Why don't we get sucked into the black hole in the middle of our galaxy?

Answer 1

We are strongly influenced by the gravity of the supermassive black hole in our Milky Way, (combined with the over-all gravity of the rest of the galactic material) because our solar system is orbiting around it. But we are very far from the event horizon. The event horizon is the distance at which there is no force capable of preventing collapse of an object into the hole itself.

Answer 2

Because our solar system is in orbit around the center of the galaxy. It doesn't matter how strong the gravity well is; we can orbit around it. Actually our solar system is pretty far away from the center of the galaxy.

Answer 3

Our Sun (and our solar system) are in orbit around the center of the galaxy. We think of "black holes" as being superpowerful, but all they have is mass - extremely CONCENTRATED mass. The power of a black hole is only felt when you get close to it.

Our solar system is a considerable distance away - about 40,000 light years. At this distance, it doesn't matter too much if the mass at the galactic center is really a black hole, or just a lot of other stars fairly close to each other; we're not really in any danger.

Answer 4

Scientists still are not sure why most galaxies contain supermassive black holes. One idea is that the first stars, which were very massive, formed smaller black holes when they died which then merged together. Another idea is that large clouds of gas at the centers of the proto-galaxies collapsed directly into black holes.

Answer 5

For the same reason a ping pong ball floats on water: buoyancy. People are not dense enough to sink through the solid earth's crust.