The black hole asks a big question – and allows us crazy, sublime answers
When I was seven, one of my sisters tried to explain to me the notion of black holes. She balanced an apple, representing a star, on an outstretched napkin, which was meant to be time and space. The distortion of the napkin around the star was the effect of gravity. If one then imagined that the apple collapsed to a point, punctured a hole in the napkin and fell through, that was the black hole – but where did it go?
This is the majesty of the black hole, now pictured for the first time. It’s not just its inconceivable size – itself enough to make it an object of terror. It’s not just that there is one at the centre of every galaxy, keeping all matter spinning like some dreadful, life-giving godhead. It’s also that question: where does all the matter go? It’s a bigger version of the question the mind inevitably asks about every gaping hole: what’s down there? It’s a central theme for science fiction, because the singularity point at the bottom of a black hole is a ready-made point for
suspension of disbelief. The laws of physics can’t tell us what is or isn’t there, so it’s a space for the crazy and the sublime. Maybe, as in the film Interstellar, there’s “love” in there. Maybe a dimension that’s the reverse of ours. Maybe Elvis Presley along with that teddy you lost when you were five. The wonder of the black hole is that we will never know. It’s as if God took the apple from Eden and placed it impossibly high up on a branch above us. Look, he said teasingly, but don’t touch.
Fortunately, Earth has its own store of more accessible mysteries. Archaeologists have identified a species of archaic human, which lived
‘Maybe there’s ‘love’ in there. Maybe a dimension that’s the reverse of ours’
60,000 years ago on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Perhaps because it was stranded on an island, Homo luzonesis was small (under 4ft tall). They swung from the trees and had features in common with an ancestor of modern humans previously thought never to have left Africa. Like most science on human evolution, this discovery complicates the notion of a straight line from ape to man. Prehistory is full of unexpected mixtures – and dead ends.