Excerpt from Chapter One, "Mysteries of the Universe"

Objects Strange and Wonderful, Page 4 of 5

It might seem at first glance a haphazard relationship, physicists and astronomers occasionally joining together to discover yet another uncanny object in the skies-but the list of celestial marvels accelerated in the second half of our century. For example, there was the theoretically seductive event known as a black hole, a concept that has launched untold jittery scenes in novels and movies like the following climactic moment in Hollywood's The Black Hole:

Ernest Borgnine:
My God, right out of Dante's Inferno.

Anthony Perkins:
Yes. The most destructive force in the universe.

Richard Forster:
Nothing can escape it, not even light.

Yvette Mimieux:
I had a professor who predicted that eventually black holes would devour the entire universe.

Anthony Perkins:
Why not? When you can see giant suns sucked in and disappear without a trace?

Richard Forster:
It's a monster, all right.

Robot:
A rip in the very fabric of space and time.

This intentionally simplistic dialogue is not so far from the unnervingly complex truth. Einstein's general theory of relativity mandates the existence of black holes: When a giant star implodes, it might become too weak to flare up again into a supernova. Gravitational forces cause it to collapse upon itself, perhpas shrinking into a pinpoint of infinite density or into a gigantic, invisible object without a surface. Even experts find it difficult to visualize black holes, but their effects are clear. Light cannot escape from the powerful object. Space curves toward it, sealing off the star's matter, as titanic clouds of hot gases and living stars swirl violently around it. In some cases jets of high-energy particles are forced out from the black hole in opposite directions.

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