Space & Astronomy

This is what would happen if a 100-billion-ton black hole hit you

By T.K. Randall
November 25, 2025

Image: Black Hole - Large Magellanic Cloud
Credit: Alain r / CC BY-SA 2.5 (adapted) Black holes are undeniably terrifying. These extraordinarily dense objects, which typically form when a particularly massive stars collapses in on itself, draw in anything unfortunate enough to get close and once you are ensnared by one - nothing, not even light itself, can escape.

But not all black holes are the same size, some are actually quite small.

So what would happen if a black hole - let's say one with a mass of 100 billion tons - happened to hit you ?

Incredibly, the answer - according to physicist Robert Scherrer of Vanderbilt University - is... not much.

Due to the immense density of black holes, one with a mass of 100 billion tons would actually be tiny - a fraction of the size of a hydrogen atom.According to Scherrer, if such an object were to pass through you, it would do very little - up to a point.

The minimum mass a black hole would need to be to do damage to you is around 140 billion tons, but even then it would do less damage than a bullet and it is the shockwave as it passes through that causes most of the damage rather than the black hole itself.

A black hole would need to be at least 7 trillion tons before it would 'spaghettify' your insides (this is where the force of the black hole's gravitational pull stretches and contracts your tissue).

Some scientists believe that black holes of this scale may be responsible for dark matter - the universe's missing mass that cannot be directly observed.

There's no need to worry, though, as we've never heard of anyone actually suffering from a black hole-induced injury...

...at least, not yet anyway.

Source: Science Alert

Tags: Black Hole