For this month's book recommendation I have "Brief Answers to the Big Questions" - Stephen Hawking's last book. You can read or listen to it's summary for free on Blinkist by activating your free trial at www.blinkist.com/sciencephile

"Spiders never are that big of a threat as your brain might be telling you" Me, an Australian:

I personally think that the universe's horrors are so abstract and so unfathomable for the human mind, that it is completely natural for us to want to explore it without hesitation or second thoughts

Honestly for me, I fear blackholes, but not in this way. The thought of falling into it is not what bothers me. It's more the fact that they exist. If I was next to a blackhole, it freaks me out that there is this utterly incomprehensibly massive sphere of pitch black something and I have no idea of telling if I'm too close to it or not. I still find them fascinating and I absolutely love blackholes while simultaneously fearing them.

I had major melanoheliophobia when I first heard the song “black hole sun” as a kid. It introduced me to the idea of a black hole eating up the earth and I had night terrors about it for a while and often had scary day dreams about it. Eventually the stresses of my teen and adult life took me out of it and now I’m just so nihilistic I don’t worry about mass extinction events in general anymore

I never even thought about gas giants being pitch black inside. For some reason I always imagined a colorful lit up gassy fog. That hit me hard for absolutely no reason and now I have a sudden fear of gas giants.

“If the universe is so big why won’t it fight me?”-internet historian

I first found out about my fear of blackholes when playing Universe Sandbox in which I was absolutely terrified of zooming in too fast, or even looking at a blackhole lest I be filled with dread or jumpscared. Still though, they are absolutely fascinating and of the many things in this universe; they are among my favourite.

welp, it's 2024 now, time to see if this prediction is true or not.

I dreamt that the sun was swallowed by a black hole in the middle of day, and it was now expanding and covering the sky and was coming for earth. I was holding onto another person as tight as I could, knowing that when the darkness reached us we would be separated forever. Strangely the black hole took my senses from me one at a time, until at last my sight survived, and then that was gone too. And then I was just a bodiless mind.

Black holes used to keep Albert Einstein up at night. He remarked that he sometimes had a hard time believing such object existed (despite his field equations and general relativity). And he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them and would not go back to sleep, trying to think up of ways to figure out how the singularity can exist inside a black hole.

I have this memory that I've repressed most of the context away from, but in probably third grade we had an astronomy presentation in the gym where each grade would go into this big inflatable dome and there was a guy inside who talked about space, but he kept hyping up that we were going to see inside a black hole at the end. Everyone was psyched but I FREAKED out. I knew I wasn't going to be sucked into a black hole, but I thought maybe because there's nothing in a black hole, the dome would deflate and we would all panic and get stuck inside and suffocate. I also just did not want to hear about the existential horror of black holes and have to look at one while stuck inside an inflatable. This guy had me sold that he was going to simulate the experience of being sucked into a black hole. Not something I want to be a part of. I got more and more anxious as the presentation went on, so much so that I started to cry, but it was DARK, and I thought that if I asked to leave I would get yelled at, so I had to cry loud. So the teachers could hear and get me the heck out of there. But that meant that the whole grade got to see me cry like a little bitch because I was afraid to see a picture of a black hole. And thus, my dream of being an astronaut ended, and the seed for my imminent existential crisis was sewn. Fuck black holes.

Not gonna lie thinking about seeing the universe speed up and end before you go (if you're still alive) is kind of a beautifully sombre thing to think about, not only will you see you life flash before your eyes but the entire universe's....honestly pretty magnificently dark in my opinion.

I’m glad my irrational fear that I’ve expressed to multiple people in the past of falling into Jupiter is somewhat justified.

3:51 the music really fit the process of the cat being turned into spaghetti

Back when I was a kid, I was extremely scared of the black holes from Super Mario Galaxy and I remember a nightmare of having my house be torn apart and eventually being sucked in myself. The fear has now subsided, and I only get slightly unnerved by black holes but I mostly just find them really fascinating. I think the main thing that scared me was how infinite it seemed and how it could easily suck in everything.

