Off topic I know, but this didn't seem worth necroing the Andromeda thread over, and I just gotta get this out of my brain so I can go about the rest of my evening. OK, so to kill time while we wait for MELE and apropos of nothing in particular; I was just reading though the Andromeda codex and something jumped out at me as being very off, astrophysically speaking.
They have that giant (and I mean *giant*) black hole at the centre of the Heleus Cluster map down as being "12 solar masses". At first blush that seemed VERY light, so I plugged the numbers into Schwarzschild Radius Calculator and sure enough; 12 solar masses would only net you a black hole 35.45km across. That's *tiny*, and this thing is supposed to be so big it has a cluster of 38 star systems orbiting it.
My first though was "maybe it's a typo and they misses a zero or three?" So back to the calculator and I start adding zeroes. Now, I figure a cluster with 38 systems, all more or less along the same plane has to be at least a few light years across, right? OK, so in order for the event horizon to be as big as it looks it's have have be at least 1 ly in diameter, right? Or at least within the ballpark. So how many solar masses would that take? One point two trillion! To put that in perspective; the total estimated mass of the Milky-Way galaxy is something like 1.5 trillion solar masses! Clearly something isn't right here.
Of course I'm inclined to just chalk it up to very poor research or a huge production error of some sort. But let's just suppose for a second that's not the case (though it almost certainly is) what could be going on here? I remember thinking it odd for the black hole to be so prevalent throughout the game but almost never directly referenced in plot or dialogue, and when it is, only in passing. Given what else happened in Helios one has to wonder if it's somehow connected to the scourge and the fate of the Jardaan. What if that's not even a black hole? What if they pulled an 'Expanse' and pissed of some entities in another universe, who sent to scourge out after them and that's actually wormhole or something? What if they were screwing around with mass effect fields and dark energy and someone created a black hole with a much larger event horizon than should be possible with it's measly 12 solar masses? What if it's artificial and the Jardaan are hiding out from the scourge inside that thing?
They have that giant (and I mean *giant*) black hole at the centre of the Heleus Cluster map down as being "12 solar masses". At first blush that seemed VERY light, so I plugged the numbers into Schwarzschild Radius Calculator and sure enough; 12 solar masses would only net you a black hole 35.45km across. That's *tiny*, and this thing is supposed to be so big it has a cluster of 38 star systems orbiting it.
My first though was "maybe it's a typo and they misses a zero or three?" So back to the calculator and I start adding zeroes. Now, I figure a cluster with 38 systems, all more or less along the same plane has to be at least a few light years across, right? OK, so in order for the event horizon to be as big as it looks it's have have be at least 1 ly in diameter, right? Or at least within the ballpark. So how many solar masses would that take? One point two trillion! To put that in perspective; the total estimated mass of the Milky-Way galaxy is something like 1.5 trillion solar masses! Clearly something isn't right here.
Of course I'm inclined to just chalk it up to very poor research or a huge production error of some sort. But let's just suppose for a second that's not the case (though it almost certainly is) what could be going on here? I remember thinking it odd for the black hole to be so prevalent throughout the game but almost never directly referenced in plot or dialogue, and when it is, only in passing. Given what else happened in Helios one has to wonder if it's somehow connected to the scourge and the fate of the Jardaan. What if that's not even a black hole? What if they pulled an 'Expanse' and pissed of some entities in another universe, who sent to scourge out after them and that's actually wormhole or something? What if they were screwing around with mass effect fields and dark energy and someone created a black hole with a much larger event horizon than should be possible with it's measly 12 solar masses? What if it's artificial and the Jardaan are hiding out from the scourge inside that thing?
