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Black Holes Encyclopedia
FAQ

Star Trek: Voyager 'Parallax' (1995)

TV Show

Star Trek: Voyager, 'Parallax'

Voyager finds itself trapped inside the event horizon of a "quantum singularity" -- in other words, a black hole. After experiencing odd optical effects, such as seeing their own ship in the viewscreen, the crew finds a way to "crack" the event horizon and escape.

The Science

It would be difficult to find yourself inside a black hole without realizing that you had entered it. The black hole's effects on the space around it would create distortions that would be clearly visible.

Once inside the black hole, it might be possible to continue to orbit its center without being torn apart, but only if the black hole were extremely massive. In a stellar-mass black hole, the difference in gravity from the event horizon to the singularity at its center is so great that anything that enters the black hole is instantly ripped apart. A supermassive black hole, however, is so large that the gravity gradient is small, allowing an object to hold itself together -- at least for a while.

As for cracking the event horizon and escaping? Forget it. The horizon is not a solid surface. Instead, it is the distance from the center of the black hole at which the speed needed to escape the black hole's grip is greater than the speed of light. Since the horizon is not a physical object, there is nothing to crack -- and no way to escape.

Of course, if you have engines that can also warp space just as a black hole's gravity does, perhaps there's a way out. But you need a Starfleet engineer to work it out -- not to mention a few shortcuts around the known laws of physics.

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