Spring 2012 ASTR 2030 Black Holes: Black Hole Books, Movies
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Spring 2012 ASTR 2030 Black Holes: Black Hole Books, MoviesYou can win yourself up to 2% extra credit by advising me of any science fiction novel or short story, or movie or TV episode, that involves Black Holes or Wormholes, and that is not listed here.
Please note that stories or movies merely involving time travel (like Time Machine or Back To The Future) don't count. Moreover texts, monographs, documentaries, or other works of non-science-fiction on Black Holes do not count.
To gain the full extra credit, you must name a specific novel, short story, movie or episode (not a general series like Deep Space 9), you must have read the story or seen the movie yourself, and you must include a short review of the story/movie in your own words (don't forget the quotes rule). You should provide a link to a place on the web where further information about the story/movie can be found.
To be considered for extra credit, you must make your submission no later than in class on Tuesday May 1, the Tuesday of the last week of classes.
| Title | Comments | |
|---|---|---|
| ASTR 2030 Spring 2012 Entries | ||
| True Blood: “She's Not There.” HBO Original TV Series |
In the Season 4 opener, Sookie, one of the main characters,
is revealed as a Faerie.
She is taken by her God Mother back “home” to the realm of the Fae,
where they attempt to seduce her senses and clear her memory of her life on Earth.
This is done in an attempt to preserve their race and “protect” Faeries
from going extinct by Vampires.
I do not want this to act as a spoiler so I will proceed to the portion in which wormholes become relevant... At a particular point in the episode Sookie discovers that the realm of the Fae is not what it seems. Rather than beautiful and pure, it is riddled with evil and darkness. As she runs from the creatures within this realm she is presented with a wormhole by a fellow male-Fae who acts as a temporary ally. He instructs her to jump into the wormhole if she wishes to return to Earth. If she does not jump the wormhole will close and she will be forever trapped in the realm of the Fae — never to see her loved ones on Earth again. Sookie, with only seconds to spare, leaps through the wormhole and is transported back to her life on Earth. Shockingly, what felt like only 15 or so minutes within the realm of Fae was actually 13 months in Earth-time.
IMDB summary
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| Farscape, Episode 1 |
On Earth, astronaut John Crichton
is testing out a new technology that he helped develop.
All of a sudden, the technology reacts with a solar flare
and creates a wormhole that Crichton falls through.
He winds up on the other side of the wormhole, far from home
and not really knowing where he is,
in the midst of a fight between two space superpowers,
the Sebaceans and the Scarrans.
Both think that Crichton has knowledge of wormhole technology,
and are after him for it.
He has to try to find his way back home,
and to do so must figure out wormhole technology, which might just destroy the universe.
Jim Henson's Farscape website
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| Wristcutters: A Love Story |
Zia is very depressed after the love of his life (Desiree) leaves him so he decides
to end his life. The story does not end there though. Zia is sent to another
world or dimension where he continues living with other people that committed
suicide. His good friend (Eugene) he meets in the new world has a car
and for some reason there is a black hole underneath the front passenger seat.
Numerous items are dropped under the seat throughout the movie. Eugene
mentions that anything that is dropped into the black hole will vanish forever.
Later in the movie he drops a pair of sunglasses that go quickly into the black
hole and vanish. Mikal, a woman that believes she has been misplaced in the
suicide dimension, loses her lipstick along with the roadmap, swallowed up by
the black hole. Eugene also dropped his lighter while sitting in the seat and Zia
loses another pair of Eugene's glasses along with some flowers for Desiree for
when he finds her. At the very end of the movie Zia falls into the black hole and
ends up floating around with all the lost items. While he is floating around in
the black hole you notice a circle of immensly bright light. Zia then falls through
the hole and once this happens he wakes up in the hospital only to find that the
whole movie was a dream. Except that he turns his head in the hospital and
notices that lying in the hospital bed next to him is the new love of his life, Mikal.
What a good love story.
Quote from
IMDB:
“What gives Wristcutters its edge, are the frequent, addictively
interesting, and not immediately fathomable symbols that keep cropping up and
nagging away like in any good movie that yearns for cult status: such as the black
hole under the passenger seat where things just disappear.”
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| Book: “Commander Toad and the Big Black Hole” by Jane Yolen |
This children's book is about Commander Toad, who is in control of the fastest
spaceship in the universe. The name of Commander Toad's ship is Star Warts and
he and his crew fly off on a mission to explore outer space. His crew includes
Lieutenant Lilly, Jake Skyjumper, Mr. Hop, and old Doc Peeper. On their mission,
the crew encounters a black hole in the distance. On their way towards the black
hole they hear Commander Toad sing in his “croak out of tune,” which will
ultimately save their lives. All of a sudden the spacecraft gets stuck in space on
a peculiar pink object. The crew finds out that the giant black hole is not a black
hole at all but actually an “E.T.T.” or “Extra Terrestrial Toad” and they are stuck on
his tongue. The tongue begins to recede into the depths of the “black hole” or
toad. Because the spaceship cannot move fast enough to escape the tongue or
“infalling space,” only Commander Toad's creative solution will save the crew.
Commander Toad proceeds to sing to the E.T.T because all toads love to sing. As
Commander Toad begins to sing, the E.T.T. joins in, ultimately freeing the
spaceship from his tongue. The team then safely returns home.
Amazon
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| “Eureka: One Giant Leap” Episode 420, Season 4 finale of Eureka |
Jack Carter, the main character who plays the role of the sheriff in a town that is far from ordinary, is frantically attempting to find the solution to the problem that caused the president's limo to be sliced in half as well as what absorbed a café shop into oblivion. They find a device created by a scientist that absorbs all of the energy from the light spectrum and converts it into reusable energy. However, on this particular day, the town is launching a spacecraft to the Saturn moon Titan. To do this, they use a FTL ion reactor (faster than light), but this coupled with the energy collectors cause black holes to pop up around town. In the end, sheriff Carter uses the collectors to draw all the mini black holes to a lake where a very large black hole forms. Carter launches a bomb loaded with anti-matter into the middle of the black hole to cancel it out, and the crisis is averted.
Summary
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| Book: “On Basilisk Station” by Devid Weber (1993) |
On Basilisk Station centers around the heroine Honor Harrington.
This is the first book in the Honor Harrington series.
Harrington has been exiled to Basilisk Station,
one of the destinations in the Manticore Wormhole Junction.
The junction is controlled by the Star Kingdom of Manticore,
and served for commercial and military use.
While banished, she faces adversity from Lord Pavel Young,
her old navel academy nemesis, who sets her up to fail
in her duty to police the system by leaving the whole station up to her.
Meanwhile Harrington is trying to police the system in an old vessel
turned into a test vessel for new grav lance technology.
Unfortunately this means that the other weapons are out of commission.
Through her diligence to her duty, Harrington realizes
that the People's Republic of Haven is planning an attack.
She stops it with her old, underpowered ship despite lacking weapons
and becomes the hero of the Star Kingdom.
wikia
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| TV Episode: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Season 1, Episode 21, The Taking of Grayskull, Aired 10/3/83 |
This episode of the kids' TV show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe begins as usual by introducing the concept and the characters of the program. The scene transitions to Orko exclaiming how happy he is that it is his birthday. The excited Orko goes and asks his friends at Grayskull if they remember what today is. Unfortunately none of them appear to realize it's Orko's birthday. Fortunately they are secretly planning a surprise party for the young sorcerer. Unfortunately during the discussion of the surprise party, they receive a distress call from the nearby Becilia and they must investigate. Upon arriving in Becilia they find an enormous whirlwind terrorizing the region and it's up to He-Man to defend them! Fortunately He-Man stops the whirlwind by “unraveling it with his sword”! Unfortunately his sword vanishes as he puts it into the sheath. During this time in Becilia, Orko goes to the Sorceress to see if she remembers his birthday. Unfortunately he runs into an issue finding her. Shortly thereafter the group that went to Becilia returns to the kingdom of Eternia thinking they have succeeded. They can't figure out who caused the whirlwind and who took Prince Adam's sword, for Skeletor was nowhere to be found! To further the unfortunate predicament, Orko returns hysterical! He explains that he couldn't find the Sorceress because Castle Grayskull has vanished! He-Man, Teela, Man-At-Arms, and Battle Cat head over to Castle Grayskull to find there is a white hole in place of the Castle! Man-At-Arms explains in the episode that “It's like a black hole, only not as dense.” He also explains that Skeletor “utilized the Council of Evil after he located a dying neutron star...” and He-Man finished the statement with “...and was able to direct it over the castle to use the tremendous suction force from the nova, and pull the castle, with the Sorceress, into another dimension.” He-Man and Battle Cat jump into the white hole and find themselves in a crazy dimension, which I would assume is the inside of the white hole. Inside the white hole they find various random objects of many colors floating around as well as scary tentacled monsters. He-Man hears the call of the Sorceress and follows her voice. At this time Teela jumps into the white hole, despite He-Man telling her not to. She falls in and lands on a platform, but a short time later she nearly falls off said platform to her doom in a black void below. He-Man comes to her rescue and lifts her to safety and they make their way through the white hole. Eventually they find a wormhole to jump through and it sends them into an anti-verse of their own. In this anti-verse, everything is backwards! The water flows upstream and the trees grow down with their roots high in the sky. Fortunately the find Castle Grayskull! Unfortunately it is being run by Skeletor and the Sorceress is chained up! Fortunately He-Man's sword reappears and Skeletor is quickly dispatched! He-Man then picks up the entire Castle Grayskull and throws it through the white hole and it lands safely back in Eternia! Unfortunately Orko is still upset about everyone “forgetting” his birthday, so he makes a bunch of food for himself and eats it all in a depressed rage. Fortunately someone comes and tells him that King Randor wants to see him. After everyone yells “Surprise” Orko discovers that his friends really do care about him! Unfortunately he ate too much food before the party and collapses from an upset stomach! The episode ends with Orko telling the viewers to watch how many sweets they eat because they have to leave room for the three healthy meals they need to eat everyday! The episode is a good example of a white hole as a central plot device, even though the science is mostly wrong. The episode is hard to watch, being that the lines are very cheesy and poorly written. The animation is really well done for 1983 and the creativity used in creating the world inside the white hole is astounding. The episode could have used a little more explanation as to how the white hole came to be and how it worked, but being that it's a kid's show, I'm sure it's okay.
tv.com
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| Cartoon: “On the Moon” episodes 15-17 |
On the Moon is an online cartoon.
Starting with episode 15 and continuing through episode 17,
the story becomes centered on a black hole.
The main characters, the Toast King and Insanity Prawn Boy,
live on the Moon, where the latter frequently harrasses the former.
In episode 15,
Insanity Prawn Boy makes a black hole in the Toast King's refrigerator
using a supercollider,
and the black hole begins growing by eating the food in the fridge,
eventually consuming the fridge itself.
In the next episode,
in anger, the King hits Prawn Boy with a spatula, so Prawn Boy takes him to court.
Fortunately for the King, the black hole consumes the jury and judge
before a verdict is passed.
In the next episode,
Prawn Boy makes more black holes to eat the first one,
which of course makes the problem worse.
The problem is resolved when Insanity Prawn Boy fills the black holes with cows,
using a catapult he built.
The story is entirely unrealistic, but very funny.
“On the Moon” is one of many ridiculous web cartoons from well-known flash animator Mr. Weebl. Amonst his more well-known creations is his flash animation “Badgers,” which became an internet phenomenon in the early to mid-2000s.
Weebl's stuff
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| Star Fox: Official Comics Act IV-V: Fixing a Hole |
Backstory: This particular story is in the form of a comic
that was published by Nintendo Power magazine in 1993. The
comic was in part a promotion for the Star Fox video game, the
first in what would become a major franchise, released for the
Super Nintendo console that same year. It was followed up in
1996 by the well-known Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64 which
was one of the best-selling N64 games of all time. The plot of
the video games involves a squadron of anthropomorphized
space fighter pilots led by Fox McCloud and their mission to
defend their world of Corneria and the Lylat stellar system
against Emperor Andross, a scientist-turned-floating-head-and-
hands who, banished from Cornelia for trying to take over, has
instead decided to destroy the entire Lylat system. Star Fox's
father, James McCloud, apparently lost his life in a variety
of possible ways depending on which incarnation of the
franchise you are referring to. Despite Jame's death, Star Fox
continues to seek out information of his circumstances during
his mission(s) and finds more than he expects.
