CLEMENTONI'S BLACK HOLE

I saw this Clementoni Black Hole board game and thought, I've not seen that before.I do like the box art.

Anyone got this Italian game?

A SINGULARITY

 Whilst Moonbase Junior was over for half term we watched The Black Hole.

Still ecstatic from Close Encounters of the Third Kind the day before, we looked forward to Disney's peek beyond the rim.

Alas, despite decent special effects, ecstatic we were not. Personally I found the acting wooden and the storyline boring. At times I'm pretty sure the music was nabbed from Thunderball and overall a poor effort from Walt. Even the robots were clunky and wooden.

I fell asleep.

I woke up when Junior was shouting for me to turn it off as a dead ashen-faced Doctor was slowly spinning across space. I shouldn't have slept!

A read that Black Hole has become a minor cult classic.

Did you venture into it readers?

KEV'S MPC VINCENT KIT

Hi,

Just finished this MPC kit of Vincent from The Black Hole. Been trying to track one of these down for years. Had to scratchbuild a few bits and fake the decals but hey ho.

Starry, starry night,

Kevin D

UK

THE BLACK HOLE

Hi Woodsy,

a copy of The Black Hole has just been put on Youtube!

Andy.

The Black Hole

The Black Hole ..... The U.S.S. Cygnus is perched precariously at the edge of a black hole -- the vast, empty nothingness where space...

OF TIME AND SPACE

I was recently discussing time and space with a young teenager.

Given that infinity is a mathematical idea and eternity a time-based idea, he wondered if all maths information was swallowed by a black hole would this mean that eternity had in effect brought about the end of infinity?

Musing further he pondered the problem of time itself entering black holes. Could black holes swallow eternity? If so what would be left when no time exists?

We riffed around people and time and he mused that if humans didn't exist at all then time wouldn't exist, as its a human construct.

If time didn't exist then what is actually out there? Neverending space without time?

After all this heavy thinking we had a game of footy!

BLACK HOLING

As we celebrate the magnificence of space I recently had a conversation with a youngster about Black Holes.

It ranged from what might survive them to what could neutralise them.

Tardigrades, those small 'water-bears', are well-known for being able to exist in all extreme environments including the vacuum of space. Could a tardigrade cope with a Black Hole?

We enjoyed imagining the moss-piglet entering another dimension intact but after googling the question it would appear that as tardigrades are simply made of matter like you and me then they would be spaghettified like you and me on contact with the Event Horizon.

So to our next subject, the world's most dangerous living thing, the Bacteriophage, a cloning microbial viral horror stealing the information from bacteria and replacing it with its own. Yes, even this information thief could not survive the rigours of the Hole as they too are just plain matter. Even their ability to fake information would be useless as no information can escape from a Black Hole [except possibly Hawking Radiation I understand].

What do you think readers? What could survive?

As for neutralising a Black Hole, my young friend suggested anti-matter, the idea being that this would cancel out normal matter, assuming that a Black Hole is indeed normal and/or matter. Googling this once more brought us no joy and my fellow conversationalist had to accept that his theory did not hold enough water.

However we did come across other forms of phenomena such as Exotic Matter, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Strange Quarks and Quark Stars to name a few and these merit further googling as to whether any of these might plug a Black Hole.

Any thoughts readers?

K.E.V.I.N.S V.I.N.C.E.N.T.

Hi,

On the subject of robots, I recently picked up this clockwork, walking robot toy of Vincent from The Black Hole movie.

Take care,

Kevin

THE BLACK HOLE: DISNEY'S EVENT HORIZON

I saw the Disney movie Black Hole last night for the first time. I was looking forward to it as its part of that golden seam of space operas which lit up the late Seventies. I didn't see it when it came out Christmas 1979 [too busy turning 19!] and for some reason it's passed me by ever since; a true movie black hole!

Alas, I have to admit that I was disappointed. Despite Disney's best efforts and some iconic design, I thought it was a bit of a mess. The action began almost immediately with very little build-up and the musical score went into dramatic overdrive almost straight away. In fact I don't think the orchestra took their foot off the gas for the rest of the film, leaving me unsure what the score was telling me. Its similarity to the soundtrack of the modern comedy Austin Power's Goldmember was an unfortunate coincidence.

As for the robots, watching them for the first time, I found them somewhat lacklustre. Clearly an attempt by Disney to mimic Star Wars, which in a time-bending twist they now own, Maximillian, VINCENT and BOB seemed half-baked and ungainly. The most interesting thing for me was recognising the voices of Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens who go uncredited for some reason. 

There are, however, clearly some interesting themes in the film, which I hope to get a better feel for after a second helping. I should have seen it in '79, when I was still a 'kid'.

What do you think readers and have you got any Black Hole toys, games and other stuff?