![[1133] Event Horizon](/comics/2019-12-02-1133-event-horizon.png "[1133] Event Horizon")
I think the last panel is one of the best things we ever produced. I hope you like it as much as I do.
I have now paid the prize money to almost all artists.
Here they are, the top 10 of this year’s artwork contest! You really need to check out these amazing pieces of art!
- Matthew: Wow, that’s so cool! Your black hole even has a small accretion disk!
- Yuna: It sparkles even more during sunset!
- Yuna: Wally, stop drooling! This is my friend Matthew, not food!
- Yuna: Aww, now he’s emitting colored energy waves to lure you into touching him.
- Yuna: Wally loves to spaghettify things!
- Matthew: That’s rather naughty…!
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Why am I laughing so much…? 😀
I had never thought that a cute black hole named Willy could be so funny!
How is he sentient and glowing, and what the heck is an accretion disk?
@ Niser:
Think the rings of Saturn. Basically matter forming a ring around a massive body due to gravity.
Niser wrote:
It’s a comic … and an accreditation disc would document the authenticity of her black hole by likely some astrological society. Niser wrote:
@ razielangelus:
And I read that totally wrong … cheers for the correct answer 🙂
@ Niser:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_disk
Next…look up Hawking Radiation
Matthew is even cuter than Cloud used to be, I want to give him hugs and protect him and call him “little brother”.
Please let them be innocent (and alive) for a while. That last panel worries me 😛
@ razielangelus:
Except that Saturn’s rings are in stable orbit. An accretion disk is falling inward.
@ Lookfar:
Falling inward up to a point… you don’t ever see something falling in.
Bahamuttone wrote:
… which takes us back to the name of the strip …
@ David L.:
He will turn out to be the lost and evil brother of Larissa. It will turn out that compared to Mathew Larissa is a firewoman… (firegirl?)
@ Lookfar:
not necessarily – its perfectly feasible to have speed to orbit a black hole forever.
l
Paeris Kiran wrote:
You could argue, that that’s the case for the milkyway (If there actually is a black hole in the center of it. I’m not astronomer enough to make that claim without disclaimer)
This brings up a question.
How do you raise a black hole?
Asrial wrote:
Feed him … 😉
Black holes aren’t picky. They eat about everything. With a small one like Wally it’ll take some time.
Young scientists are so adorable. Until they start pestering you for budget.
i though that his use of the “god” indicated him behing a theist last strip…must have been using it like einstein or hawkings tend to use it…
i.e when refering to any thing awe inspiring without nessesarily carrying any religious meaning
he may actually not go insane from yunas physics law mangling antics then…
still curious to see what would happen if yuna encountered rick sanchez lol
@ Qrez:
He can be a theist and still understand science.
The trouble with keeping small pets is that they tend to have short lifespans. No sooner do you get attached to them than they’re dead.
Suppose Willy had a radius of 1e-24 meters. That implies a mass of 670 kg. Could hardly be more or Yuna’s bed would have collapsed. Probably much less or she couldn’t have hoisted the case onto a shelf.
“His” lifetime would be 2.56e-8 seconds (hardly enough time to form emotional bonds), his temperature 1.8e20 Kelvin, and his luminosity about 2 Suns. Ye Thuza’s insurance premiums must be doozies!
OK. Yuna’s a genius. Super-genius. She must have figured some way to stabilize the hole. What could you do with it? 670 kg trickled out slowly could power a Nintendo Switch for quite a long time. Or she could have just brought it to the Science Fair and gotten a suitable revenge (hot, rather than cold) on those stupid teachers/judges!
@ clickbait:
But you have to be VERY careful, especially of tidal effects. See Larry Nivens short stories “The Hole man” and “Borderland of Sol”.
@Qrez
Don’t forget his science project blinked “Jesus Christ be praised” in Morse Code. He’s definitely Christian. That said, God is already a recurring character in this comic, so I would argue Christianity is closer to the truth than Athiesm. Science is certainly not at odds with Religion in this universe.
@ Qrez:
I don’t understand this comment. There’s nothing areligious about belief in a God who is a Creator of all.
