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Astrophysics: Fire in the hole!

Nature volume 496, pages 20–23 (2013)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 10 April 2013

This article has been updated

Will an astronaut who falls into a black hole be crushed or burned to a crisp?

In March 2012, Joseph Polchinski began to contemplate suicide — at least in mathematical form. A string theorist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, Polchinski was pondering what would happen to an astronaut who dived into a black hole. Obviously, he would die. But how?

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Change history

  • 05 April 2013

    This story originally gave the wrong affiliation for Ted Jacobson — he is at the University of Maryland in College Park not in Baltimore. The text has now been corrected.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zeeya Merali is a freelance writer based in London.,

    Zeeya Merali

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  1. Zeeya Merali
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Blogpost: NuSTAR spies black holes in galactic web

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Joseph Polchinski

Don Marolf

Leonard Susskind

Juan Maldacena

Daniel Harlow

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Merali, Z. Astrophysics: Fire in the hole!. Nature 496, 20–23 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/496020a

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