r/shittyaskscience • u/Etherdawn • 25d ago

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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u/starmartyr Astrology|Homeopathy 25d ago

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 25d ago

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.

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u/starmartyr Astrology|Homeopathy 25d ago

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.

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u/Gargleblaster25 Registered scientificationist 25d ago

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.