this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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For a star, I absolutely would. For a planet or moon, it depends on the context.
Would you say our planet is currently being sucked in by the Sun? or would you rather say that we are just orbiting the Sun?
Because odds are that if you approach a black hole without aiming directly for it, you might just end up in an orbit around it, not unlike we currently are around the Sun. Or you might even be catapulted out, instead of being "sucked in" in the popular sense.
In the case of the earth, no, I would say its an orbit. But if the path wasn't circular and instead was describing the sun pulling somthing away from its existing trajectory significantly, then yes, I might describe it as the sun sucking it in. Obviously doubly so if it actually is destroyed by the sun.
Then, under that interpretation, whether a black hole "sucks in" depends entirely on the trajectory you have. I'd argue then that considering all possible trajectories, you are more likely to not be sucked in by the black hole.
The path the Earth traces isn't circular, it's more like it's spiraling forming ellipses around the Sun and progressively getting further and further away from it (so we are actually slowly being pulled out rather than sucked in). If instead of a Sun we had a black hole with the same mass, nothing would change in that respect, since gravity only depends on the center of mass.
The difference (other than the temperature and light) is that a black hole is very very dense so it would be much much smaller. This means you can get a lot closer to it and this is what makes the gravity skyrocket (since gravity relates to the distance squared). With a star, you can't get close enough to its center without reaching first the INSIDE of the star.. and once you are below the surface of the star then the mass between you and the center of the star gets progressively smaller the closer you get to its center (and the mass that's behind you will get higher and higher), so this dampens the gravitational pull.