Black Holes

When I was in college I took two semesters of Astronomy in the, at that time, brand new Rollins Planetarium. In fact, I was in the first class that actually got to use it. For some reason I loved astronomy. I can’t say that I ever understood the mathematical concept of the universe being curved, or that only infinite mass could travel at the speed of light, but there were some pretty cool things that I learned.

One of those was “Black Holes”. For those of you who don’t know what a black hole is, let me first tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t the middle of a donut that is in a room with no lights. It is, however, a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape after having fallen past the event horizon. They are best described by using Einstein’s theory of relativity. But enough of the brainiac stuff.

A black hole is that region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape after having fallen past (into) the event horizon. Boy does that ever summarize this past Saturday night at Sanford Stadium.

Maybe it was just a Black Hole. Oh, they called it a Black Out. But blackouts simply mean there was no light…..and for Auburn, that was true. But it was even more true that Auburn came into a region of space (Sanford Stadium) in which the electricity magnetism was so powerful, that they could not escape after having fallen into the event of the Auburn-Georgia game. It was an all-black, total Black Hole.

Einstein’s theory of relativity basically says that when a large enough amount of mass that is doing the same thing (wearing black, for instance!) within a sufficiently small region of space (Sanford Stadium, for instance!), all paths through that space (the entire playing field, for instance!) lean strongly inwards towards the center of the space (homefield advantage, for instance!) forcing all matter to fall it’s way (and that is just what happened in the 4th quarter…everything fell the Dogs way).

One of the most interesting things about black holes is this…there is no escape. Once something falls into one, it cannot escape. The effort required to escape a black hole is basically infinite, and therefore if a team has tired legs from playing eleven straight weeks, it will not have enough strength and effort to escape once it falls into the black hole.

One other thing needs to be stated, and that is what happens to something once it has been engulfed by a black hole. It can only escape through a worm hole, and worm holes can only be understood through quantum mechanics.

I hope to goodness that Auburn, these next two weeks, can find a worm hole to escape from the total magnetic meltdown that occurred in the black hole event this past Saturday….and through that hole find a way to the pre-black hole existence it had prior to Athens.

I hate black holes.

War Eagle!

WJLaneSr