Story: The portion of the Star Wars comic that deals with black holes is featured in Acts 4-5 of the 11-act series. The three previous acts deal with Star Fox and crew being hired by General Pepper to defend Cornelia against Andross' forces, saving a passenger ship from an Imperial boarding party, training in the new Arwing fighters on Cornelia, and surviving a trap assault by Imperial fighters on Cornelia. In the last frame of Act IV, Fox proposes using “the black hole” (previously unmentioned) to reach Venom, the home planet of Andross' Empire. At the beginning of Act IV, titled “The Legacy” (a reference to Fox's succession from his father James), Fox counters squadmate Slippy the Frog's argument that the gravity of the black hole would crush an Arwing by referencing the “time-slip theory” which states that a black hole's gravity can be manipulated to create a 4-dimensional warp. General Pepper cryptically cautions Fox against making the same mistake as his father. Fox insists that the Arwing's “gravity diffuser” will allow the Arwing to make the journey where his father's “dinosaur” failed. The story of James McCloud is then told; back when Andross had been just a scientist, he had developed a gravity bomb that James had offered to fly to be tested in the asteroid belt. Unfortunately, the bomb was successful; so successful that James and much of the belt were sucked into the newly-created black hole. It was this action that drove Andross into exile and caused his transformation into an evil emperor on the fringes of the Lylat system. The rest of Fox's squad sets about altering the Arwing design by “tripling the output of the G induction coils”. At the beginning of Act V, titled “Fixing a Hole” (likely a reference to the Beatles song in addition to the black hole), the squad proceeds into the black hole in their modified Arwings. They are depicted as stretching and spiralling inward to the center of a vortex of visible spectra, likely meant to represent crossing the event horizon. Inside, they are greeted by odd visual phenomena as well as the remnants of wrecked ships that had futilely attempted the feat previously. The squad experiences a dilation of time depicted as “stretched-out” dialogue. Most significantly, Fox has a vision of his father, who says “Junior, follow me!” Fox appears to fly past/through the vision out of the black hole; the exit is represented as a white hole. The rest of his squad is also successful; Peppy O'Hare states that Slippy's tracking device was able to track Fox through the whole enabling them to follow. The squad proceeds to Venom as planned. Analysis of Science: Clearly, strict adherence to understood theories of black holes and the possibility of traversing them was not a priority with the Star Fox writers. Obstacles to the success of the operation are explained away with a combination of “future science” and “future tech” like the time-slip theory, gravity diffusers, and G Induction coils. However, I think this comic should be recognized as a valiant effort by the writers to acknowledge that black holes really are as dangerous and difficult to control as they are. The squad encounters a graveyard of ships inside the hole/wormhole, clear signs that even in a society with highly advanced intrastellar space travel, traversing a black hole was still a nearly-impossible endeavor. Additionally, gravity is clearly recognized as the driving force behind the black hole; not magic, not “power”, just gravity. The squad is able to tackle the problem head-on by modifying how the Arwing deals with gravity, which is likely what would have to be done for anything to make it through a black hole and survive. The idea that a “gravity bomb” could explode in such a way as to simulate a core-collapse supernova, even in small-scale, is feasible when working with tremendous enough explosions. Indeed, the writers even avoid using the term “wormhole” to describe what happens to the squad inside the black hole, which is good in my mind because of all the quasi- scientific/crackpot theories that the term is connoted with. Finally, it can at least be said that an attempt was made to depict the seemingly inevitable dilation of time that occurs around black holes, even if such a phenomena is unknown to occur in such a way inside a black hole. I won't touch on the plausability of Fox meeting his father's disembodied head inside; see “Contact” for more evidence that disembodied human spirits love hanging out around relativistic extrema.
Collection of all official Star Wars comics; this series is
listed first on the page
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| “April in Quahog” Family Guy: Season 8 Episode 16 |
In this episode the Earth is doomed to get swallowed
by a black hole headed for earth. A news crew
interviews Stephen Hawking on how the black hole approaching
the solar system is a high point for his life's work. The same
news crew describes how the black hole will decimate the Earth
as soon as the event horizon is reached. The event is
put on a count down on TV.
At the end of the broadcast
the news reports that it was all just an April Fools trick
that sends the Griffin family into more of their shenanigans.
Video
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| “Wormhole” Strange Days at Blake Holsey High, Season 1, Episode 1 |
Something strange is going on at Blake Holsey High! The Canadian science fiction program “Strange Days at Blake Holsey High”, (known as “Black Hole High” in Canada) follows a group of five students in a science club and their science professor. Things at their boarding school, Blake Holsey High, aren't always as they appear: people get sucked into alternate dimensions, professors disappear, and normal objects inexplicably lose their gravity. The series follows the students in their exploration of the strange events occurring at their school, and their possible connection to Peridine Industries, a lab near the school that was destroyed years previously.
In the series premier, “Wormhole”, the main character Josie transfers to Blake Holsey soon after the current science professor disappears mysteriously. As she is settling into her new boarding school, Josie stumbles upon a meeting of the science club, where their current discussion revolves around the possibility that their science professor was sucked into a vortex. Josie and her new companions, Marshall and Lucas, go to investigate the office where he disappeared, and discover what they think could be a vortex when Corinne (another member of their science club) enters. As they examine the spot in the floor they are sure is a vortex, Corinne is sucked in, closing the vortex and leaving everything looking normal again.
Later, while the group is still trying to understand what happened, Josie is approached by a strange woman who tells her about an accident that destroyed Peridine Industries 15 years previously. The woman claims that Josie saved her from dying in the accident, but Josie is only 14, and wasn't even born when the accident occurred. After hearing of this woman and her claim, Josie's friends decide that the vortex could actually be a “tunnel between space and time”, or a black hole. Josie decides to go into the black hole to find Corinne, and is promptly transported back to Peridine Industries moments before it was destroyed 15 years previously. As Josie and Corinne make their way back to the black hole to return, Josie hears cries for help. She finds the woman she met in her present time, and helps pry her from debris before jumping back into the black hole and returning to her school.
This series is surprisingly entertaining for a children's show. While it does take some scientific liberties, it also explains phenomena that occur in a simple, but fairly accurate manner.
Synopsis of episodes in season 1
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| “A History Channel Thanksgiving” South Park Season 15 Episode 13 | This episode is a parody of everything from the History Channel, Ancient Aliens, the movie Thor, and Natalie Portman. In the episode, the boys are having some extreme difficulty in doing a Thanksgiving report assigned to them by their teacher, but Cartman tells them that since it is Thanksgiving time, they can just watch the History Channel and see all of the specials on it. The boys then learn from the History Channel that there may have been aliens at the first Thanksgiving, which they turn into their teacher. The History Channel gets notified of the report and brings them in and asks them where they learned it from and Kyle says “We saw it on your channel!” They then use Stan and Kyle (of Devry Institute) as experts on the subject and interview them for the show. While all of this is happening, a Pilgrim is beamed down to Earth from a wormhole to rally all of his supporters. This is because the Indians are attacking Plymouth in attempt to gain control of the stuffing mines. Unfortunately for Earth, there is a “massive stuffing shortage” due to these incidents. To resolve the incident, the Pilgrim Standish, who crashed to Earth with Natalie Portman, take the boys to help them save Thanksgiving. But Natalie Portman refuses to open up her Wormhole to get Standish back to Plymouth so he can regain control of the stuffing mines. Professor Brovlosky (Kyle) is forced to take Natalie Portman out on a date to try to get her to open her wormhole. Afterwards, she is still hesitant to open it, but finally agrees to open it “just for a sec though.” Once the wormhole is open, Standish flies through it back to Plymouth, where they destroy the Indians and successfully regain control of the stuffing mines. | |
| ASTR 2030 Fall 2011 Entries | ||
| Dr. Who, Season 10, Episode 65 Part 1: “The Three Doctors” |
A crisis is faced by the doctor.
The setting is Earth, during the 3rd Incarnation of the doctor, as he serves his sentence for stealing the TARDIS.
He is stranded on Earth.
When a weather balloon crashes people begin to disappear.
An entity appears to be trying to kill the doctor.
On his home planet of Galifrey, the Time Lords find that the entity came from within a black hole,
and that black hole is approaching Earth, as well as sucking all the energy of the universe.
President: “You see Chancellor, the black hole!” Chancellor: “That's a no-where, a no-place, a void! According to all known laws nothing can exist there.” Because the Time Lords are busy trying to hold the universe together, they can do nothing, but send first the second, and then the first doctor to help the third one. together these three doctors devise a plan, where they travel through the black hole, to the universe of Antimatter that is located there. This plane of Antimatter is ruled by a Time Lord, thought long dead, and one who predictable wants revenge on the time lord that abandoned him to this black hole. I must note at this point, they had an understanding that black holes are formed by the explosion of a star. To bring matters to a short conclusion, to exist in this universe, their matter is subtly changed so they are not annihilated, but one object, a recorder remains unchanged. The recorder is dropped, the antimatter universe is annihilated, and the heroes are returned to where they should have been. The concept of the black hole in this episode seems to be merely cosmetic. There is a clear understanding of both the formation and basic properties of black holes. However the concept of antimatter seems to be lumped in here for little more then to drive the plot. The usual humor that the Doctor Who series is present as ever. This is the 10 year anniversary episode, and the crossover brings the familiar and loved older doctors together. This adds another dimension of humor, and interest to the story, as the proud and eccentric doctor is forced to endure the experience of dealing with himself, something only others have had to do thus far. The first Doctor: “It is a time bridge ... so stop dilly-dallying and cross it.”
Further information:
wikia
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| Adventure Time Season 2 Episode 21a: “The Real You” | This Episode starts with Finn and Jake preparing for princess bubblegum's birthday and science BBQ. Finn makes a model castle made out of spit bubbles but when he goes to the BBQ he feels stupid around all the smart people. So he goes to find some magical glasses that make him smart. He goes to the BBQ and makes a presentation where he makes a 2 dimensional bubble with a one dimensional shadow, then a 3 dimensional bubble with a 2 dimensional shadow, and finally a 4 dimensional bubble with a 3 dimensional shadow. The 4D bubble resembles a tesseract, and it is unstable so it becomes a black hole and starts sucking everyone in it. The only way Finn defeats it is to get sucked in by the black hole, and cuts it apart with his 4D sword. Not the most accurate episode, but the 4D bubble accurately represents a 4D tesseract, and spacetime has 4 dimensions. | |
| Movie: Thor (2011) |
Thor is about a mythical God who lives on the planet Asgard.
Thor is meant to take the throne as King, but makes a mistake
when he becomes too arrogant for his father to handle.
Thor decides to go and fight Asgard's ultimate enemy,
the Frost Giants, on their home planet of Jötunheim.
They are transported to Jötunheim via a wormhole on their planet.
This wormhole is controlled by a master protector,
who can see everything happening in the universe,
and can allow anyone through the wormhole to anywhere they want.
No one, however, can enter the wormhole back to Asgard
if they are a threat to community of Asgard.
After Thor's father finds out about the secret attack,
he becomes furious and sends Thor through the wormhole to Earth.
The wormhole spits Thor out on Earth, where he is discovered by two scientists
who soon realize that Thor is special.
Thor discovers courage and self-sacrifice on Earth
and winds up going back to Asgard to face his evil brother
who is trying to take over the throne.
To make sure that his evil brother doesn't destroy the planet of Jötunheim,
Thor breaks the wormhole with his hammer.
Although Jötunheim is the planet of Asgard's greatest enemies,
Thor now wants to spare their lives
because they too are living things.
Now that the wormhole is broken,
Thor can no longer travel to Earth.
Thor follows his main purpose in life, to take his rightful spot
on the throne and rule Asgard!
Links:
imdb
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| Johnny Test, Episode 42 “Johnny on the Spot” |
Johnny Test is an animated kid television show.
This episode begins with Johnny's sisters asking him to come check out
something really cool they had.
It turns out to be a black hole that they created,
and they want Johnny to jump through it to see what would happen.
When he jumps through it, he just passes through the wall.
The sisters deem it a failure, and decide to throw the black hole
away in a safe container.
Johnny steals the black hole, and starts to use it for his own benefit.
For example, he uses it to scare away bullies,
and he makes some narrow escapes.
Eventually when he moves the black hole,
it splits in two, but Johnny keeps using it anyway.
The sisters realize that they need to demagnetize the black hole,
because if the event horizon rips, it could collapse on itself,
consuming the earth.
They realize Johnny stole it, and when they reach him
it's already too late, the black hole has started collapsing.
