Forget about travelling to far-off galaxies through black holes. Israeli scientists say it is not possible.

The New Scientist magazine reported this week that the academics had devised a computer program to simulate the behaviour of the intensely powerful gravitational fields that are formed from the remains of a star.

The scientists at Jerusalem's Hebrew University said that instead of transporting a spaceship across the universe in an instant as some astrophysicists had believed the immense force of the black hole would tear the vessel to shreds.

"The simulations showed that the formation of a black hole creates a new kind of singularity (a point when the bending of space-time becomes infinite and all matter is torn apart) due to an effect called mass inflation," the magazine said.

When a traveller moved towards a black hole, the apparent mass of the hole increases to infinity. So in the end, the traveller would indeed be ripped to pieces, it added.