Everything Stops for Black Holes

Jen, Oni and I are going through a Tea Time transition. We‘ve watched all the existing eps of Star Trek: Discovery and Lucifer. These two shows are utterly brill – the best kind of escapism. There’s wit, spaceships, angels and demons, hot topical issues are tackled and more.

Lucky for us, there WILL be more of both series but WHEN?

We’re now exploring other shows – looking for brilliance. Maybe there’s another Buffy or Angel out there in TV Land somewhere? Toward that end we auditioned the first ep of Farscape.

Two things I couldn’t get past:

1)   Muppets. It was produced in part by Jim Henson’s company. Cool...if you’re watching with your pre-teen kiddles, I guess. Me? I just can’t take fuzzy puppets seriously as killer, space traveling aliens.

2)   The 20-something protagonist, (who looks way too damn wholesome – like a fairy tale blonde Nebraska mother just popped him outta the oven), is an astronaut. He’s taking a super duper, brand-y new rocket ship (which he co-invented...of course) out for a test drive when he accidentally falls into a black hole.

My friend Mark recently explained to me what could actually happen if one of us humans ever rilly fell into one. Me, fer instance.  Gravity would be way stronger at my feet than at my head so I would be pulled, stretched like taffy. I would be, as the science folks term it, spaghetified.

I found this fascinating post at BBC Earth – The strange fate of a person falling into a black hole  by Amanda Gefter.

So what happens if you accidentally fall into one of these cosmic aberrations? Let’s start by asking your space companion — we’ll call her Anne — who watches in horror as you plunge toward the black hole, while she remains safely outside. From where she’s floating, things are about to get weird.

As you accelerate toward the event horizon, Anne sees you stretch and contort, as if she were viewing you through a giant magnifying glass.

 ~~~snip~~~

When you reach the horizon, Anne sees you freeze, like someone has hit the pause button. You remain plastered there, motionless, stretched across the surface of the horizon as a growing heat begins to engulf you. 

According to Anne, you are slowly obliterated by the stretching of space, the stopping of time and the fires of Hawking radiation. Before you ever cross over into the black hole’s darkness, you’re reduced to ash.

But there’s so much more.

A black hole is a place where the laws of physics as we know them break down. Einstein taught us that gravity warps space itself, causing it to curve. So given a dense enough object, space-time can become so warped that it twists in on itself, burrowing a hole through the very fabric of reality.

Wickedly fascinating shit!

Also, I only mention it, reading about quantum mechanics shit is WAY more fun and less stressful than looking at the news reports.

So, ‘scuse me, Imma go bury myself in event horizons, singularities and field theory and shit. Cheers!