They use the black hole to travel quickly
to a place with a giant magnet
to demagnetize the black hole, and all is good again.
Links:
wikipedia
| |
| Book: “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons |
Dan Simmons' novel Hyperion has an excellent example of a black hole in literature
that relates well to what we have talked about in class.
Earth is slowly destroyed because a team of scientists accidently
created a tiny black hole at its core in an incident that became known as the “Big Mistake.”
This black hole slowly destroys earth while its citizens
flee to other worlds in the Hegemony.
While not a major part of the plot,
it does provide for one character's back story and comes into play in the books sequel:
The Fall of Hyperion.
Hyperion was a great novel that takes place in the future. The book is mainly made up of the in-depth back stories of pilgrims headed to confront the dreaded mechanical Shrike. Fate hangs in the balance as these average people confront the demigod. What I liked most about this book was the unique format. Each character's back story was like a little novella on its own, and as each story unfolds the mystery of what links all these characters to each other (and the Shrike) becomes the true conflict of the story. The end of the book leaves the reader with a totally different conception of nearly every character and the true goal of reaching the Shrike. The sequel to this book, The Fall of Hyperion, is even better because it delves more into the Shrike, the Big Mistake, and the TechnoCore (AIs that run much of society).
Links:
wikia: Hyperion Cantos
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| Regular Show, Season 2, Episode 25 “First Day” |
Mordecai and Rigby start new jobs working at a park and on their second day
they spot their co-worker, Pops, and their boss, Benson, throwing away an old
sofa. Even though it's worn and uncomfortable, Mordecai and Rigby decide to
play rock, paper, scissors for it with disastrous results. After they tie at rock,
paper, scissors 100 times, a black hole (complete with big green monster)
appears and begins sucking in Mordecai, Rigby, Pops, and just about everything
else. Just as they are about to be sucked in, Skips (another co-worker) shows up
with Benson and grabs them by the ankles while Benson explains that Mordecai
and Rigby must break the tie. When they do so the black hole disappears and
leaves behind only half the couch, still smoldering. This episode was originally
the unaired pilot of Regular Show.
Links:
wikia: First Day
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| Battlestar Galactica, Season 4, Episodes 21, 22: “Daybreak Parts 1 & 2” |
In the series finale of Battlestar Galactica,
Hera has been taken by the Cylons. Captain
Adama insists that they attempt to locate her. A
search party discovers that the colony of Cylons
where Hera has been taken is located dangerously
close to a black hole. Despite this knowledge Adama
orders an attack and rescue mission. The Galactica
ship comes under immediate fire as they battle the
colony of cyrons. Eventually Galactica rams directly
into the colony and a rescue party recovers Hera
while fighting between the colony and Galactica
rages on. When a rock strikes the launch button for
nuclear weapons the missile strikes the colony and
throws it off orbit. Now Galactica and the colony
are both being pulled inwards toward the black hole
and Adama frantically orders that Galactica escape
the pull in any way possible. This proves successful,
as Galactica escapes while the colony falls to its
doom into the black hole.
Links:
wikipedia
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| 1 Woman Show “The Happy Ending, a play on White Rabbits & Black Holes” by Brittany Wolff |
In this show, which I wrote, directed and performed,
I used a Black Hole as a metaphor for a traumatic life event,
Wormholes as a metaphor for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(constantly transporting you back in time to places you don't want to be),
and String Theory to explain inexplicable human relationships.
Viewers have expressed their interest in my doing what most actors do not:
employ a scientific lens for the examination of the human condition.
Here are examples:
“When you consider time travel, know that traversable wormholes—portals
through spacetime—are only theoretically possible if Exotic matter with negative energy
density could be used to stabilize them.
The key to the combination was luck, really.
He opened the holes with his exotic matter, and his negative energy has
kept them from healing. I find myself slipping through them from time to time.
Or maybe from place to place.”
And, later:
“When you fall into a Black Hole there
remains an after image frozen on the surface.
It's an illusion, nothing is really there, long disappeared into
a singularity where time and space have completely lost their meaning.
But the image remains. Like a ghost. There's no negotiating
with a ghost, no bargaining. It remains, and it haunts you.”
So far, it's gotten rave reviews. I owe a lot of my inspiration to you, Andrew.
My opening monologue is about the moon having memories.
Remembering impact, wearing its heart on its sleeve. All that.
Links:
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| Star Trek The Next Generation, Season 4, episode 10: “The Loss” |
The ship stops to observe a strange phenomenon,
when Trai suddenly loses her telepathic abilities,
and the ship starts being pulled in by a mysterious force.
They disover that the force is a group of two-dimensional,
and thus invisible, beings.
The beings are dragging the ship into a “cosmic string,”
the two-dimensional equivalent of a black hole.
The crew must find a way to break free,
or be dragged into two-dimensional oblivion.
– Aric Wilcox | |
| ASTR 2030 Fall 2009 Entries | ||
| Lloyd in space: Caution Wormhole Season 1: episode 4 (2001) |
Lloyd and his class are on a field trip. Lloyd and his
friend Eddy discover a wormhole in a dumpster that transfers
them to a place where the other students believe they are
trapped in a well, where the exit to the wormhole lies. Lloyd
and Eddy decide to trick the class into believing they are down
there while hiding in the dumpster. They talk through the
wormhole, taking advantage of the situation and getting things
such as free pizza. Hilarity ensues. Ages 8-13.
– Garrett “Jake” Goldman | |
| Movie: Star Trek (2009) |
I thought the movie was great. It gave sufficient background on the characters (Spock and Kirk) such that one did not have to be a follower of the TV Series or have any prior knowledge about Star Trek in general to enjoy the movie (case in point: I have never watched any other Star Trek film or episode of the series, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie :).
The specific reference to a “black hole” is in the scene where “The Romulans drop a 'red matter' bomb into the hole made by the drill. It triggers the formation of a black hole, which collapses the planet and wipes out the Vulcans.” (previous sentence from Bad Astronomy's Review of the Science of 'Star Trek').
Further information about this movie can be found
on
IMDb.
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| Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder (2009) |
Futurama's creators decided to release 4 new movies
(each forming a continuous narrative, but each divided into 4 episodes for showing on TV)
after their series had been canceled.
The last movie is “Into the Wild Green Yonder”.
In this movie, the Wongs decide to build an enormous space golf course.
At the end of the course sits a wormhole which will eat the golfer's ball, forcing them to buy another game.
However, at the 18th hole stands an obstacle; an asteroid, booming with extraterrestrial life, right in the way of the ball's path to the hole.
In order to remove the asteroid, they decide to blow it up.
Leela joins a group of women bent on stopping the Wongs from succeeding.
The feminist group's radical behavior eventually puts Leela on a most wanted list.
A large ceremony is held in order to view the massive explosion.
Fry, having recently joined the “Legion of Mad Fellows” is secretly trying to prevent the explosion as well,
knowing that the asteroid is actually the last egg in existence of a creature called the Encyclopod.
He forms a very close relationship with Mr. Wong in order to try and prevent it at the ceremony.
However, he is unable to tell anyone about his plan, including Leela.
A mysterious force, called the “Dark One”, is able to read anyone's mind except for Fry's.
Were Fry to tell anyone, the Dark One would kill Fry in order to stop him.
At the ceremony, Leela arrives and tries to stop Fry by taking the detonator away from him.
Unable to tell Leela what he is actually doing, Fry pleads with her to trust him.
Eventually she does and, having had proper incubation time, the Violet Dwarf system, of which the asteroid is a member,
creates a sperm, which flies into the asteroid.
From the asteroid emerges the Encyclopod, an enormous creature that contains a biosphere with two of each animal ever in existence.
Fry and Leela, now both being wanted fugitives, escape in the Planet Express Ship.
They fly through the gold course, towards the 18th hole.
As they near the wormhole,
the Professor says that it could take them trillions of lightyears away, without anyway of knowing if a return was possible.
Everyone agrees to go for it, and just before they reach the worm hole, Fry and Leela confess their love for each other and kiss just as they enter the worm hole.
More information at IMDb.
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| Fooly Cooly (TV series) |
Fooly Cooly is a six episode long anime series that makes only a little bit of sense.
In the first episode, “The vespa girl” (Haruko) hits Naota in the head with a gas powered blue vintage Rickenbacker 4001 right-handed reverse strung electric bass guitar.
Later that night, a robot (Canti) and a huge robot hand come out of Naota's head locked in an epic duel.
Canti then eats Naota, turns into a cannon, and shoots Naota in the form of an energy ball at the robot hand to kill it.
This kind of stuff continues through the whole series.
Throughout the rest of the series, many more things come out of people's heads including more evil robots, cat ears, and guitars. The whole idea behind getting things out of people's heads is described in episode four. “[They] use the left brain and right brain's distinct thought process to open up an interdimensional channel capable of pulling things through, sometimes from light-years away, in an instant. But you can't just use anyone's head; you have to find the right one.” (Commander Amarao episode 4) The only way to understand this show is to watch it, and even that doesn't help much.
youtube link.
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| TV Series: Martian Successor Nadesico, Season 1, Episode 11 |
It's the future in this anime series. Kursk, Russia has been occupied by the
Joskian Lizards. The good guys have the Nadesico, a gravity-blast cannon,
which in this episode is hired to take out a revolutionary weapon that has been
constructed by the enemy in Kursk, called the Walking Stick. The Walking Stick,
which is referred to as a “gravity wave rail gun,” generates “micro black holes”
and shoots them at those who come close to it. However, unlike in a plot that
eventually plans to go somewhere, the Walking Stick is not defending something
else but rather simply itself. Other teams have been hired to take it out but
were “never seen again.” Upon approaching, the Nadesico aircraft is detected
and partially hit with a stream of black liquid that looks like oil. This is in fact
the black hole coming out of a cannon, and luckily it mainly hits the mountain
the Nadesico aircraft is hiding behind. Mysteriously, the mountain appears for
the most part unharmed and there is no black hole in sight. The Nadesico
suffers a damaged left wing and is forced to crash land.
In response to both the Walking Stick's excellent air defense and the writers' inability to produce any more plot involving black holes, the Nadesico crew plan to attack the Walking Stick by ground and blow it up with mines. The catch: they only have one hour. The newly appointed “ground captain”, Akotski, is the handsome, funny-guy stock character that would most likely be played by Matthew McConaughey in a Nadesico feature film. He consoles his worried crew by saying, “If we all work together, I'm sure we can succeed.” The team embarks through thick forests towards the Walking Stick, night having already come and the hour seemingly up. The team confirms that the time is up by stopping to have a campfire, the lyrics “just us friends” being sung in the background. Finally, in the midst of a surprise tank attack on the campfire, the commander radios the crew to tell them they're out of time. The call includes a memorable quote that attempts to fill every gap in the plot and explain the theory behind the black holes: Commander: “The first black hole dissipated after leaving earth's atmosphere resulting in little residual damage. I'm sure the next one will dissipate within the earth's atmosphere. Our enemies aren't fools, they have less to lose than we do. The next black hole will swallow this entire area and saturate what's left with lethal gamma rays.” The commander informs the rest of the people at HQ that she is “registering a massive gravitron fluctuation building around the Walking Stick,” and that it will fire soon. Putting aside the fact that a Gravitron is an amusement park ride, the crew panics and realizes that something must be done. They decide to storm the Walking Stick and defeat it right before it shoots another “micro black hole.”
More information on the series from IMDb
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| 2010: The Year We make Contact (1984) |
“2010: The Year We make Contact” is a 1980's sci-fi flick that is set nine years after the failed Discovery mission from 2001: a Space Odyssey.
The film starts with the US and the Soviet Union investigating the mysterious disappearance/deaths of five astronauts that disappeared while investigating Jupiter.
One of the main characters, Dr. Heywood Floyd, feels responsible for the lost mission and recruits his two friends to go investigate Jupiter and the monolith near Jupiter that is expected to have caused the disappearance.
Floyd is bothered by David Bowman's (captain from 2001) last quote “my god it's full of stars!” which hints to the existence of a black hole.
The ship Discovery is found, but weird problems such as explosions keep happening, as if to hint to stay away from Jupiter and its moon Europa.
The crew discovers that a huge black hole has changed David Bowman into a god-like figure.
The black hole then disappears and reappears on Jupiter, where it grows larger, consuming Jupiter.
The computer Hal (also from 2001) sacrifices itself to save the crew and send them back to earth before the black hole consumes them as well.
