Black hole

Multiple realities
(covers information from several alternate timelines)

A Talosian projection of a black hole

For the Ferengi beverage known as a black hole, please see black hole (beverage).

A black hole is an incredibly dense remnant of a star that has collapsed into a singularity under its own gravity upon running out of fuel for nuclear fusion. Black holes have extremely strong gravitational fields, similar to cosmic string fragments, so powerful that not even light can escape. They were often surrounded by an accretion disk.

Encounters

The late-20th century NASA probe Voyager 6 disappeared into a spatial anomaly that at the time was believed to be a black hole, emerging on the other side of the galaxy, where it came into the possession of a race of sentient machines. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

As of 2152, Vulcans had charted over two thousand black holes.

A trinary system consisting of a black hole and two stars

In 2152, Enterprise NX-01 encountered a black hole that was part of a trinary star system, something unheard of by either Starfleet or Vulcan scientists. Attempting to study the black hole, the Enterprise crew became affected by an exotic form of radiation which caused nearly all members of the crew to exhibit irrational and obsessive behavior. Sub-Commander T'Pol, whose Vulcan physiology was immune to the radiation, performed an analysis which indicated that prolonged exposure to the radiation would be fatal to the crew, forcing her and Captain Archer to navigate Enterprise through a hazardous debris field in order to escape the influence of the radiation in time. (ENT: "Singularity")

In the final draft script of "Singularity", this black hole was described as "a swirling vortex of energy and matter." Although the black hole itself is shown twice on-screen in "Singularity", the script declared that a single visual effect shot of the black hole was to be used to represent both views. [1]

In 2257, the Talosians created an illusory black hole around their homeworld, Talos IV, to test the resolve of Michael Burnham and Spock as they approached the planet. Spock piloted their shuttle directly into the event horizon, breaking the illusion and revealing Talos behind it. (DIS: "If Memory Serves")

The primary of the Finibus system was a black hole, which had six planets (including a class M world, Finibus III) and a brown dwarf companion. In 2259, the black hole consumed the brown dwarf; during the event, the crew of the USS Enterprise used its powerful gravity to slingshot the ship to safety from a Gorn destroyer, while simultaneously detonating a malfunctioning AP 350 device in the accretion disk to make it appear as though the Enterprise had been destroyed. (SNW: "Memento Mori")

In the alternate reality, Takayama-type shuttlecraft were equipped with sensors that could analyze black holes. (Star Trek Into Darkness)

In 2366, the USS Enterprise-D engaged in an operation to stabilize the moon of Bre'el IV, which was in danger of crashing into the planet. The crew was informed by Q that the deterioration of the moon's orbit was most likely caused by a black hole passing through the star system's plane at near-right angles. (TNG: "Deja Q")

In 2369, the crew of the Enterprise-D encountered a race of aliens from another time continuum who utilized the gravity wells of black holes as nests for their young. The aliens had mistaken a Romulan vessel's artificial quantum singularity, which the Romulans used as a power source, for a natural black hole, and their young became trapped. When the Enterprise generated a power transfer beam to send energy to the Romulan ship, it resulted in the creation of a temporal aperture, which disrupted spacetime around the ships and created a series of temporal fragments. With the help of the Enterprise crew, the embryonic lifeforms were eventually freed. (TNG: "Timescape")

The event horizon

In 2371, the USS Voyager encountered and became trapped within the event horizon of a type 4 quantum singularity in the Delta Quadrant. Due to massive temporal distortions being emitted from the singularity, the crew of Voyager encountered time-delayed reflections of their own ship, initially making them believe that they had encountered another vessel being pulled into the singularity. Eventually, they were able to find their way out by exiting through a breach in the event horizon which they had created when they initially entered. (VOY: "Parallax")

A Hirogen vessel is pulled into a black hole

In 2374, Voyager discovered a communications relay network which was a hundred thousand years old and was being used by the Hirogen in the Delta Quadrant. Analysis indicated that each of the relay stations utilized a harvested microsingularity as a power source. While engaged in battle with a Hirogen vessel, the Voyager crew used an antithoron burst to destabilize the containment field around the singularity and increase its gravitational pull. The plan worked, but the containment field failed, destroying the relay station and causing the singularity to grow into a black hole. While Voyager was able to escape, the Hirogen ship was destroyed. (VOY: "Hunters")

The Cerritos escapes from a black hole

At some point circa 2380, the USS Cerritos nearly fell into a black hole in a binary star system after sustaining damage from a meteor impact but managed to escape. (Star Trek: Lower Decks opening credits)

In 2381, the Cerritos was ordered to fly to a black hole that was feeding on a temporal rift by her captain, Carol Freeman. This was done as part of a plan to force Shari yn Yem, a Starfleet drill instructor, to change their scores after learning she targeted them to justify her continued employment in Starfleet. Due to her inexperience and not realizing they could escape with ease, Shari panics and agrees to change the scores. (LD: "I, Excretus")

The Narada and the Jellyfish caught in a black hole

Black holes can be artificially created through the ignition of a small amount of red matter. In 2387, Ambassador Spock created such a black hole in order to absorb the energy of a supernova, formerly the Romulan sun, which threatened the entire galaxy. Spock's plan succeeded, but he was too late to save Romulus, which was destroyed by the exploding star. The resulting black hole created a tunnel through spacetime, into which both Spock's ship, the Jellyfish, and the Romulan mining vessel Narada were pulled, depositing the Narada in the year 2233, resulting in the creation of the alternate reality.

The Narada is destroyed by a black hole

Spock, who entered the black hole a few seconds after the Narada, emerged twenty-five years later due to the time differential, and was captured by Nero, the Narada's captain. Nero, who held the Federation responsible for the destruction of his homeworld, stole the red matter from Spock's ship and used it to create a black hole at the center of Vulcan, destroying the planet. Nero attempted to perform the same action on Earth as he did to Vulcan but was stopped when Spock's alternate-reality counterpart piloted the ship containing the red matter to a collision with the Narada. This caused the red matter to ignite and create a black hole within the Narada itself, destroying the ship. (Star Trek; PIC: "Remembrance")

In 2401, black hole was listed twice in a list of results for Raffaela Musiker's search for the "red lady". (PIC: "The Next Generation")

Appendices

Related topics

• Black star

Background information

This type of anomaly was referred to in the scripted description of a scene from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country wherein General Chang's Bird-of-Prey is located by the USS Enterprise-A using a photon torpedo, disrupting the Klingon Bird-of-Prey's cloaking device and making the ship visible. The film's script lightheartedly referred to the point at which the craft became trapped as "the 'black hole'".

The Talosian illusory black hole marked the first time that the then latest, most recent, scientific visual interpretation of the phenomenon is seen in Star Trek. The visual interpretation is based on the work of theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Kip Thorne and his collegues. Thorne closely cooperated with the digital modelers of CGI company Double Negative (DNeg) to create a scientifically accurate representation of a black hole, which was for the first time featured in the acclaimed 2014 science fiction film Interstellar. [2] [3] DNeg incidentally, went on to (co-)provide the digital visual effects for Star Trek Beyond, [4] Star Trek: Short Treks, [5] and Star Trek: Picard. [6] It is also known that DNeg has contributed CGI to the second season of Discovery, albeit uncredited, [7] and it is tempting to assume that it was their Interstellar black hole model that stood in for the Talosian black hole, though firm confirmation of this has yet to be forthcoming.

External link

• Quantum singularity at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Black hole at Wikipedia