into tiny red wiggling morsels.

Penetrate into event horizon? You will never get there. The definition of even horizon is the point where an object falling into the blackhole from a grant distance would attain speed of light under balck hole's gravitational pull. By relativity, time will slow down to dead stop as you get there. To an external observer you will come to rest smeared all over the even horizon, but you will never get in, unless you somehow bleed away a huge amount of your kenetic energy as you fall. They only way we know how that could happen is if you transfer that energy by friction. This is why things only enter black hole through accretion disks which radiates away the kenetic energy as gamma rays.

You will never survive the gamma ray.

Either way, where you are close enough for black holes to distort time or deflect sun light, that will be the place you die.

[Cyberman]

All hence my "how near is near" caveat. If you've wandered into the Roche limit of the object then good luck to you. Still, points taken. This is what makes the internet a wonderful tool for education, when used responsibly and critically.

Regardless, it shows just how much more wonderful is the real Universe than any superstitious dogma.

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
-- J B S Haldane (though often misattributed to Sir Arthur Eddington)

"In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way'"
-- Carl Sagan

[Erinome]

This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant..."

Tell me again about all that water that shot out of the ground, xtian. Still dying to know where it all went.

[Minimalist]

I sense another "miracle" coming.

[popeyespappy]

[Cyberman]

Tell me again about all that water that shot out of the ground, xtian. Still dying to know where it all went.

According to Conservapedia's centrefold boy NephilimFree, a lot of it hit the Moon and made all the craters. Seriously, he's gone on record as saying we'll find fossils of fish and shrimp and whatnot there.

[Erinome]

That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[Jackalope]

[Cyberman]

That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

I absolutely agree. That said, though, if I've learned only one thing it's that just when you think you've come across the dumbest thing ever, along comes something even dumber. We are never safe...