I've been looking for this phobia for EVER, but google always went back to "Megalophobia" but big things aren't scary, just cosmically large things. Approaching a planet or moon in a video game, triggers this fear for me. Same for nearing a black hole, but especially black holes.

A very nice message at the end. Very calming 😌

When I play Space Engine I always go to black holes and enter them, because the combination of coolness and utter horror is like a drug of something

Thanks for that ending message, just what I needed.

I had a dream where I woke up on a tiny pod / space craft. When I looked from the cockpit window it dawned on me that i was falling into a balck hole. No matter in what direction I burnt I had no chance of reaching escape velocity. It was a fall aimed straight to the center. The horror of blackness slowly cramping up your field of vision while you sit there waiting for death is something different. It was one of the most vivid dreams i ever had.

Guess I'm the weird one here, because.. I actually like black holes, it's my favourite celestial object. Dark, mysterious, powerful. And quasars... Cosmic crucibles of raw energy, with matter circling around in an accretion disc and being expelled at subluminal speeds as jets of hot plasma. Extremely deadly yet so beautiful... It thrills me to no end, how the darkest known objects can give out the most light, becoming the brightest. Like beacons of the universe.

I don't like to look at the supposed look of black holes, it's something about the endless, deep, round shape, whirlpools give me the same feeling of dread. Like a combination of megalophobia, thalasophobia and fear of the unknown. At the same time, there is the curiosity and endless fascination a black hole has, like the pull of the void to find out what the singularity is.

It’s so nice seeing your videos because they discuss questions I’ve asked myself for YEARS but no one had the same interest in talking about them and trying to figure them out like I did.

the sound of black holes and the scale gets me

Considering all the stars that we see at night is just a tiny group to our galaxy, i don't even want to comprehend how big the universe is and how easy it is to get lost

So i now know the name for another phobia I have. This and thalassaphobia are my two biggest fears, and I’ve always attributed it to the fact that infinite voids scare me. I can’t ever explain it fully but just the thought of falling into a deep, endless chasm, with no solid ground below you and nothing to hold onto is just terrifying. Idk if it’s because I’m scared of the loss of my senses, of what lurks within the void, or just the thought of being surrounded by nothingness, but voids terrify me

I think I have a phobia of "vacant black". That black part goes on forever without end can be unsettling and overwhelming, especially if it reminds you of the vastness of space and the terrifying potential of black holes.

This is the year we'll discover if a gamma ray hits our planet on November 5th…

Question: since time dialation would be so extreme when entering the black hole, would that mean that the black hole would immediately disintigrate due to hawking radiation?

I have morbid curiosity with things that scare me. So Black holes have quickly become one of the things I know a lot about. Ive seen those videos of falling into them from a 360 perspective and I get this intense feeling of fear. It’s looking into the deep black sphere and thinking “this is it.” I want to try it in vr because the emersion can be really intense. If I was to choose a way to die, it would be a fast acting cyanide capsule, while falling into a supermassive black hole. I can take the easy way out when the spaghettification becomes too painful, but until that point, I would see an event that is unfathomable to our minds. I would see the universe unfold as I look back out of the black hole. And when I look down I could see the deepest darkest depths the universe can create.

Putting the date at the end was just evil.

I always had an unnatural fear of every "spinning objects with giant force pulling you inside" like tornados or (especially) whirlpools. When I learned black holes are just those on steroids the entire concept became absolutely horrifying for me. They're interesting, and always make me morbidly curious, but seeing CGI footage of them already gives me shivers.

I had melonoheliophobia for like a single day, and it was brought about exactly how you suggested, but when I understood how unbeleivably far away they actually are that calmed me down. I now honestly love learning about black holes and other cosmic phenomena.

