Fall 2006 ASTR 2030 Black Holes: Black Hole Books, Movies
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Fall 2006 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 (don't forget the quotes rule). Preferably you should provide a link to a place on the web where further information about the story/movie can be found.
| Rating | Title | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | |
| 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:
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| 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.
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| "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.
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| 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). | |
| 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. |
| NR | Treasure Planet | Have't seen it, but 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 |
| NR | 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. |
| NR | Terminator 2 | Great movie, with spectacular special effects. Involves time travel, but not really black holes or wormholes. |
| NR | Flight of the Navigator | Have not seen it. |
| NR | 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. |
| NR | 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. |
| NR | Tron | Haven't seen it, but someone thought there might have been a black hole in there. |
| NR | Soundgarden, Blackhole sun | A song. |
| NR | Quantum Leap | Haven't seen it. |
| NR | The White Hole | Haven't seen it. |
| Documentaries | ||
| NR | Any Nova or Discovery documentary involving black holes | |
| NR | Hyperspace | A documentary in which an artist's impression of a wormhole makes a brief appearance that is neither very scientific nor very spectacular. |
| NR | 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. |
| NR | Cowboy Bebop –Session 4: Gateway Shuffle | ? |
| NR | 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". |
| NR | Invader Zim: Room with a Moose | Haven't seen it. |
| NR | South Park. Starvin Marvin in Space | Haven't seen it. |
| Red Dwarf | ||
| NR | Series 3: Backwards | |
| NR | Series 3: Marooned | |
| NR | Series 4: White Hole | |
| NR | Series 4: Dimension Jump | |
| Star Trek | ||
| NR | Star Trek. Eye of the Needle | |
| NR | 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. |
| NR | Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home | |
| Star Trek TNG | ||
| NR | First Contact | |
| Star Trek Deep Space Nine | ||
| NR | 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. |
| NR | The Prince | |
| NR | The Naked Now | |
| Star Trek Voyager | ||
| NR | Gravity | |
| NR | Parallax | |
| NR | 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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Updated 2006 Dec 22
