If I go to the event horizon, I get spaghettified right? How does that not mean I am being spaghettified (ever so slightly) right now?
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The spaghettification is not from the event horizon, but from one part of you being closer to the black hole than the rest of you, and the part that’s closer feels the gravity more strongly. And yes this effect happens to you from the earth, it’s just too small to be noticeable.
But what’s more noticeable is that this effect in relation to the moon(and to a lesser extent the sun) is what causes the tides.
Back to black holes, the strength of the effect is based on the difference in distance in relation to the total distance, so at the event horizon the effect will be stronger for a small black hole than for a big one.
You get spaghettified when passing through the event horizon of a black hole because the force of gravity is dependent on your distance from the black hole. The parts of your body closer to the black hole experiences much stronger gravity than the parts of your body further from the black hole. The difference between the 2 are strong enough to rip the chemical bonds that hold your body together apart. The difference in the forces of gravity between your feet and your head while standing on earth can’t be measured by any scale you can buy off the shelf.
No, the event horizon is the sphere (roughly) of darkness from which nothing can escape the black holes’ gravity, not even light.
The closer you get to a gravity source the stronger an object will feel the pull. If the difference between the pull on your legs and your head is great enough you will be ‘spegitified’. The distance this would occur at is different for each black hole and not the same as the event horizon distance.
Spaghettification doesn’t actually have anything to do with the event horizon. You’d be spaghettified long before it if falling into a small black hole, and well after if falling into a supermassive one.
But to answer your question: you are. Spaghettification is an effect of *tidal force* – that is, it’s the result of the fact that (if you’re falling feet-first), your feet are closer to the center of the hole than your head is. As a result, the tug on your feet is stronger than the tug on your head, which creates a net stretching force along the length of your body. This tidal force exists around any object, and it’s even relevant on the scale of planets or moons (by, for example, being the cause of tides – hence the name).
The reason this doesn’t harm you is that the tidal force here on the surface of the Earth is very small. You’re about 6,000 km, or 6,000,000 m, from the center of the earth, and only about 2 m tall. That means the difference in gravity – the difference between 1/6000 km squared and 1/(6000 km + 2 m) squared – is tiny, and therefore so is the tidal force on your body. For a 70 kg human standing on the Earth’s surface, the force is on the order of piconewtons, meaning the force pulling your body apart is weaker than a typical single chemical bond in a single molecule. Needless to say, your body’s structural strength is a lot bigger than that.
The difference in gravity between your feet and head isn’t enough to spaghettify you right now.
Your feet are closer to the Earth and are being pulled by gravity slightly more than your head. But the difference in gravity isn’t large enough to deform you. Near a black hole however, the difference in gravity is much greater and overcomes the forces that hold you together.
I love these comments so far. To me, they imply that there is a threshold where spaghettification becomes perceptible. Um, OR NOT. From what I can surmise we are all being stretched by spacetime, all the time.
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