Space Engine is a horror game to me. While I absolutely love exploring the universe and taking snapshots on pretty planets, I also went to gas giants, stars and even black holes. Getting too close to gas giants or accidentally wandering into its atmosphere triggers a massive shock reaction to me. Faster pulse, goosebumps, the works. The worst one was trying to get to our Milky Way’s SMB. Black holes are incredibly hard to pinpoint and the closer you get to it, the more stars you can observe orbiting quickly. Actually getting to the black hole made me quit the game.

Falling into an empty void where nothing, NOTHING can get out at an high speed knowing very well that there is nothing i can do is my worst nigthmare, thanks for awakening it inside me

The first time i learned about what truly causes them i wasnt scared, I was eager to know more and i kept trying to find out more stuff about them. After 3 years (and wild psychosis episodes that have gotten less intense ovetime), i dreadfully fear them. I fear other unknown things like dark matter and vacuum fluctuations, but black holes still give me a hard time mentally when i extensively watch videos about them. And yet i still binge your Astronomy playlist repeatedly! It's also a good reminder to cut ties with anthropocentrism. Although i feel morbidly worthless but i think preserving life on earth for all living beings and pushing vitality to the limit is not ridiculous. i still admire that.

I have a big fear of space and the open ocean. Most of my nightmares involve getting taken away by strong currents, or falling up into the sky. But like many of us, I am fascinated by those things and I love researching them. Perhaps it's a subconscious effort to try and shed some light into the unknown.

What good timing! I was just in the middle of a metaphysical crisis!

Not surprised that I have this phobia

Can't believe I haven't subbed to you before now. I've been watching your content for a long time thinking that i already had.

"What makes the Universe Terrifying?" The fact that it doesn't give a shit about us, and that's also what makes it absolutely fascinating

I had the extreme urge to scroll down when you said we were gonna test Melanoheliophobia and I tried to fight it, but failed. I am weak to the holes power.

Thank you for this calming and fun creation of a phobia!

wait what? the 5th of November in 2024..? that's this year......

I remember learning about black holes for the first time in fourth grade and I was absolutely terrified for months until I learned that some snakes in the wild are poisonous. From one phobia to the next…

*5th of November 2024 comes* Sciencephile: you know the rules and so do i

7:06 had my dying just look at the cat

This is really difficult to explain but for me, whenever i boot up space engine and fly around a black hole its the gravitational lensing that really screws with me, as you approach, the space around the blackhole expands and envelopes you in a really unnerving way almost like its defying reality with how quickly it grows towards you, plus the percieved danger of the consequences of flying too close coupled with the severe disorientation caused by the warped space really makes you feel absolutely tiny and powerless

6:34 I always feel that fear when I warp really close to the Jool in KSP, It's a game about sending small people into the space yet watching those planets getting huge (really fast) and covering my entire screen scares me more than horror games

Every time when in playing around in Space Engine, I inevitably scare myself, by searching for a black hole and just fast-traveling to it. Seeing that sphere of blackness and bent light around it just suddenly popping up always scares me.

November 5th 2024 is approaching...

I believe that getting sucked into a black hole, might be the single most interesting way to go. I’m normally a very optimistic person and I love being alive, but the idea of dying by a black hole is such an intriguing idea, that I would actually, voluntarily sacrifice myself right here and now to experience it. If I found out that next week we would get sucked in by a roaming black hole I would actually be more thrilled about it than anything else. The idea of experiencing the ultimate raw power of the universe is such a rare privillege, why waste it by being scared or sad about it. The thought alone of there being a 100% chance of it happening sometime in the future is just such a beautiful prospect to me.

Clicked a black hole in Space Engine in VR. And when it snapped into view, for a second I felt a type jump scare I havent felt since the first Alien.

Yes I was absolutely terrified of THAT specific animation of a black hole. not because its a black hole. But because of the severe flashbacks i get from hearing that high pitched noise while reading that i died.

