Black hole escape??

[garhkal]

Getting this from the WEG forums.

Lets say a group of pcs were trapped in the gravitational pull (eg beyond the event horizon) of a black hole. How would / could they escape??
One of the guys over there, arguing for keeping the wild dice in the game, was going on about his group got into that situation, and one of the players made a 67 (iirc) roll on his piloting to escape.

To me, i cannot see piloting alone allowing the ship to break free, but i have stated that if the above roll was used as a repair roll, to jury rig the power systems, to give a massive boost to the drives, it would have worked.

What say you all?
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[hisham]

If perhaps the middle of a black hole has a theoretical Schwarzchild wormhole (or an Einstein-Rosen bridge), the characters could somehow survive the entry through the event horizon provided that their ship is structurally sound enough to survive the gravitational tidal forces.

The other thing would be the time distortion heading into the black hole, which would spaghettize anything approaching the event horizon, but since in the EU hyperdrives are also equipped with some sort of time manipulation device (I'm not certain how it works, but if I'm not mistaken it's mentioned in either the AOTC or the ROTS ICS) it would be a stretch but conceivable that someone can program the device to compensate for the gradual time distorion as they approach the event horizon.

I'd have the pilot roll a 50+ (or higher even) difficulty piloting roll to hold course as they approach the event horizon. The hacked time manipulation device will nullify the time distortion so their time would still be in synch with outside time.

When they cross the threshold they would be spit back out into realspace at another point in the galaxy (or out of it?) via a temporary white hole which will disappear once they've been ejected (since Schwarzchild wormholes are thought to be unstable), or perhaps out of a quasar where their shields will have to protect them from the intense spinning radiation emissions of the quasar (because quasars are also theorized to be a form of white hole).

Other possible occurences would be the wormhole might lead them to an alternate universe, thus bringing into use whatever Infinities sourcebook that are out there on the net.

If they are Lorentzian wormholes that connect between spacetime, the PCs might just exit elsewhere in the galaxy in a totally different time period! Imagine a bunch of rebel agents smack dab in the middle of the Great Sith War. Fracking-A.

[Robert]

Good post! I can´t think of anything more to say.
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[Boomer]

If they are in the event horizon of the black hole, they have two problems.
1)Light speed isn;t going to get you out. Light itself can't get out and it weighs nothing. You have mass and can only do light speed.
2)That light speed only lworks when you are in hyperspace. You can't get into hyperspace through a mass shadow. A mass shadow is made by gravity. If you are in the event horizon of a black hole, you are WELL within the hyperspace blocking gravity well.

So, you can't use either of those.

Your best bet is to not fight the gravity of the black hole. You would need to ride it, set an orbital escape vector and hope it is correct.
If it is correct, the time distortion is going to make the escape take much longer for you than it will feel. What would be a couple hours of orbit through complete darkness could be months in the extreme for the rest of the galaxy.
Plotting this course can be difficult, since your sensors are gone and visual is definitely gone. Light in your ship has become so heavy it falls rather than reflects. Your completely blind. Can you plot any course, ever, with absolutely 0 information?

But that is all if you ignore the fact that your matter would have indeed been torn apart thousands of miles before you ever reached the event horizon. No matter how "strong" your ship is, it's made of matter, it will be pulled apart.
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I'm Boba the Fett!
And I bounty hunt for Jabba Hutt,
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[darthomer09]

Okay.... my brain hurts... i really should have paid more attention in astronomy...
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Rebel Uprisings

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[Chabit Rane]

Same here darthomer09.

[hisham]

[Ray]

Uber-Tech Structural Integrity Field.

"I invented it in my sleep. It has a button on it. I don't know what it does, but I am so tempted to push the button... But what if it does something bad?"

[garhkal]

So unless you throw some strange mind boggling piece of tech, or wormholes (which i cannot fathom how the heck they could exist in a black hole), they are

D

o

o

m

e

d

!


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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Robert]

Hier is a picture show of a starship flying into a black hole. The pictures show front, right side, back view.
And here are 3 pictures of black holes.

Now, what have wormholes and black holes to do with each other. Every black hole has a different mass and depending from that a different diameter of its event horizon. But we don´t know how mass behaves in the black hole itself. It could be concentrated right in the center, infinite dense. It would be called singularity then. If so, it could touch another singularity in another place in the universe. How? This is best shown by the well known 2D model of a wormhole.

On both ends would be a black hole. Therefore travel through a wormhole could be possible (still taking into account the ship can cope with the high gravity) But it has to escape the black hole on the other end of the wormhole. Therefore travelling through a black hole doesn´t solve your problem.

But how can a ship escape? If you don´t want to take the simple space opera approach like Star Trek Voyager which once escaped through a rift in a event horizon, you have to deal with theoretical problems yet unsolved - and the hyperdrive.

Point one - it could tunnel:
The event horizon is like a wall. Light trying to escape cannot pass this wall. In quantum theory every thing only has a probability of existing on a definite spot. The difference is shown by this picture:

Therefore something could fly just near the event horizon, tunnel through and escape, if it just has dumb luck, vast energy to accelerate to near light speed and withstands the gravity on its structure. On the other hand, it doesn´t even have to accelerate, dumb luck is enough, as the probability never reaches zero. It can tunnel even if "far" away from the potential wall.

