Black holes in fiction


The study of black holes, gravitational sources so massive that even light cannot escape from them, goes back to the late 18th century. Major advances in understanding were made throughout the first half of the 20th century, with contributions from many prominent mathematical physicists, though the term black hole was only coined in 1967. With the development of general relativity other properties related to these entities came to be understood, and their features have been included in many notable works of fiction.

Literature

Early works

Many works of fiction use ideas or concepts with features similar to the idea of a black hole, predating the coinage of the term "Black Hole" by Wheeler in 1967. Science fiction stories written before this date often portray one or two features of black holes accurately, but display a naive view of them overall.
In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface of a black hole as an event horizon, extending the commonplace notion that objects beyond a horizon cannot be seen, calling it "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction." This result helped usher in the golden age of general relativity, which was marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. Later tales tend to portray black holes in a fashion more thoroughly in accord with modern understanding. An early term for the black hole produced by stellar collapse was "collapsar" with the term black hole itself being introduced by John Wheeler in 1967 and adopted enthusiastically by science fiction writers. In science fiction stories written up to this date, black holes are called by a variety of more or less suggestive names, including "black" and "hole" used in isolation; after 1969, almost all works use Wheeler's combined term "black hole."

Stellar and astrophysical black holes

In 1971, Hawking introduced the idea that black holes may exist that are smaller than stellar mass, "micro black holes", possibly formed as primordial black holes during the high-density phase of the big bang. Some stories refer to these as "quantum black holes," distinguishing them from astrophysical black holes. In 1975, Hawking pointed out that such small holes would evaporate due to the emission of Hawking radiation.
In the stories that follow, a common plot device is that of the escaped black hole that oscillates back and forth through the core of an astronomical body and, most often, eventually consumes it: Mars in "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven, an asteroid in "The Borderland of Sol" by Niven, the Earth in Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Earth by David Brin and The Krone Experiment by J. Craig Wheeler, the Moon in "How We Lost the Moon, a True Story by Frank W. Allen" by Paul J. McAuley, and the Earth once more in Olympos by Simmons. Surprisingly, given the widely publicized 1975 publication by Stephen Hawking of the theory of quantum evaporation, few of the works incorporate this idea and Olympos by Dan Simmons ).
Many early stories about black holes incorporate the concept that a black hole may contain a wormhole that could be used for transportation; a concept that was at one time considered plausible, but is not currently accepted. More on wormholes can be found in the wormholes in fiction article.