SF author Wil McCarthy talks black holes & Trek XI.

[Gepard]

From Trekmovie, probably my favorite SF author to date, Wil McCarthy, has posted a piece on Sci-Fi Wire about the effect of black holes eating planets in Trek XI.

I'm pleased to see him addressing the topic, since the effects of small, man-made black holes was (part of) the subject of his last several novels; if anyone's an expert on destroying planets with singularities, it's him.

 

[TK421]

Never heard of him.

 

[M'Sharak]

Good article -- a very thorough (yet easily understandable) explanation.

 

[Gepard]

Good article -- a very thorough (yet easily understandable) explanation.

Yeah. He's good that way--I strongly recommend both his novel "The Collapsium" and his related nonfiction book, "Hacking Matter," which, according to the article on Sci-Fi Wire, is now available as a free download.

 

[Peter the Younger]

The Collapsium is fantastic. Having said that, I don't think Wil has earned his Vulcan ears here; i.e., he's not quite into the Treknology headspace.

(paraphrasing from my post on his blog) Clearly the red matter doesn't weight billions of tons, so it would have to create the black hole by some other means. Note the usage of the terms "ignite" associated with it, and the fact that it seems to need other matter to work with; perhaps when "ignited", it causes some sort of radical change in the matter it comes in contact with, a chain reaction that increases the mass of the affected matter.

Maybe it tears a hole in the Bulk and sucks in mass from the multiverse. Maybe it re-orders the vibration of the 10 fundamental dimensions in such a way that causes regular matter to turn into something 10 times more massive than neutronium. Not "real science?" No, of course not - and as he says at the outset, this is Star Trek. Duh.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Fascinating.

Thanks for posting this. Though obviously Red Matter works in some kind of different and completely magical manner than what was mentioned in the article, it was still cool to see him lay out how things would happen in reality in such an accessible and entertaining way.

I've never read any of his novels, but this makes me want to check them out. Thanks for the recommendation on 'The Collapsium' as well.