And Scotty seemed to suffer no ill effects after being submerged in the stuff, so I can only assume it was indeed harmless.
Novel continuity in 2387
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And Scotty seemed to suffer no ill effects after being submerged in the stuff, so I can only assume it was indeed harmless.
Also, the panel that Kirk uses to get him out was described as a "water turbine control board" by Chekov moments later.
I have to admit that this is second-hand going by the comments on the Language Log post I linked, but apparently "inert reactant" is a common phrase in chemistry literature for a reactant that isn't currently reacting; inert in that case meaning "inactive" rather than "does not react". (I'm trusting that it's legitimate because the commenting community on Language Log tends to be pretty reliable as a whole, but I haven't personally double-checked the claim.)
I've got a question. Is there a way to logically explain how the Narada and Jellyfish traveled through time as a result encountering the artificial black hole and not be ripped apart? Cause I thought that in Star Trek black holes are just as they are in real life and that their surfaces/event horizons are not spatial-temporal apertures. However in Star Trek 2009 that was what the Narada and Jellyfish looked to me like they were entering the black hole's surface into a black-colored Bajoran wormhole and then exiting the black-colored Bajoran wormhole.
It could just be a case that in the fictional Star Trek Universe, some black holes are gateways to other universes and/or different points in time, while others are not.
Well, if a ship can survive the spatiotemporal stresses of a warp field, wormhole, or time warp of any kind, then falling into a black hole wouldn't be that much different, really. They're all extremely severe spacetime distortions and the tidal stresses at the edge of a warp field would be comparable to those near a black hole. So if a ship would need some kind of exotic matter or energy fields to stabilize a warp field, and that might be enough to cancel a black hole's tidal stresses as well.
In any case, the warps created by Red Matter were not normal black holes by any means, given the manner of their formation. The term was probably somewhat figurative and they were more some kind of unstable wormhole.
Didn't you postulate that the black hole which sent Voyager VI across the galaxy also sent it back in time, Christopher?
In any case, black holes have been doing magical stuff in Trek since 1979. They're definitely not like the ones in the real world.
In any case, black holes have been doing magical stuff in Trek since 1979. They're definitely not like the ones in the real world.
Yes, and that it was the same "black star" from "Tomorrow is Yesterday," with anomalous properties that made Voyager 6's passage through its ergosphere survivable.
I thought Voyager 6 and the Enterprise made slingshots around the Black Star, not travel into it.
That's right. The ergosphere is the region of warped spacetime around a rotating black hole. A "slingshot maneuver" is essentially an orbital trajectory through that warped region, producing a closed timelike curve like that around a Tipler cylinder (and what's impressive is that "Tomorrow is Yesterday" predicted this seven years before Frank Tipler wrote his seminal paper on the subject).
Still, the conditions that exist at the horizon of an inverted spacetime (time warp) would entail runaway Hawking radiation that would destroy a traveler unless some kind of exotic matter were used to cancel the effect -- and pretty much the same is true of a warp metric (they're just variations on the same physics). Thus, my point that survival in a warp drive or wormhole and survival in a time warp are physically similar propositions.
According to TMP itself:
DECKER: Voyager VI ...disappeared into what they used to call a black hole.
KIRK: It must have emerged sometime on the far side of the Galaxy and fell into the machine's planet's gravitational field.
This could be interpreted in the fashion we saw in the '09 movie. I wouldn't be surprised if that was their inspiration.
DECKER: Voyager VI ...disappeared into what they used to call a black hole.
KIRK: It must have emerged sometime on the far side of the Galaxy and fell into the machine's planet's gravitational field.
This could be interpreted in the fashion we saw in the '09 movie. I wouldn't be surprised if that was their inspiration.
I'd be very surprised if it was their inspiration, because it was very, very far from being the first or only time that the idea of something falling through a black hole into another part of space or time has been proposed in fiction. I mean, the idea dates back to Einstein and Rosen's work in 1935, and even on TV and film, it had shown up in various places before TMP used it. Heck, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" essentially used it; the only reason they called the thing a "black star" rather than a black hole is because the term "black hole" was still a few months away from being coined when the episode was made.
Besides, I thing I remember Orci saying he attempted to explain the black hole in a scientifically plausible way but was overruled by Abrams who said "less science, just make it cool."
^I prefer not to think about it too much...
I thought of another flaw with the whole concept of the Hobus Supernova. Cause even if you accept Countdown/Star Trek Online's use of Iconian engineering for rupturing subspace in the Hobus Supernova, then that would still mean that the artificial black hole would rapidly occupy dozens of light years if it safely stopped the Supernova. But then the Jellyfishwould have had to travel into the Hobus Supernova's wave front in order to deliver the red matter to an effective location. But the movie basically portrayed the Jellyfish making a pass at an ordinary star.
Unless maybe the artificial black hole's gravity reached through the subspace ruptures and pulled back the supernova wavefront from destroying more solar systems?
And this reminds me of something else. If black holes are collapsed stars, then shouldn't they be spherical? The artificial black holes in Star Trek 2009 looked more to me like discs in space, not spheres.
Unless maybe the artificial black hole's gravity reached through the subspace ruptures and pulled back the supernova wavefront from destroying more solar systems?
And this reminds me of something else. If black holes are collapsed stars, then shouldn't they be spherical? The artificial black holes in Star Trek 2009 looked more to me like discs in space, not spheres.
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Like I said, it's best not to think about it too much. The whole thing was a total mess conceptually; I'm sure the original script's version was more plausible before Abrams simplified it.
And yes, black holes' event horizons are spheres or spheroids, but not because they collapsed from stars; after all, the actual singularity of a black hole, which contains all the mass, is a point volume. The event horizon is the surface defining the distance from that point mass at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light -- which is why it's a sphere, since a sphere is a surface whose every point is equidistant from its center. Although it's a bit more complicated if the black hole is rotating, because then the singularity is ring-shaped so the EH is more oblate.
Anyway, screen depictions of black holes have rarely been realistic. Ever since Disney's The Black Hole in 1979, the standard depiction has been a brightly glowing accretion disk that's funnel-shaped in the center like water swirling down a drain, even though a BH wouldn't have an accretion disk unless it had a binary companion to suck gas from (or were a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, surrounded by stars that it tore apart).
And yes, black holes' event horizons are spheres or spheroids, but not because they collapsed from stars; after all, the actual singularity of a black hole, which contains all the mass, is a point volume. The event horizon is the surface defining the distance from that point mass at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light -- which is why it's a sphere, since a sphere is a surface whose every point is equidistant from its center. Although it's a bit more complicated if the black hole is rotating, because then the singularity is ring-shaped so the EH is more oblate.
Anyway, screen depictions of black holes have rarely been realistic. Ever since Disney's The Black Hole in 1979, the standard depiction has been a brightly glowing accretion disk that's funnel-shaped in the center like water swirling down a drain, even though a BH wouldn't have an accretion disk unless it had a binary companion to suck gas from (or were a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, surrounded by stars that it tore apart).
Whatever happens in 2387, all I ask is it be exciting. Even if the Hobus Supernova turns out to be the birth of the Great Bird of the Galaxy's bigger meaner brother. Trek's allowed to be batshit crazy sometimes, too!
Does anyone have any Great Bird of the Galaxy reference pics?
