At the end of this article the author asks: "What would you see if you lived on a habitable planet in that far-away galaxy and could look toward the center? Probably nothing that makes sense to human eyes. Black holes have such powerful gravity that they distort the space around them." Coincidentally, my boyfriend Rob (who is on the physics faculty at Oberlin college, and whose research focus is black holes), just presented an image to the computational modeling class he teaches that relates to the above question. It simulates what the Earth would look like to an outside observer if it were 99.99% the density of a black hole. I wasn't able to get the image small enough to forward directly, but you can see it (along with my attempt at a fun explanation) on my blog here. http://kellyricks.blogspot.com/2012/11/if-earth-were-black-hole.html Enjoy! ~Kelly Message: 1 Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:13:35 -0800 (PST) From: Mark Shelton <astroshelton@yahoo.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] super giant black hole Message-ID: <1354223615.5927.YahooMailNeo@web161801.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 link to a story on the news http://news.yahoo.com/super-giant-black-hole-baffles-scientists-174556589--a... ? Mark Shelton Indian Hills Middle School CTE Tech Ed. Teacher Salt Lake Astronomical Society Board Member (School and Special Star Parties?Coordinator)?