Today, I celebrate the unveiling of the Milky Way’s black hole by reviewing the film that Neil DeGrasse Tyson once described as the most scientifically inaccurate movie of all time. Is it as bad as its rep? Click to find out.
Michael Siegel
Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.
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I recall reading a piece of an interview with an older science fiction writer who remarked that any number of old science fiction stories that depended on small black holes had been ruined when Hawkings (and a couple of Russians, I believe) established that small black holes probably evaporate away before they could be used.Report
It will take a typical black hole 10^67 year to evaporate so no worries there.Report
No, no, these were all black holes small enough — say 100,000 tons tops — that you could manipulate them. Eg, throw in enough tons all with the same electrical sign to “charge up” the black hole and then you could push it around to where you wanted it. But it had to be little as these things go. Leaving the authors to deal with the infinitesimal chance that you would encounter a primordial black hole that had evaporated to that convenient size, or that you could create an LHC-scale black hole and manage to dump enough mass into it to grow it to a useful size before it evaporated.Report
The Black Plot Hole!Report
Off topic — you knew I would a some point — but space related.
The ULA and Boeing have launched Starliner and inserted it into the proper orbit to catch the ISS and dock. This despite two of the four thrusters that were to be used for the final orbit corrections failing. But what really struck me about the launch was the difference in video coverage compared to a SpaceX Crew Dragon launch.
ULA/Boeing was straight out of the 70s. Rows of identically dressed technical people sitting in front of large monitors at the Johnson Space Center. CGI rendering — intentionally not photo-realistic, I assume — of booster separation, second stage ignition, etc. All of the voice overs sounding deadly serious. In contrast, SpaceX provides multiple live video feeds of the separation, the second stage burn, and of course the booster landing on one of the barges at sea. Usually with a couple of talking heads who, while knowledgeable, look cheerful speaking about it.Report
SpaceX has to maintain the PR, and, well, their tech works.
And when it doesn’t, they make snarky PR videos of that as well.Report
Musk seems to be a fairly hands-off CEO for SpaceX these days. But I’ll bet Gwynne Rowley, the president and COO, responsible for company growth, has started thinking, “We can put ULA out of business.” I wonder what their lobbying effort in Congress looks like?Report
Not sure, but I’m betting it never mentions Musk.Report