NASA Simulation’s Flight Around a Black Hole: Explained

A Journey Into the Infinite: The Mysterious Voyage Inside a Black Hole

What would happen if we suddenly found ourselves “falling” into a black hole?

Black holes remain one of the most fascinating and mysterious phenomena in the universe. Although their nature is incredibly dense, with matter compressed into a region beyond our current imagination, scientists continue to struggle to understand what happens inside them.

Astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has taken a bold step to bring us closer to this enigma by creating a stunning simulation based on the latest scientific data.

“People often ask about what lies inside, and this simulation helps me translate the math of relativity into visual experiences that anyone can understand,” Schnittman explains.

In the simulation, he imagined two scenarios: one where a camera — representing a daring astronaut — reaches the edge of the black hole but backs away just before crossing the point of no return, and another where the camera crosses that boundary, enters the black hole, and remains trapped forever.

Black holes form when massive stars collapse under their own gravity, concentrating enormous mass into an infinitesimal point. Their gravitational pull is so intense that not even light can escape, which is why their interiors remain completely unknown.

Using the available scientific evidence, Schnittman’s simulation reveals how Einstein’s theory of relativity operates in these extreme conditions and includes a 360-degree video allowing viewers to “look around” inside the black hole.

To create this visualization, Schnittman collaborated with Brian Powell and used NASA’s Discover supercomputer. The simulation produced about 10 terabytes of data — roughly half the text content of the Library of Congress — and took five days to run, using only 0.3% of Discover’s 129,000 processors.

The destination of the “camera” is a supermassive black hole with a mass 4.3 million times that of our Sun — similar to the one at the center of our Galaxy.

Schnittman explains that supermassive black holes are more “friendly” to explore than smaller stellar-mass black holes, where tidal forces can shred anything that gets too close, a process called “spaghettification.”

The event horizon of this simulated black hole spans tens of millions of miles and is surrounded by a glowing disk of hot gas and rings of photons — images that constantly distort as the camera approaches, creating multiple reflections and visual warping.

As the camera nears speeds close to that of light, the glow from the disk and background stars intensifies, much like the rising pitch of a racecar engine approaching.

The simulation shows that from afar, the camera would appear to never actually cross the event horizon due to time dilation — hence black holes were initially called “frozen stars.”

Once crossing the event horizon, the camera (or brave astronaut) plunges toward the black hole’s center — the singularity — where the known laws of physics break down.

In the alternate scenario, the camera approaches and orbits near the event horizon but eventually returns safely. An astronaut making such a round trip would come back younger than those who stayed behind, thanks to the slowing of time near a strong gravitational field.

If the black hole were spinning rapidly, like the one in the movie Interstellar, the astronaut could return many years younger!