Ever wondered what it would be like to fall into a black hole? A new NASA simulation has the answer — including the inevitable, crushing end.
Researchers created the new simulation using the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. It shows a viewer plunging through the accretion disk of glowing gas around a supermassive black hole like the one at the center of the Milky Way. The viewer cartwheels through the plunge, passing ghostly racetracks of light particles that have orbited the black hole multiple times, finally hitting the point of no return: the event horizon, where nothing, not even light, can escape.
