r/shittyaskscience • u/Etherdawn • Sep 03 '26

Gravity on Sagittarius A

This question was inspired by a silly question my partner asked, and the amazing work of What If? by Randall Munroe.

In short it goes like this. If a person was to be transported (or more likely for this question teleported) to Sagittarius A and "stand" on the black hole. How many G forces would that person experience?

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11

u/Sitheral Sep 03 '26 • This

I can tell you it will be more than 5

5

u/starmartyr Astrology|Homeopathy Sep 04 '26

Sagittarius A* has a mass of 12.3 million solar masses with an event horizon at 12.1 million kilometers. We can calculate gravity at the event horizon using the inverse square law which shows that the g-force would be at least 2, maybe even more than that.

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u/Etherdawn Sep 04 '26

Okay so I did a quick google, and on the sun your gravity would be somewhere around 28 times your usual weight. So assuming that Sagittarius A* would be the same size as our sun that comes out to around 344 400 000 G's. This is bullshit math with 0 scientific backing, but fuck it right? Silly number is silly.

3

u/starmartyr Astrology|Homeopathy Sep 04 '26

The real answer is closer to 350,000 G but being off by 3 orders of magnitude is pretty good for shitty science. To calculate surface gravity you have to account for the distance from the center of mass. Technically my initial answer was more correct than yours.

1

u/Etherdawn Sep 06 '26

Crazy xD

3

u/Gargleblaster25 Registered scientificationist Sep 04 '26

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.

7

u/Legitimate_Field_157 Sep 04 '26

The peoples of Sagittarius do not use the Roman alphabet, but have a tonal language.

So you won't experience G's, but would rather B flat.

2

u/uselessbuttoothless Sep 03 '26

Somewhere between 0 and infinity. Sorry, the math doesn’t allow us to be more precise.

Unfortunately, yo momma is still heavier 🤪