23. Could a collapsing star form a black hole near us and suck the Sun and the Earth into it? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

Stars that could form black holes are so far from our solar system that the effect on our solar system would be negligible—I would worry more about the end coming from the collapse of our Sun into a white dwarf in three to five billion years than about any potential black holes forming nearby! For a collapsing star to form a black hole, it has to exceed the Sun's mass by at least eight to ten solar masses. The end of life for such stars will be supernova blasts which will end in a black hole only if the remnant stellar core exceeds three solar masses! And remember that once this star collapses to form a black hole, its effect on the matter around it will be exactly the same as before. All a black hole does is concentrate the mass of an object into an exceedingly tiny and dense point in space—all matter nearby will still respond to it exactly like it did before the collapse according to the known laws of gravity.

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Answer provided by Jim Zebrowski

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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