On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:13:54 GMT, (Eugene
Griessel) wrote:

In episode 3 we are regaled with the breathless tale of "monsters"
that could consume the earth - black holes. Including a scenario of
what would happen to the solar system should one of these take it into
its head to devour us.

There are a number of gravitational simulators out there you can
download and play with. It's fun and instructional to allow a rogue star
to fly through the Solar System. The results are almost always the same:
a few planets are captured by the intruder, and end up orbiting it, a
few remain around the Sun, although usually with altered orbits, and a
few are flung out of orbit completely. It makes no difference whether
you consider the rogue object a star or a black hole- the dynamics are
essentially the same. Nothing gets "devoured", barring the extremely
unlikely chance of an actual collision, but the Solar System certainly
doesn't come out of such an event intact.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com