Really hope that this video will be recomended on the start of november of the next year...

I feel the same sort of dread that people have toward black holes when I am going down into the void in Subnautica. There is just something so disturbing about it.

I am terrified of stars and gas giants, absolutely would sh*t myself if I were approaching a black hole. My nightmares are almost always falling into stars

8:43 HOLD UP WHAT THE

Your videos are always phenomenal

im grown up but i still have melanoheliophobia, and im not scared of the idea of going into it, but that it exists. my version of melanoheliophobia is more irrational. It could be because since i was a kid i was interested in space, and learning about black holes gave me nightmares of them, i no longer have them of course, but playing games like universe sandbox or outer wilds and being near a black hole sends chills down my spine, and i dont know why. megalophobia plays into it, which makes sense, but just being near a black hole even in a game, looking at it gives me chills.

I find trypophobia might be to warn us away from things like wasp nests, and perhaps there are other things out there in nature But otherwise, it's just a strange icky sensation, I wouldn't call it a phobia in the way that arachnophobia is, but it feels icky I also have a fear of infinite voids, like space. I've had nightmares where I'm floating in a straight line through a void knowing I have a destination but knowing it is so infinitely far away I will never reach it or see another object again. I once got stuck in a dark room where all light had been purposefully blocked out, I couldn't find a wall or a door or anything to orient myself. I had no idea how big the room was or anything about it I shudder just remembering the sensation

I find that it is the dark and unknown that gives a black hole its frightening beauty. No one knows what's inside or if there's an exit. After learning that you see your reflection on the edge of a black hole upside down (your own rear view), I'm dying to see it for myself! 🤗🖤

I think the fear gets worse when i think about my loved ones, how i will die without telling them i love them and it stresses me out

I don't think I'm afraid of falling into a black hole itself, but have this weird fear of falling into an endless void, for example I get a very unsettling feeling when clipping through the ground in a game. And I believe that kind of transfers to the way that an increasing portion of your surroundings turn to black as you fall into a black hole..

You know what's really scary? The fact that, though unfathomably unlikely, there is a non zero probability that a gamma ray burst will render Earth lifeless on the 5th of November 2024.

Love the fact the majority of the footage was taken in Space Engine, great space exploring sim

the scariest thing about black holes to me is the time distortion tbh. that's so messed up that suddenly everything you've ever known will be long long gone and the entire universe pitch black and almost empty and you're just there chilling, eugh

Honestly I have an irrational fear of Jupiter, like I'm fine with black holes and even other things of similar size, but there's just something about that planet... Something very intimidating about it

What scares me is the picture of that circle of deep opaque black, in such contrast with the distorted lights that surround it, making a vortex. I don't know why but it gives me chills and a lot of discomfort to just look at it. When reading about black holes I'm usually careful because I get jumpscared by the illustrations. Maybe it is because it looks like an eye.

I love space but it does give me anxiety to know that it’s so vast, infinite, the unknown it does give me anxiety but also fascinates me even more!

That 5th November 2024 is coming awfully close.

Nothing must be pretty important for Nietzsche to value it. Cool phils, bro.

Learning how big and scary the universe is something that fills us with awe. I've studied a bit of medieval cosmology (C. S. Lewis's The Discard Image is quite an introductory book, and it's that Lewis of Chronicles of Narnia, it can be said it's its philosophical foundation) and one thing that the medieval philosophers emphasized was that the heavenly sphere, that we identify as the outer space was perfect, in contrast with our sinful world. Medieval cosmology was abandoned because Newtonian physics simply provided much better explanations, but I always wondered that if a medieval philosopher, true believer in the Ptolomaic model would be most shocked with the fact even the heavenly sphere is also full of chaos, to the point of giving way to phobias like this, than anything else.