At the end of the movie the black hole somehow gains enough energy and heat to become a star, which heats Europa enough to sustain jungle life.
IMDb
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| Star Trek Voyager: Season Five, Episode 10, “Counterpoint” | In this episode, the crew is forced to travel through the space of a species called the Devore. During the journey, they are routinely inspected for contraband, which according to the Devore are telepaths. Before the beginning of the episode, the Federation crew decided to assist a group of refugee telepaths flee Devore space and escape through a nearby wormhole. Unfortunately the wormhole opens intermittently and does not stay in one place, so the majority of the episode is spent trying to predict the next opening of the wormhole. Captain Janeway finally uncovers the key to determining the next location of the wormhole isn't simply a mathematical formula, but rather in a subspace counterpoint, similar to a background counterpoint found in classical music. After ultimately fooling the Devore inspectors, Janeway and her crew are able to aid the escape of the telepaths and ultimately leave Devore space unharmed. | |
| Stargate SG1 Season 10 “The Pegasus Project” (2007) |
This episode of Stargate
features a black hole in several ways.
First they place a Stargate near the accretion disk of a black hole to use the energy released by the black hole to power the Stargate.
Then they use this energy to dial from the Pegasus galaxy back to the Milky Way galaxy.
Using nuclear weapons they attempt to jump the wormhole from one gate to an adjacent supergate to prevent the Ori from sending more ships to the Milky Way galaxy.
In the process the nuclear bomb attract a Wraith ship to the black hole.
To escape from the Wraith ship Sg-1 uses the black hole to sling shot themselves away from the enemy ship quickly.
GateWorld (Stargate website)
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| Season premier of Stargate Universe “Air (Part 1)” 2009 Oct 2 |
The premise of the show was that a group of people from planetary base Icarus are attacked and forced to evacuate via the stargate system.
A stargate is a portal into a wormhole that links two seperate gates, creating a link by which people can travel quickly and efficiently through space.
Different planets and locations have a unique address, which is dialed and connected to in order to create the wormhole.
In this instance, the stargate was used as a last option for survival.
They dialed the address and hoped for the best because, due to circumstances, they had no idea where they had linked to.
They ended up being sent to Destiny, an abandoned Ancient starship across the universe from Earth.
Over the course of the season, the problem at hand for Destiny's new crew is to figure out how to get home.
The main feature of the series, harnessed wormholes or Stargates,
is an interesting concept and allows for some creative scenarios for future episodes.
I would definitely suggest this series to anybody interested in the sci-fi/space genre.
Stargate website
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| Transformers (The Animated Series), Episode 71, The Killing Jar, Part 3 of 3, (1986) |
Ultra Magnus and his allies attempt to rescue their compatriots from a
Quientesson scientist. While successful in doing so, they accidentally
send the ship on a course for a black hole. The ship is sucked inside
the black hole and is transported to a “negative universe” where all the
colors are shifted. The crew of the ship is unharmed, but remains
trapped inside the hole. Their only means of escape is of course the
“white hole”. They run the risk of being crushed by this “white hole”
but the heroes escaped unharmed as always.
YouTube
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| Transformers Season 3, Episode 6, The Killing Jar, (1986) |
An alien of the race of the Quintissons tricks many Transformer characters into entering onto his ship where he then keeps them as prisoner for specimens.
His plan is to conduct scientific experiments on the various characters for his own personal data and knowledge.
The female human character Marissa manages to free herself from the captivity and sparks an electron storm around the ship.
When the ship emerges from the confusion of the electron storm, they realize that the ship is irreversibly heading towards a black hole.
They get sucked into the black hole and end up in a parallel universe that they term a “negative universe.”
They work together to fix the ship and reverse through the white hole.
Quotes:
Alien captor: “Black hole is a star that has collapsed in on itself becoming so dense neither matter or light can escape its gravity.”
YouTube
| |
| “The Jaunt,” short story by Stephen King |
The Jaunt is a short story within Stephen King's book “The Skeleton Crew.”
It's a futuristic tale about a family with two young children who are “jaunting”
(a method of instantaneous travel) for their first time.
The father in this tale explains to his children the history of how jaunting was developed.
An impoverished scientist several hundred years earlier managed to create sustainable wormholes, more or less.
The only catch was that if one was awake for their journey through the wormhole they experienced “complications:“
a time infinitum.
Although the father failed to mention this to his children,
the few persons that had experienced this time infinitum
went insane and died horrible deaths upon reaching the other side of the wormhole.
The climax of this story is that the man's son, after hearing his fathers tale, decided out of curiosity to hold his breath while the attendants were administering the gas to knock him out. The family arrived at their new destination only to find that the boy had gone through the wormhole while conscious, and had gone insane. He rips out his own eyes while screaming, “Longer than you think dad!, longer than you think!”. Wikipedia – Netia Ingram | |
| “The Krone Experiment,” novel by J. Craig Wheeler (1988), now also a movie |
The Soviets' ship, Kiev, is damaged. They suspect that the Americans are responsible.
Other mysterious accidents keep happening, plaguing United States and Soviet military units.
Eventually, scientists figure out that the weird occurrences are produced by mini black holes,
which holes appear to originate from a machine at CERN.
The mini black holes are growing as they orbit through the Earth, threatening the Earth and civilization.
How can mankind avoid complete destruction?
PaperbackSwap
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| TV Series: Venture Bros, Season 2, Episode 6, “Victor. Echo. November” |
The episode focuses on a series of mishaps and ruined dates between the main characters,
all taking place in the same restaurant.
Henchmen 24 and 21 are nearby at the bar.
24 asks 21 how the villain Phantom Limb floats.
21 describes how a time machine malfunctioned
and created a mini-black hole which sucked in “Phantom Limb's” limbs.
Venture Bros Wiki
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| “Land of the Lost” (2009) |
The movie itself was absolutely funky
—
I wasn't expecting it to be great, but
Will Ferrel usually has a few good moments in all of his ridiculous films.
The movie revolves around Dr. Rick Marshall, Physicist/Paleontologist who creates a “tachyon amplifier” machine that creates a wormhole to another dimension of existence, “where all timelines converge.” When Dr. Marshall and his team of incompetent scientists/friends first step through the time warp, we see a scene where they fly through a vortex spinning and stretching. They get dropped into a desert where they observe two ancient hominids trying to kill a third. The third is rescued by the group and joins them in their quest. In this new land, the protagonists are faced with the task of saving all of humanity by destroying a group of lizard-men who plan to take over the universe and destroy Earth, and then to return home. They must find the tachyon amplifier before the lizard men do. However, a giant T-Rex is constantly in the way of their plans to succeed. An interesting scene is one where our protagonists stumble upon a vast desert area littered with various random objects that somehow have gotten there through other wormholes in the world.
IMDb
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| TV Movie: The Black Hole (2006) |
This was hands down the worst movie I saw in 2006.
It has such a promising title, but robs you in every way.
The acting is horrendous, the plot is terrible, and the special effects remind me of my 5th grade Art class.
It felt like my soul was being tortured by the devil, as I sat through two hours of mindless hell.
I would not recommend this movie to anyone, unless you are a vegetable.
The plot of the movie is about a research experiment that goes wrong.
It creates a black hole that unleashes a electric monster who steals electricity and kills anyone who tries to stop him.
The black hole is also slowly engulfing the planet.
IMDb
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| Space Jam (1996) |
While Michael Jordan is out golfing with his friends, he hits
his drive onto the green and the ball mysteriously travels
across the green into the hole. When he goes to retrieve his
ball, he is sucked through a warm hole that curves space and
time and comes out in Looneyland. There he meets all of the
famous looney tunes and learns of their plight to either be
enslaved by aliens or beat them in a basketball game.
Despite possessing an immaculate sound track, there are many flaws in the movie Space Jam. In general I like the movie, but I think it's obvious to any discerning critic that this film needs more Charles Barkley. Also, all of the scenes involving Michael's family are entirely forgettable.
IMDb
| |
| Space Chimps (2008) |
The space chimp program is selected to explore a wormhole that appeared in space to see if life can survive after going through it.
They think they're doing a very important mission, but to most the space chimp program is a joke.
This is thanks to Ham III, the descendant of the original space chimp, Ham I.
It's up to the space chimps to prove their worth as they go through the wormhole,
but they get trapped on the other side thanks to Zartog, the evil dictator alien who is using Earth technology to enslave his race.
The chimps have to get back through the wormhole and to Earth to complete their mission.
Space Chimps website
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| Superman: The Animated Series. Season 3 Episode 6 “Absolute Power” |
In this exciting episode of Superman: The Animated Series, our hero Superman is sent out by the people of Earth in his spaceship to investigate a black hole that has recently been discovered “less than six light years from Earth.” In his opening monologue, Superman describes a black hole as “a collapsed star so dense that not even light can escape from its gravitational pull.”
Superman observes some meteors being pulled into the black hole and they appear to be stretched lengthwise by the hole's tidal forces before exploding into a twinkle of light at the hole's horizon.
Superman offers no commentary on exactly what he is witnessing but we will assume that he is as puzzled as the viewer as to the physical mechanism that causes matter to explode into energy and light at the hole's horizon.
At any rate, Superman witnesses a ship being pulled towards the black hole and rescues it and returns its passengers to their home planet ... where he makes a terrible discovery!
The peaceful aliens' home planet has been taken over by two other super-people who are ruling the planet like Gods. These evil super-people are also apparently communists because at one point they declare that they have reorganized the planet's labor structure so that there is “a job for everyone according to his abilities and our needs,” with “cooperation instead of competition.” Their being communists makes them extra evil, so that the viewer does not feel bad about their eventual fate. Inevitably Superman fights the evil super-people for some reason and they subdue him and strap him to a rocket that they intend to shoot into the black hole. Superman escapes with the help of some of the oppressed aliens, and turns the tide on the communists. Ultimately it is they who fall into the black hole, in a swirling mass like water going down a drain. I give the episode 3 out of 5 stars, despite the questionable science, for featuring communists being shot into a black hole.
Wikipedia
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| Halloweentown II |
In this movie, the main character, Marney, is trying to get back to the “mortal“ world.
When she sees the “portal” that they are about to enter she says,
“You know, that looks just like Stephen Hawking's description of a non-stellar black hole.”
She then goes on to explain to her friend, Luke, that theoretially black holes can accelerate time.
So, if they enter the black hole, they can travel back to the mortal world.
The enter the portal, and travel through time back to the 1600s.
Luke worries that they are never going to make it home, since they started so far back in time.
But as luck would have it, Marney sees a black hole far off to the left of them.
The enter this black hole, and accelerate fiercly.
“What if this black hole theory, say, doesn't work?!”
asks Luke.
But sure enough it works,
and Marney and Luke find themselves back in the mortal world just in the knick of time.
YouTube.
The black hole part starts at about 1min and goes till 2min 45sec.
The second part starts at 3min 56sec - 4min 16sec.
The last part starts at 5min 15sec and goes to about 5min 30sec.
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| Dark Matter (2008) |
At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to the protagonist Liu Xing, who is a prominent student at Beijing University in China.
He travels to the US to join a cosmology research group under his scientific icon Professor Jake Reiser.
As an eager student, Liu Xing goes above and beyond to impress Professor Reiser, and introduces his thoughts on dark matter.
He proves that 99% of the universe is dark matter (including black holes),
and hopes that he can determine the components of dark matter using mathematics.
His goals are to win the Nobel Prize for his theories on the universe and to marry a blond-haired blue-eyed American girl.
Throughout the story Liu Xing is in a double bind between bringing honor to his family
and trying to adjust to the cultural differences he must face in America.
Although Liu Xing is completely capable,
Professor Reiser suppresses his innovative research ideas because they are a threat to his own career and accomplishments.
Poor Liu is left in a very frustrated and emotionally unstable state of mind.
I highly recommend watching this movie not only for the stimulating plotline, but also for its interesting study of the universe.
New York Times review
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| House of Suns (2008), novel by Alastair Reynolds |
This science fiction novel was enormously well received.
It prominently features wormholes.
The story is set 6.4 million years in the future, with humans spread out through the Milky Way galaxy.
While the plot is somewhat convoluted,
it centers on two robots, Cadence and Cascade, who are trying to linl a wormhole to Andromeda.
There is resistance from other robots, but Cascade is able to sneak the wormhole through to Andromeda.
Reynolds makes a respectable effort to employ credible science in his novel.
When Campion and Purslane are reunited in the novel's conclusion,
a hundred thousand years have passed, yet it is described to feel as if only days had gone by.
