Spaghettification

In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect) is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong, non-homogeneous gravitational field. It is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near a black hole, the stretching and compression are so powerful that no object can resist it. Within a small region, the horizontal compression balances the vertical stretching so that a small object being spaghettified experiences no net change in volume. Stephen Hawking described the flight of a fictional astronaut who, passing within a black hole's event horizon, is "stretched like spaghetti" by the gravitational gradient (difference in gravitational force) from head to toe. The reason this happens would be that the gravity force exerted by the singularity would be much stronger at one end of the body than the other. If one were to fall into a black hole feet first, the gravity at their feet would be much stronger than at their head, causing the person to be vertically stretched. Along with that, the right side of the body will be pulled to the left, and the left side of the body will be pulled to the right, horizontally compressing the person. However, the term "spaghettification" was established well before this. Spaghettification of a star was imaged for the first time in 2018 by researchers observing a pair of colliding galaxies approximately 150 million light-years from Earth. In this example, four separate objects are in the space above a planet, positioned in a diamond formation. The four objects follow the lines of the gravitoelectric field, directed towards the celestial body's centre. In accordance with the inverse-square law, the lowest of the four objects experiences the biggest gravitational acceleration, so that the whole formation becomes stretched into a line. These four objects are connected parts of a larger object.