To believe that God did it by some means other than “I will it so, and continue to will it so, and there’s no rhyme nor reason to it other than My will and whim,” is not a Christian belief. (It is fairly close to Islamic dogma, however, as I understand it.) One needn’t even believe in the “absent clockmaker” God to behold the wonders of Creation and seek to understand them; a God who still has knobs and levers He can and does pull when it suits His purpose doesn’t obviate the structure and intricacy of the design of the metaphorical machine, any more than a man driving a car obviates the possibility that the car was designed and machined in such a way that it operates by mechanisms other than the pure and constant willpower of the driver.
The notion that Science is opposed to Religion is a canard promoted by anti-Christians and, sadly, bought by some Christians, but is, as stated, a lie.
@ Regis Earsquake:
There *is* a black hole in the center of the Milky Way. It’s called Sagittarius A* (the * is part of it’s name, not a footnote indicator).
It’s been known to astronomers since 1931 as at least a big *something* in the center of the galaxy, and was officially discovered as an independent object in 1974 (there’s a LOT of stuff in the center of the galaxy that gets in the way).
There was a big hullabaloo in April of this year (2019) about them finally taking a photo of the thing. Not sure how you missed it, it was like in the news.
@ dankaar:
Slight correction. Sag A* was one of the 2 “targets” chosen, but the picture they got is of the other one, M87*
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2019/4/19/how-scientists-captured-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole/
@ master Diver:
It would certainly swallow any atom which actually touched it — but I wouldn’t worry about being spagettified. If the mass, as I estimated previously, is under a tonne, it would tug at you no harder than any ‘normal’ mass at that distance. At 1 millimeter range the pull would only be about 1/200th of a gee.
It’d be like touching superglue; you couldn’t break the adhesion, but you could escape if you were willing to sacrifice a little skin.
In addition to the Niven stories you mention, I can recommend “The Compleat McAndrew” by Charles Sheffield. Someone develops a means of collapsing matter into Neutronium and stabilizing it. He applies the process to an asteroid. 18 kilotonnes in a pinpoint. He leaves his ship to investigate the remnant, then makes the mistake of touching it. Can’t withdraw the finger. Can’t move the mass. Can’t take off his spacesuit. He starves to death.
A co-pilot could have safely yanked him free, but he was alone.
Uh oh… It become a horror… me dont like! 🙁
Nate wrote:
Not necessarily. Anyone can -say- something like that without actually -believing- it.
On the other hand, with nothing else to go on, it is certainly a strong clue that he is in fact a Christian; just not proof.
Lookfar wrote:
Well, technically Saturn’s rings aren’t stable, either, and for the same reason: Particles a little closer to the central body orbit faster, and friction between those particles and particles a little further out causes them to gradually spiral inwards.
Just happens more gradually for Saturn’s rings, because the gravitational gradient is a lot smaller.
Of course, there’s no safe size of black hole; If they’re not big enough to be tearing you apart from across the room, they’re small enough that the Hawking radiation vaporizes you. And, what’s keeping it from falling through the box into the center of the planet, and consuming it.
Yuna doesn’t practice science, she practices mad science, which treats the laws of physics as more of optional suggestions.
Brett Bellmore wrote:
This last is very, very true. She would fit quite nicely in Girl Genius.
Forget Sandra and Woo… The comic should be about Yuna and Wally.
clickbait wrote:
Let me put it this way, hoe does one get it to behave?
Hmmm…could Yuna be finding a crush in this new boy?
@ AnotherBear:
Miracle of science would be closer to Sandra and Woo in tone, and the characters would fit right in. In Girl Genius, people are described in a much more 2-dimensional way.
Edda wrote:
Only if “he” would be in vacuum. If he’s allowed to consume air (not speaking about other stuff), he can compensate the energy lost by hawking radiation.
…. although I guess it would need to be LOT of air to compensate luminosity of two suns …
@ Carlospes:
HI Yuna, Matthew.
Yuna, is your mom available?
She took him home?
Reminds me of Superman’s pet Sun Eater from the 2011 animated movie All-Star Superman. He’d make mini black holes with his forge to feed him.
David L. wrote:
A black whole the size of a grain of rice would weigh more than 10K suns.
A black whole powerful enough so its disk would be visible in daylight would swallow the earth.
So (in real life) this would definitely be something to worry about, though we’d be unlikely to know about it 4 seconds after it was made (about how long it would take for the earth to disappear).