Onion's A.V. Club
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| Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey |
Bill and Ted are back,
along with their telephone booth (complete with transportation via wormhole!) in this sequel to the highly popular “Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.”
This time, Bill and Ted wind up dead and must use their telephone booth to transport to Heaven, Hell, alternate dimensions,
and the hardware store in order to save the day from their evil robotic twins.
IMDb
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| S. Darko (2009) |
This is the sequal to the movie “Donnie Darko.”
Donnie has been dead now for 7 years, and his younger sister Samantha Darko has been depressed ever since.
She decides to move to California, but gets stuck in Utah,
in some podunk town where a meteor shower is supposed to have killed a crazy man.
When he doesn't die, it leads to the death of Samantha's friend,
then Samantha, then her love-interest, not to mention the prediction that the world is going to end in 17 days...
until the crazy man pulls a Donnie Darko and jumps into a Black Hole that appears in a second meteor shower, transporting him back in time to the exact moment where he had escaped death, and chooses this time to sacrifice himself so the world and the protagonists could survive.
review
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| “Ender's Game,” novel by Orson Scott Card |
The book starts out following a young boy, who has an incredibly high IQ, who is being followed by the government.
He is taken from his family to go up into space to the place where the government trains young children to be excellent military leaders in their war against their Bug-like adversaries.
He excels here and becomes the youngest boy ever to command his own squad in 3D battle simulations.
Before he knows it he is graduating early and is sent to a secret base where he continues training with someone that he thought was dead.
General Rackham, who was the genius behind the victory against the last alien invasion is there to train him.
Ender wonders how this is possible, as the last war was over 100 years ago and Rackham isn't very old.
It turns out that The government decided to keep him at close to the speed of light for an extended period of time so that he could train the next military leader of Earth when the time came.
So for the hundred years that passed for everyone on Earth, only a few passed for him, severe time dilation occurred for this to happen to him.
Ender continues to train in battle simulations that get increasingly harder.
He finally gets to his final exam where it is his small fleet against an armada of the enemy ships protecting their home planet.
He somehow manages to get their new secret weapon to the planet and activate it.
The weapon starts a chain reaction, destroying the planet and the enemy fleet.
Everyone around him starts celebrating.
He then finds out that the simulations were actually real, and he just killed off the last of the enemy.
he also realized that he is responsible for the genocide of an entire race.
Horrified, he becomes sick and falls into a coma.
Once he awakes, his sister tells him that he cannot go back to Earth because his talents would be coveted by the military leaders and would probably start wars.
Ender and his sister board a colonization craft that heads out into previously Bugger infested space to try and start a new colony.
Their ship goes close to the speed of light, and while their journey only lasts a few years for them, on Earth a few decades have passed,
again showing the principles of special relativity and time dilation and how it would work if we did have ships that could travel close to the speed of light.
Wikipedia
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| “Star Trek: Countdown,” trade paperback by Robert Lyons |
This was an interesting collection of comics that was meant to be the Prequel to the Star Trek Movie (2009).
It starts out in the old Star Trek Universe, in the future when Jean-Luc Picard is an Ambassador to Vulcan.
Spock is the ambassador to the Romulans and he is trying to convince them to ask the Vulcans for help in stopping a star in their sector from going supernova.
They refuse.
Spock goes to Vulcan to ask for help anyway, but the politics take too long and the star goes supernova and destroys Romulus and threatens to destroy the galaxy.
Nero is one of the few Romulans that survive the destruction of the home world.
He told the Vulcans that he would hold them responsible for Romulus if they did not help.
He blames the destruction on Vulcans and mainly on Spock.
Spock is able to take a ship and stop the supernova, which turns it into a black hole.
Nero's ship and Spock's ship are sucked in and are flung back in time.
The graphic novel was left as a cliff hanger. It give a lot of back story to the movie and it gives more meaning to the movie. This is a really thrilling story that you just cant set down and after you finish it then you feel compelled to see the Star Trek movie even if you have seen it already. It was also nice to read what happens to the characters of Star Trek Next Generation.
TrekMovie.
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| “The Borderland of Sol” by Larry Niven |
The Borderland of Sol
is part of a series of short stores called Known Space,
and is the fifth in the series.
Known Space follows the happenings of Beowulf Shaffer, a “crashlander” from the planet of We Made It.
He frequently deals with human characters and “Pieseron's Puppeteers,” intelligent life forms.
In this episode, Beowulf Shaffer is attempting to return to earth. Instead, he is stuck on the planet of Jinx for months. He eventually runs into an old friend of his, Carlos Wu. The two reminisce, and Beowulf tells Carlos of his conundrum, that he is stuck on Jinx and desperately wants to return to Earth to see his lover. Carlos tells Beowulf that he has a ride to the Sol system, with the Bureau of Alien affairs, designed to keep relations between earth and Alien nations safe. Beowulf is granted passage by the captain, because of his expertise with Pierson's Puppeteers. It is then that one of the conflicts is introduced, that many ships have been mysteriously disappearing near the Sol system. Most of the journey is uneventful, but when they near Sol, their ship bucks, shakes, and groans from some hidden turbulence and suddenly falls out of hyper drive. They find that the entire hyper drive unit is missing, completely vanished from the ship. Beowulf requests information that might help him figure out the source of the disturbance. After much political red-tape, he finally gets information that he needs and begins to ponder the bizarre recent events. He and Carlos are perplexed to the source of the disturbance and the disappearance of the hyper drive motor. After contacting an astronomer by the name of Dr. Forward, they are invited to his station to await a ferry to earth. After much deliberation, Carlos and Beowulf decide to go to Forward Station, even though the source of the disturbance to be near the “Forward Station.” Once on Forward Station, they learn of Dr. Forward's new contraption: The Grabber. It's a huge arm and bucket contraption that can manipulate ultra dense masses to produce gravitational waves. They are eventually knocked unconscious by Dr. Forward after they realize he is the villain. Dr. Forward had taken a quantum black hole, and used the Grabber to feed a neutronium sphere into it. It created a black hole with a tremendous charge, yet could be moved from place to place due to its ultra-density and his Grabber arm. They eventually are engaged in a struggle with Dr. Forward, and the black hole eventually gets loose. The black hole starts to break the station apart, and the Forward Station starts to disintegrate. Carlos and Beowulf are tied to a pillar and are saved from falling in. Dr. Forward, in a last ditch effort, traps the black hole with the Grabber but falls in right before it is fully trapped. By some turn of events, the ride Beowulf and Carlos were waiting for shows up in the nick of time and they are rescued to earth. As they escape, they see the Forward Station and its asteroid consumed in a big blast of light. Author's website &ndash Uday Reddy | |
| ASTR 2030 Fall 2006 Entries | ||
| Book: The Fall of Reach, by Eric Nylund (New York: Random House 2001). |
In Eric Nylund's novel "The Fall of Reach", based on the popular Halo video game
franchise for the Xbox, there are many references to astronomical phenomenon.
One of these is a black hole that served as sort of a data time capsule,
capturing a "pulse-laser transmission" in its entirety for something on the
order of one hundred thousand years. The direct reference is found on page 234
and is as follows;
"There is a black hole located approximately forty thousand light-years from the Sigma Octanus System. An extremely powerful pulse-laser transmission back-scattered the matter in the accretion disk-essentially trapped this signal as this matter accelerated towards the speed of light. From our perspective, according to special relativity, this essentially froze the residue of this information on the event horizon." This is spoken by the A.I. Cortana to Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey in reference to data broadcast by a long-dead alien civilization, The Forerunners.
There is some discussion on the game's
official forums discussing the information Cortana presents
here.
| |
| Power Rangers S.P.D episode: "Wormhole" |
The Rangers are forced to create a wormhole to travel back into the year 2004
in order to fight the three monsters Mora has created and sent to attack the
previous Power Rangers. Using the worm hole they are able to stop the ploy.
Its a fine episode full of excitement and poorly costumed villains, not to
mention the original and well thought out names such as "the green monster."
I think that it is safe to say that the only good that has come out of the
thirteenth season of this poor poor beaten up show is this opportunity for extra credit
in ASTR 2030.
| |
| Stargate, second season: "A Matter of Time" |
One of my favorite of this series,
this episode involves a team on a world that recently had its
sun turn into a blackhole (not that they'd survive the explosion anyways) and
they try to use the Stargate to get home. Unfortunately when they activate
their gate, the stranded team is unable to get through the gate before the
wormhole closes on its own due to the time dilation. When the earth gate opens
up to the planet in an effort to see what went wrong, the gate is unable to be
shutdown because the time difference on both sides of the gate is phenominal
and it begins to draw energy from the blackhole itself. The time dilation
slowly spreads from Cheyenne Mountain across some of Colorado before scientists
in Washington (who have been working for weeks on the problem –even though the
mountain has only experienced less than a day) decide to direct a large
explosion at the wormhole to hopefully force the wormhole to jump to another
gate, allowing them to safely shut it down.
Summary
courtesy of Gateworld.net.
| |
| Stargate SG-1, season 9: "The Ripple Effect" |
The Stargate team arrives back to the SGC from their mission earlier than
expected, and shortly after are greeted by dozens of versions of themselves.
The multiple other teams are there because one version of the Stargate team
used a black hole to interfere with a worm hole to go to another
dimension to steal a part for the ship, which is breaking down in their
reality. After failed attempts to bring the other teams back to their own
dimensions, the original team decides to take the ship "Prometheus" to stop
the black hole.
Summary.
| |
| Futurama, Volume 4, Episode 12: "The Route of All Evil" |
While only playing a minor footnote to the overall storyline, Qbert
and Dwight are forced to assault an alien after being picked on in
science class. The class is building miniature black holes. The bully
makes fun of the two boys and then throws their lunches into their
project compressing them to nothing more than a single point of
matter. This is just a launching off point for the rest of the story
in which the two boys must become more responsible.
– Kurt Fox | |
| The Void (2001) |
A movie about microscopic black holes, particle accelerators, and a self-absorbed, insane, money-driven engineer.
A physics teacher named Eva gains access to a lab with the help of her former lover, Steven, in order to look up Filadyne Corporation's latest project. She realizes that the head of Filadyne, Thomas Abernathy, is planning to create a microscopic sized black hole using a particle accelerator in hopes of creating a new energy source. Unfortunately, he has tried this before, in Luxembourg, and ended up killing a lot of people, including Eva's father. She realizes there is a mathematical mistake that Abernathy made and the black hole created will be unstable – either it will "suck up" the Earth or fall to the core and then explode. Unable to convince Abernathy of his oversight, she convinces Steven and another friend, Lazarus, to help stop Abernathy by sabotaging his experiment, but what begins as a science fiction movie quickly turns into a horror film as people, starting with Lazarus, are killed by Filadyne associates in order to prevent them from getting in the way. In the end, both Eva and Steven end up trapped at the lab while attempting to stop the experiment, and the microscopic black hole is created. The black hole quickly grows in size, "devouring" everything in the lab room, including a couple of scientists, and the entire facility begins to collapse as it is "sucked up" by the black hole. Eva and Steven make it out alive in the end, but I believe Abernathy and just about everyone else is either "devoured" or killed in the explosion, which wipes out a large radius surrounding the facility.
The idea of the film was rather intriguing, until it took a horror twist.
Unfortunately, the science wasn't good and this became another "black hole gobbling up everything in sight" movie.
It was more fun to laugh at than anything.
| |
| Stark Trek The Next Generation, Season 6, Episode 25: "Timescape" |
Temporal aliens end up fracturing time. This happens because the aliens
normally nurture their young in a quantum singularity. The aliens found a
Romulan vessel, which uses an artificial quantum singularity as its main power
generator. The artificial singularity caused all time in the region to
fracture into thousands, if not more, distortions. In some distortions time
progresses faster than normal, some slower.
Four officers –Picard, Data, Troi, and La Forge –discover the catastrophe while it unfolds, as it were. The Enterprise is in the middle of rescuing the disabled Romulan vessel, and both vessels are caught in the middle of a huge temporal distortion, inside which time is slowed to an indistinguishable halt. The officers are capable of resuming time as normal, but not without resulting in the destruction of the Enterprise. The viewers do actually get to see the Enterprise explode before Picard’s eyes. He handles it with remarkable composure. He is rather surprised, however, when the explosion suddenly reverses itself. The crew’s solution, is to make time go backwards, not forwards. Then they can intervene and prevent the incident from occurring. One of the temporal aliens intervenes and botches the entire plan, but as usual Picard experiences a fit of creative genius and all is well. This is not the only episode to say that the Romulans use artificial quantum singularities for power. However, it is never said how they create an artificial singularity, what an artificial singularity IS, how they harness its power, or how they would deal with the disastrous consequences of containing a quantum singularity inside their ship. If it were a quantum singularity, the same as in a black hole, I would imagine the Romulans would use such a thing as a weapon, but the possibility is never mentioned.
