Agggh!
Let me make it as simple as I can.
It dosen't matter whether you are talking about
:
- your ship VS an asteroid
- your ship VS a planet
- your ship VS a star
- your ship VS a Black Hole
IN orbit ==> stay in orbit ==> no crash
Not IN orbit (eg. stationary) ==> fall in ==> die horrible death
quote:
In other words, a one-solar-mass black hole is no better than any other one-solar-mass object (such as, for example, the Sun) at "sucking in" distant objects.
Yes! Exactly.
quote:
A black hole in a close orbit around a star can pull the top layers of the star off the surface and down its own gravity well. Once the material passes beyond the black hole's event horizon, it is gone, and more stuff can be consumed by the black hole. You are left with a slightly larger black hole, and a slightly less massive star, so the black hole can pull a little more material off the star
Now, one caution here:
The Hole isn't "sucking" the gas off of the star. The star's gas is slowly smeared out by the gravitational shear & drifts into the accretion disk, which radiates energy & sinks towards the hole.
The Hole & star are orbiting each other, but lets take the viewpoint of the hole.
Relative to us, we aren't moving.
The star is orbiting us, but it is really fat compared to the hole.
Now, imagine drawing an ellipse (circle) tracing out the star's path. Some of the star's gas is too far out & some is too far in. The farther out the orbit, the slower you move, so the outside (away from the hole) is moving too fast for it's orbital distance, while the inside is moving too slow.
The Gas that's moving too slow tends to drop inwards towards the hole, while the fast gas stretches outwards. The slow gas transfers from orbiting the star to the hole, where it joins the accretion disk.
The accretion disk radiates heat from the friction between different layers (inner ones orbit faster) and the gas loses energy & slowly falls in.