The internet is ready for a black hole to suck up the Earth
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The internet is ready for a black hole to suck up the Earth

Stacey Ritzen—
Black Hole

Seems not great!

These are scary times we’re living in now. Between climate change, literal Nazis running amok, the fate of Roe v. Wade hanging in the balance, conspiracy theorists, the fear of getting gunned down every time you leave your house, and a reckless president who seems to be attempting to incite civil war if upcoming elections don’t shake out the way he wants—not to mention the ongoing conflict in Syria and other parts of the world—things are looking pretty grim!

But what if I told you that there’s a possibility that, someday, maybe none of that will matter?

It’s true! According to scientists, the end of the world may come sooner than we thought due to colliding gravitational waves that would cause the Earth to be sucked into a black hole! (As opposed to being swallowed up and incinerated when the sun inevitably becomes a giant red star in five billion years from now.)

Should this fate await our planet we’ll have less Russian election meddling to deal with and more, well, whatever happens when you enter a black hole. (Nobody knows exactly what, but it’s probably bad!)

Newsweek delivered the bad news about the possible impending fate of Earth in a cheery tweet on Thursday:

According to Newsweek:

Gravitational waves are invisible ripples in space which travel at the speed of light. The most powerful of these waves occur when objects move very quickly, for instance when two big stars orbit each other or two black holes orbit one another and merge. Such waves are often compared to the circular ripples which emerge when a stone is dropped in water.

However, if a particle or object travels at the speed of light, flat gravitational waves can result.

If such an event were to occur, if the waves were big enough, the subsequent collision would create a black hole with a gravitational field that not even light would be able to escape from it. That’s the long answer. The short answer is: we’re screwed.

Still, that didn’t stop Twitter from making light of the subject with morbid jokes. If we’ve all got to die, we might as well go laughing?

And then there were the requisite Space Force jokes:

And then Dictionary.com also had a take:

On one hand, maybe we shouldn’t actually taunt the black hole, but on the other…

I for one, welcome our new black hole overlord.

Stacey Ritzen

Stacey Ritzen

Stacey Ritzen is a reporter and editor based in West Philadelphia with over 10 years' experience covering pop culture, web culture, entertainment, and news. You can follow her on Twitter @staceyritzen.

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