Commentary
| |
| Futurama, Season 3 (2001): "Time Keeps On Slipping" |
In this episode, the Professor steals time chronatons from a distant
nebula to grow a super-mutant group of basketball players to defeat the Harlem
Globetrotters, who have challenged Earth to a game of basketball. Oh boy, now
that’s an exhibition! The super-mutants fail to defeat the Globetrotters, and the
Earthling mutants looks like a bunch of chumps. (And rightfully so, might I add. Team
Earth had a guy that could dunk from half court. Seriously.)
What could be worse than this humiliation?
But yes, things get worse.
When the Professor took the time
cronatons from the distant nebula, it created continually worsening jumps in time.
Well, that does not happen where I come from, but in the story it happens,
and it is about
to lead to the destruction of civilization. Luckly, the Professor and the
Globetrotters, who also just happen to be brilliant scientists,
come up with a plan in which they
create an implosion which turns the time nebula into a black hole. This causes
all the chronatons to get sucked into the black hole, saving mankind.
Aahhhhhh. When will we finally learn to see the Globetrotters not just as a bunch of cheats who play the same half-witted yokels every game, but as they really are: easy prey for cartoon sitcoms?
Review
| |
| Madeleine L'Engle "A Wrinkle in Time" (1962) |
The main character of this novel is Meg, a thirteen year old girl who lives with her
family in an old house.
Her mother and her father are both scientists.
However,
her father has been mysteriously missing for about a year on some sort of
government mission, and the family has had no contact with him. Charles
Wallace, Meg's super intelligent little brother, makes friends with some
strange neighbors named Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which, who live a
short distance from their house. It turns out that these women are actually
very old beings from another planet,
with the power of being able to change their form at will.
They have come to Earth to get the kids and take them to their father, who is
trapped on another planet being controlled by an evil force. These
three "Mrs. W's" use a technique they call "tesseract."
The children go to see their father, and together they
fight the evil IT, a very powerful telepathic device designed to
eradicate individuality. Meg ends up defeating the IT with love, because IT cannot
love. After the defeat, the "Mrs. W's" tesseract the children and their
father back to Earth where the family is reunited.
Wikipedia: Tesseract states:
| |
| The Acorna series of books, by Anne McCaffrey |
The Acorna books by Anne McCaffrey can be
a fun read. Or at least the earlier ones are
– later on the plot becomes rather repetitive.
Acorna is an alien girl with some special abilities, who is stranded on earth, and is struggling to find her people. Later in the series, she has found her people but must save them from another alien race bent on their destruction. Throughout the series Acorna and her friends make use of wormholes for quick travel and to shortcut across the galaxy. While this use of wormholes is not an integral part of the plot, it still helps the book's storyline move along. Wormhole and space travel are more important in Acorna's People, Acorna's Quest, and Acorna's World than in the other Acorna books. Since time dilation does not exist in the Acorna books, the highest rating I can give them would be 2 stars out of 5.
More information on the Acorna books.
| |
| TV Show "Animaniacs", Season one, Episode two, Original air date September 14, 1993: "Cookies for Einstein" |
Yakko, Wakko and Dot are selling cookies door-to-door in Bern,
Switzerland, in 1905. The last home they visit is that of Albert Einstein, who
is struggling with developing special relativity. The Warner siblings irritate
Einstein and give him trouble, bouncing around the room and playing, singing
and laughing. Eventually, however, Wakko picks up a piece of chalk during a
song and writes the word "acme" on the blackboard, but he writes it backwards,
so it reads "emca." The comment is made that Wakko's "a" looks like a "2," and
Einstein becomes speechless as he approaches the blackboard and draws an equal
sign between the "e" and the "m." The board then reads "e=mca," or, because of
the a's similarity to a 2, the board reads "e=mc2." Thus Einstein –with a
little help from the Warner siblings –develops his infamous equation, and he
and the Warner siblings win the Nobel Prize.
Web summary
– Christopher Zabka | |
| Book: Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered, by Eric Nylund |
First I would like to say Eric Nylund is one of my favorite writers and I would
recommend any of his books to anyone interested in science fiction.
Signal to Noise is a book about technology, business, conspiracy, and betrayal. The main character ‘Jack’ finds a signal in the background noise in the universe and tracks it back to a ‘being’ named Wheeler. They begin their business with a simple trade. After some trading Jack finds himself with an object that allows him to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. It turns out that this teleporting device uses the rotational power of celestial bodies to transport him. Signal to Noise is the first book in the series. In the second book, A Signal Shattered, Jack visits the black hole at the center of our galaxy, and he uses some of its power to make copies of himself and send them across the galaxy. I suggest you go read the book to find out why he does that, and what happens.
Go
here to find out more about Eric Nylund
and his books.
| |
| Heroes |
On NBC's new hit show Heroes, each of the main characters live seemingly normal lives
until they discover that they have super-powers.
On the pilot episode of Heroes, "Genesis", one of the characters, Hiro, finds that he has the ability to teleport. At the end of this episode we see Hiro on a subway train in Japan. As Hiro closes his eyes and begins his teleportation from Japan to New York City, we see the digital clock behind him on the train accelerating extremely fast forward in time. However, from Hiro's perspective, time is continuing normally. Shortly thereafter, we see Hiro appear in New York City. In the second episode, "Don't Look Back", Hiro is a victim of a case of mistaken identity after he is found by the police at a crime scene. While in police custody, Hiro explains to an officer that he is able to manipulate the space-time continuum. In order to try and absolve himself, Hiro calls his friend in Japan who he says can attest to the police that he was in Japan just a day ago. His friend, much to Hiro's dismay, informs the police officer that he has been looking for Hiro for over three weeks. This scene reveals that some time dilation occurs when Hiro teleports. Heroes, though only two episodes into its existence, has already proven to be an entertaining and intriguing show filled with interesting characters and a mysterious serial-killer villain. Thus far the episodes have led viewers to infer that all of the characters possessing super powers are interconnected, though we are still left to wonder what that connection may be.
Additional general information on the series can be found on NBC's website
or at the Heroes fansite.
| |
| Futurama: Love and Rocket (2002) |
Fry is still in love with Leela, and sends her Valentine hearts to tell her
how he feels. Meanwhile the ship, Planet Express Ship, is love-sick over robot Bender who just
broke up with her. The ship turns off artificial gravity, and the shipment of
hearts turns over and spills everywhere. Leela has to turn off the computer as
in 2001 Space Odyssey. To get rid of the hearts they dump them into a quasar
where they go into orbit and eventually are pulled into the quasar giving off
a "romantic glow that all the galaxy can see."
– Charles Dalton | |
| The Science of Sleep (2006) |
I recently went to the movies with my friends.
We planned on seeing "The Science of Sleep",
a film by the same man, Michel Gondry,
how made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
As expected, the movies was intense and fascinating.
I never expected to hear a statement about black holes
in a movie that relates to the human psyche and love.
So I was thrilled when Stephanie, the heroine, states that
"It is impossible to watch someone fall into a black hole
because the gravity stretches them,
and they appear to move slower and slower to the black hole
until they freeze on the horizon.''
Sadly, that was the only mention of black holes in the film.
The film centers around a boy named Stephane
who as he enters his mid 20s is struggling to decipher real life
from his dreams.
His dreams are vivid and outstanding.
When Stephane enters his dream sequences,
the style of film changes from live action
to a beautiful form of clay-mation with felt, cardboard and paper.
Stephane falls in love with the beautiful Stephanie,
and tries to understand his relationship with her
both in and out of his elaborate dreams.
The movie is unique and brilliant.
I won't give away all the details,
but whether or not you like black holes,
I highly recommend this movie if you are looking to
expand your own mind.
Movie website.
| |
| Futurama: "A Flight to Remember..." (1999). Originally aired on 26 September 1999. |
In this show, the whole crew gets to go on a luxery cruise on a space ship
called "Titanic." Fry is pretending to date Leela so that her ex-boyfriend Captain
Zapp Brannigan won't try to win her over again. Fry is also pretending to be
Amy's boyfriend so that her parents won't bother her anymore. This causes
some issues. Meanwhile Bender falls in love with a rich countess robot.
Captain (Leela's ex) decides to change course into an asteroid field. The
asteroids are destroying the ship, so the captain changes course into an empty
region of space, which is the home of a black hole. The ship is torn apart as
it gets sucked in and all the passengers escape before it is sucked into the
black hole.
I found this episode one of the better Futuramas. The paradoy of the movie Titanic lasted throughout the episode and was pretty funny. Not much scientific detail was mentioned about the black hole, but the viewers did not see the ship freeze at the horizon; it just disappeared. Also the crew was able to escape right before the end of the ship hit the horizon, and it is doubtful that the escape pod could move at the speed of light.
Synopsis;
another synopsis.
| |
| "Deja Vu" (2006) |
After a terrorist attack, a team is brought in by the Federal Government with a
device they claim can view the past exactly four days before their current
point in time and watch it like a streaming video. They use this device to try
to track the terrorist or discover his identity, and they watch a woman
who had become entangled in the attack. Denzel's character finds out he can
influence the video stream in such a way that the individual they are watching
reacts, and he demands an explanation. He is told that the device is actually
capable of folding spacetime back onto itself, forming a contained
Einstein-Rosen bridge which gives them access to things already passed. There is a
subtle debate between the traditionalist view that even if you could change how
things happen, you can't change what ultimately happens and the more "radical"
multiverse theory. The blackout throughout the east coast and Canada a few
years back? Powering their device, which looks like a
gigantic turbine without the blades, uses such a power surge that it knocks out
the power in the entire costal area.
Can Denzel change the past and stop the attack? Could he even go back himself?
Although only theoretically possible, it's an interesting look at the powers
of science and the nature of time and space, Hollywood style.
Synopsis courtesy of IMDb.
Alternatively... The movie Deja Vu is about an ATF agent Doug Carlin who investigates a crime that involves a ferry that is blown up by a terrorist. Carlin is invited to join an "elite" group of members to try and find the terrorist, and to find the killer of a women related to the crime. The elite group happens to have a wormhole generator that views the world 4 days and 6 hours previously. Carlin goes into the wormhole, and saves the day. The movie makes little attempt at scientific accuracy. One somewhat realistic feature is that when Carlin goes through the wormhole, he appears "dead" on arrival and requires reviving. Death is indeed a feature of realistic black holes. – Daniel Lee | |
| Doctor Who, Series 2: "The Impossible Planet" |
As the blue police box resolves itself into existence after skipping through
the mists of time and space, the Doctor and his trusty companion Rose
discover that they are somewhere inside a rather dank closet
located in a giant mining facility.
After the normal bit of blundering about and snooping,
the two run into a ragtag crew of miners from Earth who are amazed
to come across other humanoids.
The crew reveals that the planet they are on, dubbed "The Pit,"
is situated almost directly beneath a giant black hole.
The mystery deepens as the crew explains that some ancient civilization
had manufactured some process that constantly emits an antigravity field,
leaving the planet impervious to peril,
and also making it a perfect site to observe this black hole at close range.
The mission of the mining operation, and thusly the doctor, is to uncover exactly how this is possible, and to learn about the nature of such a civilization that could control such forces. As the mining operation continues, and the story line unfolds, disaster strikes. An ancient alien prisoner is awakened at the bottom of the mines and begins to manipulate the crew via telepathy. This creature identifies itself as the Satan or Devil of every religion throughout the history of the time, and it is revealed that, after a lengthy war, he was imprisoned on the planet to keep the universe safe. Dealing with this foe requires the Doctor to use all of his cunning and genius to keep this beast from escaping and bringing doom to the universe. Soon the Doctor realizes the planet is placed close to the black hole for a reason, so that it will automatically devour the planet (and everyone on it) if the prisoner is ever set free.
More information.
| |
| Star Trek The Next Generation Season 4 Episode 14: "Clues" |
The crew of the Enterprise is en route to investigate a planet when the
ship passes through an uncharted wormhole. The crew, excluding Commander Data,
are rendered unconscious and lose all short term memories.
