BLACK HOLES IN POP CULTURE

     Hello all and welcome to my Blogspot EVERYTHING ASTRONOMICAL. In this blog, I am going to talk about Black Holes. YES! In the end, you will become familiar with the basic structures of a black hole, learn the terminology used to describe them, and explore the history of black hole physics.

    I'm fascinated by the force of gravity. How does gravity strength depend on an object's mass and size? How does gravity cause light to travel on curved paths? Can we use the effects of gravity to observe black holes through gravitational lensing? What exactly are the gravitational waves that scientists are so excited about? Have you ever been fascinated by this? ( If so, leave it in the comment.)

Okay, let's get into our discussion.

Introduction to Black Holes:

    We learned that black holes are the endpoint of stellar evolution for high mass stars. What I'm curious to learn is how the mass of a star can create a gravitationally collapsed object, a black hole. All we know is that a black hole is a region in spacetime, where it sucks anything into it by its strong gravitational force. But it is more than that we can imagine. 

Black Holes in movies:

    Let's start our journey into the realm of pop culture with a franchise that has attracted fans for the last 50 years. Yeah, Star Trek is that. Star Trek is known for singlehandedly inspiring a generation of scientists and engineers whose work saw the human exploration of the moon and permanent laboratories in space. The writers of the film employed a strange form of fictional matter called Red matter, which appears to create black holes that can consume entire planets. Although visually impressive, Star Trek gets a lot of the Black Hole physics wrong. For one, the audience is meant to understand that red matter black holes are traversable. 

    Unfortunately, traversable wormholes are merely a theory. In fact, travel through a wormhole, if possible, would likely expose travellers to a serious dose of radiation. 

    On the other hand, Star Trek explores some very interesting physics of black holes, specifically how a spacecraft might escape if it becomes trapped within the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Gargantua Supermassive Black Hole - Interstellar

    

    

    Another famous movie Interstellar 2014, presents the science of black holes as accurately as possible. There is still a unknown in black hole physics, like what happens when you cross an event horizon? Interstellar does engage in some speculation about what happens inside a black hole and also the wormhole.

    Another cool bit of science that Interstellar gets right are the extreme time differences between Miller's planet and the spaceship that orbits farther away from the black hole. When one hour passes on the planet, seven years pass for the astronauts far from the black hole.

    

    Okay, I gave an overview of black holes in movies, it will lead you to fascinate about it. Which science fiction movie fascinated you the most? ( Leave it in the comment)

    I shall discuss more about the Black Holes in my successive blogs. Engage with me.😊

(Special thanks to Muhesh Kanna for the Blog name ❤️😌)