Well, I only read up to about page 4 of this thread and had a few things to add. What would happen if I snapped my fingers and the sun was instantly turned into a black hole (still only 1 solar mass in size)? Would the earth be suddenly sucked in? No, we would continue to orbit just as we do now, only it will get awful cold. When calculating things like orbits of planets around a central body, the only relevant information needed is the mass of the 2 bodies invloved, not their density, size etc. Now these orbital calculations break down for black holes as you get closer to them because of the extreme bending of space-time. There are also different types of black holes: static, rotating, charged. Depending on the type there are multiple photon spheres (read the site for what photon spheres are) and you can even get the singulatiry outside the event horizon :shock: . This website has some pretty good discriptions of the different types of black holes as well as what happens if you were to try and "drive" into one and lots of good info on black holes in general. A lot of the discriptions of black holes involve general relativity which I am no good at. The whole tensor math and non-eculidian (sp?) geometry make my head hurt, but it is terribly interesting to hear about. (please excuse andy spelling and grammer errors, I was a physics major, not english)