Missing from the crew's memories is an encounter with a xenophobic race of aliens whose territory the Enterprise had inadvertantly invaded. Captain Picard asks Data how long the crew was unconscious, and Data replies 30 seconds. When the crew begins to notice discrepancies with this short length of time, Data blames the wormhole as the cause. But the discrepancies keep piling up, and Picard and the others become convinced that Data is lying. Eventually Picard insists on a reason for Data's lies, and he is stunned to learn that it was he that gave Data the order to conceal the true nature of events. In the end, Picard and his crew learn what really happened, and Picard is then forced into on the spot negotiations with the alien race. In classic Star Trek form, Picard prevents a war, Data remains enigmatic, and the crew resorts to complex calculations to explain apparent time dilation discrepancies.
To find out more, go to
www.startrek.com
and follow the links to TNG season four, episode 188.
| |
| Made for TV movie: The Black Hole (2006) |
This movie is about as bad as the 1979 Disney movie of the same name.
The black hole is created when a science experiment goes awry.
The action takes place in St. Louis, and in one scene the St. Louis arch is sucked
into the black hole.
Later, an alien that feeds off electricity is unleashed,
The army has to get involved,
and they carry guns –to fight a black hole?
About the only thing remotely realistic about the movie is when someone says
"It's a black hole, not even light can escape".
Official movie site -Dylan Trussell | |
| Donnie Darko |
Intense movie about teenage angst, whose climactic end features a wormhole
that darkens the skies over Donnie Darko's house,
and changes everything.
Donnie Darko, the protagonist, is a troubled and schizophrenic teenager who sleep walks into some very strange situations. On one late night walk, Donnie meets Frank the giant bunny, who informs Donnie that there are 28 days left until the world ends. Frank also tells Donnie about time travel. While Donnie is out, a mysterious jet engine falls on to the Darkos' house. Donnie encounters harsh conflicts on his journey to understand Frank and to overcome his problems. Finally, on the day that the world is going to end, the sky splits in two, and there above is a wormhole. Donnie drives his car into the wormhole, and is transported back to the moment that the jet engine crashes through his house, killing him and thereby saving his girlfriend Gretchen from her fate.
The plot is based on the fiction "Cellar Door", a real book by Roberta Sparrow.
In this book she states that artifacts can move through wormholes,
allowing time travel.
She explains that the "Tangent Universe" on the other side of the wormhole
was created by the jet engine.
| |
| Sliders Season 1 Episode 1 |
In the pilot of this science fiction series,
a brilliant physics student is attempting
to develop an anti-gravity device when he accidentially creates a stable wormhole.
The student decides to have his professor of
physics and his female friend join him in the journey.
Along the way the hole becomes too big
and sucks in an innocent bystander along for the adventure.
The drama begins when they misuse a weird timer device and end up in a
world not of their own (one in which the Soviet Union won the cold war).
The show continues until they open up another wormhole, but alas it does not
return them home.
Instead, the show continues as an odyssey of sorts with the characters
desperately attempting to get home.
– Bobby O'Mara | |
| Donnie Darko |
Intense movie about teenage angst, whose climactic end features a wormhole
that darkens the skies over Donnie Darko's house,
and changes everything.
Donnie Darko, the protagonist, is a troubled and schizophrenic teenager who sleep walks into some very strange situations. On one late night walk, Donnie meets Frank the giant bunny, who informs Donnie that there are 28 days left until the world ends. Frank also tells Donnie about time travel. While Donnie is out, a mysterious jet engine falls on to the Darkos' house. Donnie encounters harsh conflicts on his journey to understand Frank and to overcome his problems. Finally, on the day that the world is going to end, the sky splits in two, and there above is a wormhole. Donnie drives his car into the wormhole, and is transported back to the moment that the jet engine crashes through his house, killing him and thereby saving his girlfriend Gretchen from her fate.
The plot is based on the fiction "Cellar Door", a real book by Roberta Sparrow.
In this book she states that artifacts can move through wormholes,
allowing time travel.
She explains that the "Tangent Universe" on the other side of the wormhole
was created by the jet engine.
| |
| Short Story: Bubbles, by David Brin |
In this story, Serena, a huge galaxy-traversing starship
made by a long forgottten race,
finds herself marooned between galaxies.
She was built to relay care packages to isolated pockets of sentient life,
and just as she was about to tunnel into a wormhole
that will take her from Spiral Galaxy 998612a
to some other telephone-number-named galaxy, something goes wrong.
Serena ends up marooned someplace between galaxies,
and stumbles upon a hulking mass of technology known as The Coward.
The Coward has been so named because he is too terrified to enter
"the navel of creation", a gigantic black hole at the center of the Universe.
Some dialogue is exchanged, and Serena jumps in,
leaving the Coward to contemplate what may have happened to Serena.
"Bubbles" was published in "Otherness", a collection of short stories.
A brief description can be found at David Brin's
My Story Collections.
| |
| ASTR 2030 Spring 2005 Entries | ||
| The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2006) |
Arthur Dent wakes up one morning to find that his house is about to be
demolished, his best friend Ford Perfect is an alien from another planet, and
that Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace highway.
Minuets later Arthur and Ford have hitchhiked a ride on the demolisher's space
craft and are on an adventure across the galaxy. While there are no black
holes in this movie, hyperspace travel has been made possible by the "Infinite
Improbability Drive" that allows the crew to bridge hyperspace. The one small
problem with this type of travel is that it is impossible to predict where or
even what species you will be when you emerge out of hyperspace (without the
correct coordinates that is) and there is a normalization period that must take
place for things to return to normal. General relativity seems to play no part
in this comical science fiction movie (especially time dilation) but overall is
a very funny movie with an interesting take on how to hitchhike the galaxy
through the inner threads of hyperspace.
More information and synopsis.
– Kate Guthrie | |
| Book: Singularity, By William Sleator |
An odd book that tells the tale of two brothers (twins) that stay at
their dead uncle's house and discover the secret of his "playhouse" in the
back. The playhouse turns out to be the exit end of a black hole. This "white
hole" speeds up time within the playhouse for observers outside. After a fight
one twin desides to age himself a year by "living" in the playhouse while the
other sleeps. An interesting book with odd twists and an odder idea behind it.
Review.
– Cassidy Strode | |
| The Outer Limits Season Five: "Deja Vu" |
A government scientist had just finished developing a new kind of technology to
aide the military/government with rapid transportation. The technology
involves opening up a controllable wormhole and transporting someone or
something to another destination, and then exiting the wormhole when they get
there. Of course, everything doesn't go as planned, and our scientist loses
control of the wormhole machine. Instead of functioning properly and
transporting from place to place, it starts to go back in time. Conveniently,
the scientist is transported to the day before his machine went haywire. He
starts trying to warn everyone about the malfunctions to come, but doesn't have
much luck. Each time he fails to prevent the experiment from going wrong, he is
transported back again and again. However, also each time, the scientist finds
himself appearing with less and less time to try to end the madness. Time is
running out! As tge story progresses, he finds out that not one, but two
people have their own plans for his device, and that they were the cause of the
malfunctions. The scientist does fix everything in the end though.
The show is on the SciFi Channel if that is any hint on its popularity these days. – Kevin Keeling | |
| Wing Commander (1999) |
The movie takes place in the year 2654 and is about a war in space between the Erath confederation and an evil race called the Kilrathi. Only the Earth confederation is at a major disadvantage because the Kilrathi race has discovered a device that allows them to jump through worm holes and black holes. Upon going through and reaching the point of singularity they are able to travel back in time and arrive behind enemy lines. The only hope is the power of a fearless wing commander and his team of squadron fighters. The movie talks about black holes and worm holes throughout.
Review.
– Eric Rodriguez | |
| The Ultimate Weapon of MEGAS XLR |
This black hole story comes from the new Cartoon network show MEGAS XLR.
M.E.G.A.S. stands for Mechanical Earth Guardian Attack System.
It was developed in the year 3037 to protect earth.
But before its systems were fully functional, earth was attacked. In order to save earth's only chance for a counter attack, MEGAS was sent to the past to later be recovered, fixed and brought back to the future for combat.
MEGAS ended up in a New Jersey junkyard in 1970.
The Mech was eventually found by Coop, the chubby but loveable hero of the story.
Coop takes MEGAS, takes off the rust and adds his own modifications like a Playstation controller for the combat control and a hotrod for a head.
So now to introduce the main characters. Coop is the driver of MEGAS. Even with his modifications, he is not completely aware of all of MEGAS' capabilities. The person who is aware of all MEGAS functions is Kiva, MEGAS' creator. The smart red head from the future built the machine but is unaware of how to drive it. Then there is Jamie, Coop's good friend and co-pilot. Jamie is the typical side-kick. These three travel around, train on MEGAS and attract the attention of galactic friends and foes. In episode 5 of season two, titled S-Force S.O.S., Coop is locked in a battle with undefeatable Galactus. Coop, nearing defeat, stumbles upon MEGAS' ultimate weapon. After ignoring the warning from Kiva, Coop decides to fire revealing that the ultimate weapon is a black hole. A singularity is shot sucking in the villain, but as a side effect, everything else is getting sucked in too. MEGAS clings to a pipe as the crew tries to figure out how to disable the hole. Kiva created the weapon as a last resort; she was never expecting to stop the weapon. The quick thinking Coop then fires another singularity right next to the 1st black hole. The two singularities then cancel each other out and the universe is saved once again. – Jason Duong | |
| Blackstar (1981) |
Astronaut John Blackstar has a run-in with a black hole while traveling on his
ship, and is transported to the planet "Sagar". Here he is rescued by a race
of creatures called "Trobbits". Our hero soon learns that these peaceful
creatures are living under the oppressive power of the Overlord, who possesses
half of an extremely powerful sword. Blackstar has the other half. The
citizens of Sagar wish to see an end to their oppressive society. Blackstar,
of course, aids their endeavor, and along the way befriends a dragon, named
Warlock, and a shape-shifter named Klone.
This animated series is full of adventure and conflict, and the lasting friendships formed between John Blackstar and his companions. Even though a children's animated series, it could do with more character development. Though the series premiered as recently as the 1980s, CBS refused to allow the main character to be black, claiming that the public was not ready for this.
The show, in its entirety, lasted one season, and only 13 episodes.
Synopsis.
| |
| The Simpson's: "Don't Fear the Roofer" |
This episode features an appearance by Stephen Hawking, who
suggests that a small black hole in front of Homer might explain why
Bart could not see who Homer was talking to. The black hole absorbed all
the light from the main Homer was talking to.
Synopsis.
– Craig Campbell | |
| ASTR 2030 Fall 2003 Entries | ||
| Futurama (the space comedy brought to you by Matt Groenig, creator of the Simpsons): "Roswell That Ends Well" (2001) | Involves the crew of the show entering a black hole and being sent back in time because Fry put metal into the ship's microwave. Originally aired on December 9, 2001. Synopsis. | |
| Ben Hillman "That Pesky Toaster" (1995, Hyperion Books for Children, New York) | A book, not a movie. A gorgeously illustrated story about a dysfunctional toaster that swallows bread and disgorges not toast but a galaxy that the farmer's wife whacks with her broom into a black hole that hides in a pie that farmer Gus eats and ... | |
| The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) | A mysterious object comes crashing to Earth on a farm in Northern Wisconsin. A host of spiders hatch out of crystal geodes. A "NASA scientist" identifies the object as a black hole feeding energy to the spiders. The spiders quickly overrun everything and then produce a spider the size of an entire house which rampages through town. Synopsis. | |
| Star Trek TNG: "The Price" (1989) |
This Episode begins with an advanced civilization auctioning off the only
known "stable" wormhole in the universe. Several different delegations,
including the United Federation of Planets (to which the Enterprise belongs),
attempt to outbid each other for control of the wormhole.
The wormhole appears every 242 minutes or so,
and they compare the reliability of its appearing to
that of the geyser Old Faithful back on earth.
But Geordi and Data later discover that
the wormhole spits you out at a "random" location on the other side,
where it is unstable and collapses.
When they travel through the wormhole they see a lot of psychedelic lights.
From outside,
the wormhole goes from being a black point in space to a bright flash,
and a big purple bubble-shaped tunnel.
– Eliot Armstrong First aired 1989 November 26. Synopsis | |
| Timeline (2003) |
Timeline is about an archaeological team who study under their Yale professor, Billy Connolly.
They are all really into their work and into the past.