A fear of there being no end or beginning is simple to think about but scary at the same time endless and no start wondering till the end of time never to stop is amazing to think about and so sad but not hopeless knowing there will be something in the future

The insignificance of human life in comparison to the scale of the Universe actually gives me comfort and peace of mind. There is something bigger than me and even that the whole earth. I'm nothing but that's fine, it's beautiful if you think about it. I'm small and yet I can admire and learn all this stuff.

Pretty sure the fear of spiders is due to the fact without knowing which ones are venomous and which aren't, avoiding them altogether is the safest course of action. So I'd say that isn't a phobia, just a fear.

3:17 yea black holes and and death screen really gave me radhan flashbacks

i have megalophobia and when you showed the clip of the giant in front of the car i physically flinched, felt like my soul left my body.

A huge fear of mine is being stuck somewhere in space. Stuck in the orbit of a huge planet sounds terrifying enough, but imagine being stuck in a huge void in space. There's a part in space with no stars in a huge radius. No you wont be able to sense anything. Another fear of mine is being able to hear space objects as if there was no vaccum in space and was filled with some kind of gas. We may or may not be able to hear distant stars but the sound of the sun would be so unimaginably unpleasant. Probably will even instantly destroy our eardrums.

1:23 Wait a minute... "Our"?

bruh we truly live in a universe

When I was 8 years old, my class was taken to a science museum and planetarium. They put on a puppet show where a big black net was sucking up the characters and showed some pictures/media. I came home terrified wondering why no one else was reacting like I was and would not shut up about black holes for a month. I couldn't sleep through the night and became afraid of the dark, despite the fact that my dad told me they were light years away. I'm still disturbed by their existence as an adult but at least take ease in knowing I will never encounter one in my lifetime.

I find the thought of falling into a supermassive black hole very soothing. Watching the entire history of the universe pass away while I fall would be awesome! Imagine outliving the entire universe!

I swear I’m so aware of “scary things” not actually being a life or death situation, that I just ignore my angst most of the time

5:52 BIGGER THAN A STEGOSAURUS?!?

Using computer voices and around the same time as a is becoming a mean headliner, you are contributing to my psychosis that nothing I see is real

I don’t exactly fear things that cause death, I fear death itself, it’s icy grip holding on for what feels like and is eternity, my last shreds of consciousness blowing away like dust in the wind, the unknowable horror that overwhelms me when I even try to fathom the great nothingness that is the end of one’s own being and consciousness makes the pain that some associate with the end of one’s life seem like burning embers compared to the vast, horrifying flame of dread that invades my mind when I think of what will happen after death.

Thank you Sciencephile, I now have that date marked on my calendar.

This is pretty cool stuff. I've never thought of Phobias like this🙂

That’s actually awesome there’s a term for this. I‘ve had fear of black holes and big asteroids hitting earth since I was a kid. The fear is not as bad now but I still get worried

Alright, boys! It's 2024! Time to wait until November 5!!

I've never really felt fear when I think about the universe. I think it's because I've loved learning about it my whole life so I'm used to the craziness of it all

6:57 nice fact

I have a small fear of distances. Dreaming of being far away from earth scares me.

That giant in the end scared the fk out of me...got shivers

I'm glad you made a video about these fears because when some video games tell you to jump into a black hole, I don't think I'm the only one to really want to do the opposite and to not get near these monsters lol

3:14 tbh i laughed because of the dark souls reference

Interestingly enough I used to have a massive phobia of the sky especially the night sky I was afraid of falling into the sky I found out it had a name “cassadastraphobia” and I still get scared when I go star gazing or looking up too long but not as bad as when I was younger I guess this is along the same lines as this fear because I too am terrified of black holes and massive objects lol

Space Engine made me realize that i have this phobia. I still like being around them because they're beautiful to look at, but i'm very careful with moving the mouse as i don't want to accidentally zoom in, because seeing them just engulf the screen makes my heart drop worse than any jumpscare. Same thing when you reach the end of the observable universe, just the absolute nothingness beyond the stars makes my stomach sink.