Why Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Falling Into a Black Hole Could Be the Ultimate Cosmic Experience

Ever found yourself pondering the ultimate exit strategy? Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysics maestro with a knack for making the cosmos feel like your slightly tipsy next-door neighbor, has a curveball for you: if you get to pick how you clock out of this mortal coil, why not choose to be sucked into a black hole? Yeah, that’s right—a cosmic gulp that sounds like the worst theme park ride ever. But hold your horror just a sec, because Tyson swears this death route is actually ‘the way to go’ for those of us who want to check out with a bit of flair (and maybe a sprinkle of scientific oddity). Now, before your brain starts doing somersaults thinking about spaghettifying limbs and interstellar toothpaste squeezes, let me tell you—it’s not your everyday “bite the dust” scenario. Curious yet? You should be. LEARN MORE

According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, if there’s any way you can choose your manner of dying, then you ought to pick being sucked into a black hole.

Bet that one hadn’t crossed your mind, had it?

It might sound like a rather grisly fate, but he knows his science and reckons death by black hole is ‘the way to go’ for the discerning deceased.

While plenty would see it as an utterly terrifying way to perish, they’ve probably never heard a detailed description of everything this method of death would do to you.

Normally, this would make any method of death even more daunting, but deGrasse Tyson is pretty sure that once you’ve heard what a black hole will do to you, you’ll agree with him that it’s how to depart with style.

Have fun trying to actually make it to a black hole (John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)

How would dying by black hole work?

He gave his explanation during an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2007, where he said: “It’s the way to go.

“I mean if you have your choice of getting hit by a car, dying in a nursing home or falling into a black hole, then the choice is easy for me. Totally.

“If you go a feet-first dive, your feet approach the black hole faster than your head does because the gravity is stronger at your feet. At first, you’re stretching and that kind of feels good initially.”

A grisly turn

The scientist explained that after a ‘therapeutic stretch’, things start to get fatal as ‘the difference in gravity becomes greater than the molecular forces that hold your flesh together’.

I’m not sure that looks all that inviting… (SAKKMESTERKE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

He described how your body would ‘snap into two segments’ which would ‘eventually snap into two segments’ and so on until you become ‘a stream of particles descending down’.

Despite him billing being sucked into a black hole as the way to die, deGrasse Tyson gave a very enthusiastic ‘yeah’ when he was asked whether or not this would be painful.

‘Like toothpaste through a tube’

“It’s worse than that, though, it’s worse because the fabric of space and time funnels you,” he explained, and right about now, you probably want to cross off ‘sucked into a black hole’ off your list of preferred exits.

“In fact, you’re occupying a narrower and narrower cone of space, so you’re getting extruded through the fabric of space-time like toothpaste through a tube.”

That really doesn’t sound great, so why on Earth does the scientist reckon this is the number one way to die?

According to the man himself ‘if you had to choose, why not perform the irreversible experiment of your life’.

Of course, one of the biggest problems here is actually getting to the black hole, since the closest one to our planet is some 1,500 light-years away, so good luck reaching that before something else claims your life.