Go Get Sucked Into A Black Hole

Since I've been on a space kick lately, here's a short video from University of Colorado scientists Andrew Hamilton and Gavin Polhemus on what it would be like to get sucked into a black hole. Trippy:

Light from stars directly behind the hole is swallowed by the horizon, while light from other stars is merely bent by the black hole's gravity, forming a warped image around the hole . . . [researchers] Hamilton and Polhemus have painted a red grid on the horizon to help visualise it (as the horizon is spherical, the two circles on the grid represent the north and south "poles" of its central black hole). And as you pass one Schwartzschild radius, another artificial visual aid pops up. The white grid that loops around you marks where distant observers would place the horizon – this is where you'd see other people falling in if they followed you through the horizon.

[Via New Scientist]

ADDENDUM: My friend Farzad turned me onto this video of Neil DeGrass Tyson talking, amongst other things, about falling into a black hole. It's interesting and very entertaining: