Velok the Younger
When I Was A Young Warthog
When Circe returned to her bridge, she would find none other than Rave Merrill, longtime servant of the Empire (among others). She had remained behind, under careful scrutiny, when her former supervisor stole the archives. Careful mental examination, sufficient even to break past her expert mental defenses, had established that she knew nothing of the plan and was not loyal to Velok. An eighteen-year-old with the memories of a fifty-year-old was about to save the laws of physics from desecration -- and the assembled Imperial fleet from apocalypse.
She toggled the comm at her throat.
"All ships, this is Rave Merrill. Some of you may know me as a scientist for the Empire. I'm here to give you the real story of what's about to happen.
"First off, a good proportion of black holes rotate at roughly a thousand times a second. Some rotate at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Applying mere interdictor-scale gravity wells won't change that in any appreciable way. Even if it did, the calculations that are now being transmitted to your ships indicate that no centripedal acceleration -- centrifugal force being an approximation for amateurs, and a myth -- could possibly overcome the gravity of a black hole. Furthermore, an event horizon is not an object to be flung, it's a distance beyond which nothing can escape the black hole's gravity and quickly becomes an elongated string of constituent atoms due to the gravity differential over a matter of a distance as small as metres between the near and far ends of an object. Even if, by some miracle, the event horizon did move outward, that would simply make that much more volume of space within which nothing can escape. Furthermore, the plan requires the 'vaporization' of the black hole via the acceleration of its lifespan -- which any competent physicist will tell you is somewhere around two times ten to the power of sixty-six years. In other words, an appreciable fraction of the remaining time until the heat-death of the universe. That can't possibly be dialled down to minutes, hours, or even years by applying a basic interdictor field. And, to sum up, the Maw's black holes have eaten so many stations, starships, gravity wells and even worlds that any hope of finding those black holes to have identical mass apart from the infinitesimally minor deviation associated with consuming one space station...
"Well, gentlemen, I have only one question. At any point, did you look at the summary of the plan and say to yourself Everything about that statement is wrong?
"Now, this region is already gravitationally unstable. Addition of multiple artificial gravity wells will unset it further, probably resulting in all of our vessels being dragged out of safety and into one or more of the black holes all around us -- the Maw Installation having been in the middle of the cluster.
"Any questions?"
She toggled the comm at her throat.
"All ships, this is Rave Merrill. Some of you may know me as a scientist for the Empire. I'm here to give you the real story of what's about to happen.
"First off, a good proportion of black holes rotate at roughly a thousand times a second. Some rotate at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Applying mere interdictor-scale gravity wells won't change that in any appreciable way. Even if it did, the calculations that are now being transmitted to your ships indicate that no centripedal acceleration -- centrifugal force being an approximation for amateurs, and a myth -- could possibly overcome the gravity of a black hole. Furthermore, an event horizon is not an object to be flung, it's a distance beyond which nothing can escape the black hole's gravity and quickly becomes an elongated string of constituent atoms due to the gravity differential over a matter of a distance as small as metres between the near and far ends of an object. Even if, by some miracle, the event horizon did move outward, that would simply make that much more volume of space within which nothing can escape. Furthermore, the plan requires the 'vaporization' of the black hole via the acceleration of its lifespan -- which any competent physicist will tell you is somewhere around two times ten to the power of sixty-six years. In other words, an appreciable fraction of the remaining time until the heat-death of the universe. That can't possibly be dialled down to minutes, hours, or even years by applying a basic interdictor field. And, to sum up, the Maw's black holes have eaten so many stations, starships, gravity wells and even worlds that any hope of finding those black holes to have identical mass apart from the infinitesimally minor deviation associated with consuming one space station...
"Well, gentlemen, I have only one question. At any point, did you look at the summary of the plan and say to yourself Everything about that statement is wrong?
"Now, this region is already gravitationally unstable. Addition of multiple artificial gravity wells will unset it further, probably resulting in all of our vessels being dragged out of safety and into one or more of the black holes all around us -- the Maw Installation having been in the middle of the cluster.
"Any questions?"
