It's voracious, but:

Are they too late for the end of the world?

Planet Earth: If a black hole comes close, things could get tight for us - in the truest sense of the word.

(Bild: 1xpert - stock.adobe.com)

Thanks to advances in observation technology, more and more black holes are being discovered in space. How dangerous are these objects for planet Earth, asks scientist and author Christian Mähr.  

Black holes were already known 200 years ago - on paper. In 1783, the English physicist John Michell postulated "dark stars", whose gravity was said to be so great that their light could not "rise" from them. This was based on the idea at the time that light consisted of a type of "light atom", i.e. tiny particles, which would no longer reach the escape velocity of a "dark star".

The real conditions are very different from this simple model. However, it is astonishing how well it describes what one sees, or rather does not see, in a black hole. This is why Michell's model is still used today in popular explanations of black holes. What is it really like?