Point two - the hyperdrive:
It is said that the hyperdrive can not be activated in an area of space where there is a mass shadow. This mass shadow comes with every gravitating object. The universe is actually full of such mass shadows - as even the ship itself has a mass shadow. This can be demonstrated 2-dimensional by this picture:

Every object in space warps the spacetime. And the spacetime is warped just everywhere, and if only by the ship itself. A hyperdrive therefore must work even in a mass shadow. It depends on how the spacetime is warped or how "strong" this mass shadow actually is. But this means it could even work in a black hole. If you take the guidelines form the gravity well of interdictor cruisers, it says that some ships just stop their hyperdrives and use their remaining drift to pass through the projected mass shadow, starting it again after passing through. This might work just exactly for a black hole. Maybe you could pass through it. Remember, we don´t know whether there is "real" mass with which the ship can collide. There might be only a mass shadow. The hyperdrive is actually this

[DS-61-4]

Hi. Astrophysicist here.

Nothing can escape the pull of a black hole once you have past the event horizon. Moreover, the last image that others will see of you will remain 'frozen' on the surface of the event horizon. Something else no one mentioned is that the forces are so great that anything that gets near the singularity point is ripped apart right up to matters' subatomic particles. Matter is in a degenerate state much before the singularity point, which means that everything kinda melts together. Nothing escapes. Even if you could pass through the singularity point, then you would find yourself in 4-D spacetime, unable to understand forms and figures. You would have left 3-D space and therefore become invisible to all lifeforms that have senses developed in 3-D worlds. If it could happen that you find yourself travelling through an einstein-rosen wormhole, there are three possible outcomes:

a) you travel backwards in time
b) you travel forwards in time
c) there is another set of equations where you don't re-enter the known universe alltogether

either way in a) or b), your point of exit is a theoretical "white hole", that exists in 4-D spacetime. You would be able to see how the universe is seen in 4-D. But the thing is, you can't. Even if you could somehow understand forms and figures in 4-D spacetime, you've been already reduced to a formless pulp of subatomic particles.


GM's go easy on the physics... Some sense of mystery is always useful to be retained... Even a galaxy far, far away is probably subject to the same laws of physics... Even though SW is not about physics. Look at hyperspace travel: as it is portrayed brakes the law of momentum conservation. When the ship enters or exits hyperspace, all passengers and items should meet a horrible and squishy death on either the back wall or the windshield...
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[DS-61-4]

Oh and I forgot to say this about the quantum post. Well if a particle has let's say the huge chance of 1% of doing that (in reality it's much less). This means that a whole ship would still be destroyed, because only on particle in 100 escapes. This means that 1% of the ship would be saved. That is particles from different parts of the spaceship, that their total mass would be 1% of the total mass of the starship. Ugly.
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[Robert]

Yeah i know about the probability problem, but there is a chance that all particles pass the potential wall - therefore one of the thins necessary to escape is dumb luck.

And i second your statement about mystery - the hyperdrive could make a exit possible. Therefore my appraoch to the problem would be what the characters did to fly into the event horizon at last. If it might be fun to play some twisted time or infinite universe setting, i would proceed that way. If thay wanted to smuggle some cargo, believing in rolling high will make much money, they´ll probably die (or don´t, just stop moving in time). The discussions about physics in space opera are to me a little bit about - how does magic work in fantasy rpgs. Funny, but unnecessary.

By the way, as today physics tells no information can get out of a black hole, it its impossible to say what happens in one - we just can´t tell. Some purists even say that going back in time can´t help you escaping from a black hole, as no information can get out means no information can get out.
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[DS-61-4]

Well it does say in a galaxy far, far away, not in a fantasy world so the same physics would apply

The chance that *every* particle of the spaceship would escape is the chance that a *single* one would (let's call that M), raised in the Nth power, where N equals the total number of particles that constitute the spaceship. Considering that M is much smaller than unity, and N is like 10 followed by a few billion zero's, simple maths show that the chance is zero. It would *never* happen. Not in a billion trillion years... Even if you gave *every* man in the world a wild die and *every* one threw a six, followed by a six, followed by a six, followed by a six, the chance of that spaceship escaping would be much slimmer.

Forgive my relentlessness.. discussing physics in starwars is as you say unnecessary but I can't help it

As for black holes, we do have a general idea of what happens. Exactly, we shall never know, but the general idea is what I posted above (so far). We know for sure that matter is degenerate, and that everything is dissolved into subatomic particles. Nothing could live to tell the tale of what really happens...
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Did you know I scored a hit on Red 5 at the battle of Yavin??

[Robert]

No problem - relentlessness shows up when things seem clear, doesn´t it? I love speculating about physics too, i studied it back in school. Stochastics too - and i calculate the chance is slim and goes to zero. But it won´t reach zero - therefore count in dumb luck, hero bonus and the "force" (whatever physical laws this thing follows in a galaxy far away:) ) and it might work. Of course only if you believe that quantum physics work in a black hole - which might not be true.

But to tell you the truth and to bring back some information for roleplaying: If i plan a black hole as a dangerous hazard in space, maybe during a space battle - it´ll be deadly. If i plan a black hole as a campaign path - it´ll work. I think this is a question of whether you as director will let it come that far and not one of physics.

As we are talking about physics - did you know that the Death Star would be deadly enough without his laser beam. Just hover above a planet and the tidal effects will wreak havoc over the planet. Even Star Destroyers have a similar effect. Makes that Death Star scale Bomb much more deadly.
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw