What If a Magnetar Collided With a Black Hole?

WHAT IF

What would happen if a magnetar collided with a black hole?

Transcript

00:00 In the center of our galaxy,

00:03 the Milky Way,

00:04 there is a supermassive black hole

00:07 feeding on nearby stars.

00:10 It's called Sagittarius A*.

00:13 And if a giant gravitational monster

00:17 slowly eating the galaxy

00:18 isn't terrifying enough,

00:20 there's another cosmic monstrosity

00:23 lurking around it.

00:26 Is it possible that one day

00:27 they would get a little too close

00:29 and collapse on each other?

00:31 What would be left of the Milky Way

00:33 if they did?

00:35 Would there be even a slight chance

00:38 that the Earth could get out of that safely?

00:41 This is WHAT IF,

00:43 and here's what would happen

00:45 if a magnetar collided with a black hole.

00:51 This monstrosity creeping through the Milky Way

00:55 is a remnant of a giant exploded star.

00:58 But it's not just any remnant.

01:00 It's an extremely dense

01:02 and very magnetic collapsed stellar core,

01:06 a magnetar.

01:09 Let me refresh your knowledge of magnetars.

01:12 They're born when a star,

01:14 at least eight times more massive than our Sun,

01:18 reaches its expiration date

01:20 and explodes in a beautiful supernova.

01:23 Much of that star is gone,

01:25 but the dense core of it remains.

01:28 Most of these remnants become neutron stars.

01:31 They spin very fast,

01:33 usually a few times per second,

01:36 and they're composed of neutrons.

01:39 Some neutron stars have such strong magnetic fields

01:42 that they emit electromagnetic radiation

01:45 from their poles.

01:46 That makes them pulsars,

01:48 and you can observe them with a telescope

01:50 when their poles face the Earth.

01:53 Only a few pulsars develop such an extremely

01:56 powerful magnetic field.

01:58 They become the strongest magnets in the Universe,

02:02 the magnetars.

02:05 They spin once every 10 seconds,

02:07 but their magnetic field is 100 times stronger

02:11 than that of a neutron star.

02:13 If one of those magnets came halfway between

02:16 the Moon and the Earth,

02:18 well, it wouldn't be pretty.

02:22 But would it be as bad from a distance

02:25 of 26 light-years away?

02:28 What I'd like to know is,

02:30 would a magnetar swallow a black hole,

02:32 or would a black hole gobble up a magnetar?

02:36 The collision of these two giants

02:40 wouldn't end up in an explosion,

02:41 but in a quiet cosmic merger,

02:44 stretched over billions of years.

02:48 Although magnetars are incredibly powerful,

02:51 they would lose the battle with a black hole.

02:55 Depending on the trajectory of the magnetar,

02:58 as well as the size and mass

03:00 of both the magnetar and the black hole,

03:03 the magnetic monster would be eaten up

03:05 either whole or slowly, piece by piece.

03:10 As the magnetar was being torn apart by the black hole,

03:14 it would be sending gravitational waves

03:16 throughout the Universe,

03:18 disturbing the curvature of spacetime.

03:21 Once the black hole consumed the magnetar,

03:24 its mass would increase

03:26 and expand its event horizon.

03:28 And thanks to this expansion,

03:31 more and more stars would be flung

03:33 into its dark density.

03:35 The black hole would be slowly eating our galaxy,

03:39 star by star.

03:42 Eventually, after quadrillions of years

03:44 of star consumption,

03:46 the black hole could gobble up the Milky Way.

03:50 All of it.

03:52 By that time, humanity would most likely be long gone anyway.

03:57 That is, unless another cosmic event

03:59 disrupts this feast

04:01 some 4.5 billion years from now.

04:05 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.

04:09 (upbeat music)

04:11 (dramatic music)

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