Black Holes (& Revelations)

(this post originally appeared in 2018)

Are you fascinated by Black Holes? I am.

It is perhaps a question you never expected to be asked here, but I’ve decided to embrace the full me lately. Embrace my weird, share all my interests not just a small handful. Taking blogging back to basics even, relax a little, make it more of a journal again. Do what you love, not what is expected of you– a quote I can’t remember who said, please enlighten me if you know.

Anyhooo… back to black holes.

I’m fascinated by space and the infinite expanse of it. I’m a sci-fi fan, I always have been and always will be. A black hole feels like the ultimate sci-fi trope and yet, they aren’t fiction.

This week I had the privilege of attending a Press day at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI for short) in Manchester. We (the press!?) were there for a special preview of the Manchester Science Festival 2018.

One of the headline pieces of the festival is an impressive installation “Distortions in Spacetime” by an artist collective called Marshmallow Laser Feast. It’s immersive, it’s beautiful, it’s kind of like being in an Earth, Wind & Fire/The Jacksons music video circa 1978. But it’s so much more than that too. It made me think of my favourite space films. It gave me lots to think about for my novel (surprise surprise, it has sci-fi elements).

The aim of the installation is to make it seem as though you are inside a black hole. Of course, it doesn’t feel like you are, hey, because you aren’t being torn apart by gravity and radiation. Thank goodness, this one of many theories of course.

It’s as close as we’ll ever get to experiencing a black hole and for someone like me, it captures the imagination and the possibilities of what could be.