Then, under that interpretation, whether a black hole āsucks inā depends entirely on the trajectory you have. Iād 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 isnāt circular, itās more like itās 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 canāt get close enough to its center without reaching first the INSIDE of the starā¦ 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 thatās behind you will get higher and higher), so this dampens the gravitational pull.
My point isnāt that a black hole is unique or anything else of the sort. Heavy objects try to suck in lighter objects around them. The reason I was saying I would only sometimes describe it as being āsucked inā was because that suggests being significantly pulled towards the object, whereas if it is a fairly stable orbit or the objectās trajectory being slightly bent, I wouldnāt describe it as such (black hole or otherwise). Even with a gas giant, It wouldnāt feel wrong to say it sucks in nearby debris.
Ok, then itās not the condition of ābeing a black holeā what makes it āsuck inā, but its mass, which can be varied (according to Stephen Hawking, the theoretical minimum mass to form a black hole would be 0.01 mg)
Saying that a black hole āsucks inā in that sense is as valid as saying that any object with mass (like a tenis ball) āsucks inā. But I donāt think thatās what the article was referring to as a āmythā, the myth the article targets is the suck power being a particular characteristic of black holes.