Shiva holes

Do you remember the Walt Disney film, The Black Hole?

It's a personal favorite of mine, as it remains firmly embedded in my childhood memory as one of the top 5 best ever. Robert Forster, who wouldn't make another big comeback until Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, was the the captain of a ship, the Palamino, who finds another ship thought to be lost hanging just beyond a black hole's event horizon. Reunions, theorizations on travel in a black hole, kidnapping, shooting robots, laser lobotomies, and trips into the great beyond ensue. It had an addictive theme as well.

I had the audio record for the movie. You know the big 33 1/3 speed record you'd play, while reading the accompanying storybook rich with movie photos? Man, those were awesome. I also had 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' and the Star Trek Buena Vista records. I recommend the Robot Masters mp3 sample.

Where was I? Black holes. Some interesting recent work in astronomy suggests that at the core of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. How big is 'supermassive'? Well, according to an article in the Washington Post (where's there's also an ad in which I was involved: see the Presidential Candidate search), the one at the heart of the Milky Way, which is the galaxy in which the Sol system hovers, is 4 million times the size of our own sun. I can't even comprehend this. Is it like 4 million pushpin heads crammed together in something the size of a carnival balloon...or a hot air balloon?

Even more interesting,

To the enormous surprise of those who study the universe, the size of a supermassive black hole appears to have a direct and unusual correlation to the galaxy around it. Researchers calculated a decade ago that the mass of a supermassive black hole appeared to have a constant relation to the mass of the central part of its galaxy, known as its bulge. This relationship supports the notion that the evolution and structure of a galaxy is closely tied to the scale of its black hole.

This means that every starlight starbright galaxy in the multiverse contains a black hole so massive, that given enough time they could eventually consume the host galaxy, and spit out new elemental particles needed for new stars, suns, planets, and such. Philosophically speaking, they are a catalyst of destruction and creation.They're like giant celestial Shivas busting out an endless Nataraja.

Meanwhile, people back on Earth pay over $3 (if you're lucky) for a gallon of gas and work in cubes like these for eight hours a day for years upon years. Perhaps it could be argued that we impose our own event horizons upon which we spin inexorably to the great unknown at which time the process begins anew. I hope my next cube has a window.

I'm pitching a new reality show: Nas-saulters

O-Ring Domination?
Face Blasters?
Diaper Rash Race?

I'm still working on the title, but I'm thinking that the story of astronaut Lisa Nowak and the alleged attempted murder of another woman with whom she shared an apparent space-love rival trajectory.

In case you haven't heard, Lisa drove from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers to avoid bathroom stops, and eventually blasted the woman, Colleen Shipman, in the face with her attitude vectors (read: pepper spray) in order to incapacitate her to...put her body in a bag? She's being charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, and diaper rash. The apparent motive was Colleen's involvement with another astronaut, with whom Nowak was involved in an undetermined "relationship". That's what the po-leece are saying.

Anyways, I'm thinking all this attention is bound to attract the whores of Hollywood. I can see producers pitching the show to network executives right now. Picture this:

• 7 people, selected via a nationally televised event (think American Idol), are judged by a board of current astronauts, celebrities, and therapists - the winners are assigned a number (1 thru 7) go to Space Camp, become qualified astronauts, and go on a mission to the ISS to make videos about their adventures and post them on YouTube;
• The winning video is selected by the dog who played Airbud, who shoots 7 baskets and the corresponding number of successful shots to the numbered astronaut is the winner! We'll also have a prize awarded to the person who received the most video views.
• Meanwhile, we'll keep cameras on the space station and air all the hot sex that happens in zero-gee, and watch as fights break out and people get shoved into airlocks and threatened with decompression!

It could happen people. It could! I just need to work out the title...American Orbit? Astro-tryst?