`  ==Can't spaghettification be explained much more simply?== It looks to me like this article is overcomplicated and spaghettification  can be explained in under 20 lines, plus possibly 1 very simple diagram (using Newtonian gravity):  * Gravitational pull is inversely proportional to the square of distance. * So the pull on the near side of an object is greater than the pull on the far side. * That means the near side wants to accelerate faster than the far side towards the source of the gravity field. * This difference in acceleration creates tension between the 2 sides of the object. The tension is proportional to 2 factors: the length of the object in the direction pointing towards the gravity source; the strength of the gravitational force. *For ``normal`` gravity fields, like Earth's, the effect is negligible if the object is smaller than a large asteroid. But in an extremely strong gravity fields, such as a black hole's, the tension can become enough to stretch the object and eventually pull it apart. Or am I missing something?  If I'm right and the article can be simplified, we can use the extra space for additional aspects, e.g.: any new features added by general relativity; spahettification eventually destroys atoms and even sub-atomic particles falling into black holes, because as the distance from the black hole decreases the gravitational pull increases very fast (inverse square law) and the difference in distance between the leading and trailing edges of the ``victim`` becomes a large fraction of the distance to the black hole; what happens when 2 black holes meet. `