PREVIEW

Scientists have released a mind-bending simulation of what it would look like to fall into a black hole. Using a NASA supercomputer, the new video allows viewers to experience the descent into the event horizon, the point from which nothing can escape a black hole. The simulation follows a camera as it nears, orbits, and finally enters the event horizon of a colossal black hole akin to the one at our galaxy's center. Jeremy Schnittman, NASA astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, created the visualisations. The effort produced about 10 terabytes of data and ran for about 5 days using just 0.3% of Discover’s 129,000 processors. Attempting this on a standard laptop would take over a decade. The target is a supermassive black hole, with a mass 4.3 million times that of our Sun, mirroring the behemoth at the center of the Milky Way.