Somehow the professor finds out about some time travel machine that is being built,
and he travels back in time, but gets stuck there.
The team wants to go back in time to rescue him, but are scared, and ask many questions.
David Thewlis, head of International Technology Corp,
knows everything about time travel, and tells them how simple it is to go through a wormhole.
He wants them to go back in time so badly, he doesn't tell them that it's not actually that safe.
The last man to come back through was all distorted and even his veins and body parts weren't lined up anymore.
Most of the team decide to go through the wormhole.
On the other side they find themselves in the Hundred Years War,
and many of them are quickly killed.
The movie wasn't filled with the best acting or the most intense action scenes,
but it did have a good ending, and the movie pulled everything together nicely at the conclusion.
One man, Gerard Butler, ends up staying back in the 14th century, having decided to make his own history
after falling in love with Lady Claire, played by the beautiful Anna Friel.
– Shannon Von Eschen | |
| South Park Season 4 Episode 12: "The 4th Grade" |
In this episode of South Park
the main characters are tired of being in 4th grade
so they decide they want to go back in time to 3rd grade.
To do this they ask the help of the Star Trek geeks down the street to help them make a time machine.
The geeks talk about time travel and say there are two theories of time travel,
the Spock theory which says that a slingshot around the sun could create a wormhole,
and the Lieutenant Commander Data theory which says that a magnetic vibration could create
a rip in the spacetime continuum.
They decide that Timmy's wheelchair
would be good for making the required inertia device.
When Timmy tries to use the wheelchair to go through the wormhole,
which supposedly should open for 4.2 seconds,
he instead accelerates through the classroom wall,
and goes on a hectic ride.
Just when the wheelchair is about to explode,
Timmy travels back in time.
But he overshoots 3rd grade, and finds himself among the dinosaurs.
Back in school,
the other kids try to make a new time machine with a duck and a microwave.
The new machine successfully produces a wormhole,
but the kids decide they don't want to travel back in time.
Instead, Timmy reappears out of the wormhole,
having had his great adventure through time.
– Jacob Hansen | |
| Ren and Stimpy Season 1 Episode 6: Black Hole (1992) |
In this episode,
Ren and Stimpy start out aboard a space ship that is being sucked into
"the hideous vortex of a black hole" (quote, Ren).
They get thrown into another universe, minus their spaceship.
They are "the first cat and dog to pass through the black hole and live to tell the tale"
(Ren).
The universe is like another planet where the clouds change from baseballs
to chickens to toasters.
Ren and Stimpy are subject to many weird mutations like splitting in two,
eyes merging, and heads ballooning.
They trek to a mysterious mountain,
which turns out to be a huge pile of stinky left socks.
Apparently
"this is where all the missing left socks in the universe go" (Ren).
They must then get to the "trans-dimensional gateway"
so that they are not trapped in the new universe forever.
They try to board a bus departing the black hole for Jersey City,
but they don't have exact change, and are kicked off.
In order to leave the black hole,
they decide to implode themselves.
End of story.
Originally aired 1992 Feb 23.
– Emily Kramer Synopsis Tim-May Game. Help Timmy negotiate various obstacles, including time warps. | |
| The Tick Season 2 Episode 24: The Tick vs. The Big Nothing (1996) | A race of aliens, The Heys, plans to destroy the Universe by throwing a black hole into another black hole. Another race, The Whats, kidnap The Tick to try to stop them. Originally aired 1996 Feb 3. Synopsis | |
| 40 days and 40 nights (2002) | Josh Hartnet's ceiling forms into a black hole every time he has sex. Synopsis. | |
| Singularity –the universe, part 1 by mfx |
An artist's animation of a black hole at the center of a galaxy,
with music.
Go to http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=10997, and click on download (to the bottom right of the picture). It's a windows executable, but it runs fine under linux with wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator). | |
| Books | ||
| Bobo's Star, by Glenn Chandler, reprinted in "Science Fiction Stories (Red Hot Reads)" by Karin Littlewood (2004) | This children's story concerns a boy (Bobo) and his science experiment. Somehow he gets his hands on a Star Genesis Kit and creates a "pet" star in a protected, tough glass case, complete with an airlock via which Bobo can scoop sand into the vacuum, "feeding" his star in order to sustain itself. After feeding his star too enthusiastically, it finally undergoes a metamorphosis long after it should have burned out peacefully: it begins to collapse. When this fledgling black hole finally breaks out of its protected case, Bobo's uncle and a tray of tea cakes –along with half of Bobo's room – are the first to be gobbled up; Bobo himself only has time to imagine the headline "BOY DESTROYS UNIVERSE" before he is obliterated too. – Johann Greffrath | |
| Movies | ||
| 2001 | Read the book before you watch the film, otherwise you won't have a clue what happened. | |
| Contact | Beautifully crafted film, better I think than Carl Sagan's original book. Kip Thorne consulted on the wormhole, but in the end the director could not wait for a scientific rendering, and instead chose an artistic and dramatic rendering. There's a momentary glimpse of an exquisite galaxy. | |
| Stargate | The classic film featuring a sequence passing through a wormhole. The special effect sequence looks a bit like a screensaver compared to more recent offerings, but it was groundbreaking for its time. | |
| Supernova | Great film with some gratuitous astrophysics. Some lovely glimpses of a massive star accreting on to a black hole, but the sequences last only moments, presumably to disguise the fact that the view is just a still painting. There are two nice one-minute sequences where the spaceship looks like it's probably supposed to be passing through some kind of wormhole or spacewarp. The film is vague about what is actually happening. The climax is spectacular. The DVD offers an alternative ending which depicts the beginning of the destruction of the Universe, as a wave of supernovae marches through the Galaxy. | |
| The One | "There is not one Universe, but many, a Multiverse" intones the opening sequence, with delicious graphics to accompany. Our action hero, Jet Li, exists as a copy in each. If one copy is killed, then his strength is shared amongst the remaining copies. So it is that one rogue copy decides to kill all his other selves, so as to become the all powerful, The One. Li transports between Universes using a wormhole machine, and the wormhole sequences are quite fun. A feature of the transport is that the transporting person gets torn to bits en route, but is reassembled on landing. | |
| Walt Disney's The Black Hole | A truly awful movie, with annoying music, dreadful dialogue, clichéd characters, and laughable special effects. It gets 4 stars because it's perfect for teaching about what not to do. | |
| Event Horizon | A horror movie. The bit on the wormhole is short and a bit disappointing. The title is the name of the spaceship. | |
| Planet of The Apes (2001) | Our hero reaches the Planet of the Apes through what appears to be some kind of wormhole through space and time, although the comments on the DVD by the Director and the Special Effects guy suggest they weren't thinking about wormholes or black holes at all. | |
| Lost in Space (The 1998 movie) | A movie remake based on the old TV series. The family visits a planet where a future version of the son has devised a time machine that looks a bit like a churning wormhole. | |
| The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Special Edition) (1984) | The opening scene has Buckaroo Banzai accelerate a rocket car (no computer graphics here) across the salt flats, press the dimension button and pass right through a solid mountain, with special effects that were wizzy for the time. | |
| Galaxy Quest | Brandon says "Well, the Protector got super-accelerated coming out of the black hole, and it, like, nailed the atmosphere at Mach 15, which, you guys know, is pretty unstable, obviously, so we're gonna help Laredo guide it on the vox ultra-frequency carrier and use Roman candles for visual confirmation." A black hole appears briefly and unspectacularly as a way to get home. | |
| Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure | The telephone booth transports via some goofy kind of a wormhole. | |
| Austin Powers 2, 3 | The wormhole that transports across spacetime is a rotating psychedelic disk. Deliberately intended to be a dreadful take off, like the rest of the movie. | |
| Treasure Planet | Apparently there's scenes involving travel into a black hole. A memorable quote: "Do active galactic nuclei have superluminous jets!" | |
| Time Bandits |
The 1981 movie featured three former Pythons (Cleese, Gilliam, and
Palin) and Sean Connery in a fairly disjointed story about a child who gets
mixed up with some midget-thieves. The bandits steal not only across
continents, but across the spacetime continuum. The dwarves were God's
helpers when he was creating the universe, and they claim that while God was
working out all the important intangibles like good and evil, the dwarves
actually created all the stars, planets, and matter in the universe.
Naturally, the six tiny men only had a week to do it all, so there were a few
places they just sorta slapped some duct tape across it and called it good
enough. The holes in the spacetime continuum have been there ever since. The
dwarves eventually tire of toiling for God, and decide to go on a crime spree
across space and time. Granted, in the movie, the "holes" are never referred
to as "black holes," and they are localized as a black doorway in an alley
that come and go in a few seconds, in which case they certainly don't devour
any of the matter around them, but they could still definitely be considered
mini-black holes. But what it lacks in scientific accuracy, this movie
personifies the famous Stephen Wright quote, "Black Holes are where God
divided by zero."
– Billy Gooch | |
| Sailor Moon Super S: Black Dream Hole | ||
| Sphere | A spooky sphere at the bottom of the ocean does weird things. Scary, but not really much about black holes there. | |
| Terminator 2 | Great movie, with spectacular special effects. Involves time travel, but not really black holes or wormholes. | |
| Flight of the Navigator | ||
| Barbie and the Sensations: Rockin' Back to Earth | I have not been able to see this, but I am promised that Barbie and her rock group go through some kind of black hole or wormhole. | |
| Gojira tai Megagirasu: Jii Shômetsu Sakusen | A Japanese godzilla movie. One of Tokyo's defense mechanism's is the "dimension tide" a weapon that creates artificial black holes. | |
| Tron | ||
| Soundgarden, Blackhole sun | A song. | |
| Quantum Leap | ||
| The White Hole | ||
| Documentaries | ||
| Any Nova or Discovery documentary involving black holes | ||
| Hyperspace | A documentary in which an artist's impression of a wormhole makes a brief appearance that is neither very scientific nor very spectacular. | |
| The Philadelphia Experiment | One of those documentaries about weird happenings, here the transportation of the USS Philadelphia by some kind of plasma warp, that turn out to be hoaxes. | |
| TV Episodes | ||
| Andromeda "Under the Night" (the first episode of the series) | A world war with the Nietzscheans wipes out the entire human race, except for our hero captain Hunt, who escapes into a black hole, where he stays frozen on the horizon for 300 years before being pulled off the horizon by a salvage ship. Great for discussion in class, because of the way it mixes good physics with bad. | |
| Simpsons. Treehouse of Horror episode VI | Superbly irreverent. | |
| Farscape Season 1, Vol. 1 –Premiere/I, E.T. | In the first episode, our hero astronaut accelerates an experimental craft to unheard of speed, skips off the atmosphere, and finds himself transported through a time tunnel to another part of the Universe. | |
| Space: 1999 set 1 | A slow, awful episode from the 1970s series. The low grade special effects remind you how far things have come in the computer age. Don't bother. | |
| Sliders | Awful. There's a kind of wormhole thing, usually just off camera, through which the cast leaps at the beginning and end of each episode to take them to another time and place. | |
| Cowboy Bebop –Session 4: Gateway Shuffle | ||
| Space Above & Beyond. Ray Butts | Starship ripped apart by tidal forces. Dogfight in and around BH. Pilot dies while listening to Johnny Cash's "I walk the line". | |
| Invader Zim: Room with a Moose | ||
| South Park. Starvin Marvin in Space | ||
| Red Dwarf | ||
| Series 3: Backwards | ||
| Series 3: Marooned | ||
| Series 4: White Hole | ||
| Series 4: Dimension Jump | ||
| Star Trek | ||
| Star Trek. Eye of the Needle | ||
| Star Trek I, The Motion Picture | The cast go through a wormhole created by their malfunctioning warp drive. The actors' faces all distort and their voices get slower and slower until they break free. | |
| Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home | ||
| Star Trek TNG | ||
| First Contact | ||
| Star Trek Deep Space Nine | ||
| Emissary (the first season two-part introduction) | The cast discover the wormhole for the first time. There are lots of shots of the wormhole opening and people passing through it. In later episodes the wormhole becomes commonplace, and people just enter one side and exit the other. | |
| The Prince | ||
| The Naked Now | ||
| Star Trek Voyager | ||
| Gravity | ||
| Parallax | ||
| Tomorrow Is Yesterday | ||
| Star Trek Enterprise | ||
| Singularity | The cast experiences strange warp effects as they pass through the accretion disk of a black hole. The graphics of the nebulous and rocky accretion disk are beautiful, though we never actually see the black hole or get close to it. | |
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