You know his name. You’ve read his stories. But did you know Isaac Asimov imagined an alternative explanation for black holes?
Let’s talk about the science of fiction.
A name easily recognized among readers, Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific science fiction authors of all time, with an extensive list of awards and accolades to attest to his reputation. In life, he was one of the “Big Three” sci-fi giants. And until this day, his stories are a must-read for the fans of the genre.
In 1972, the creator of the Foundation series published the Nebula and Hugo award-winning novel The Gods Themselves, a story born from a challenge. Author Robert Silverberg dared Asimov to write a story about a non-existent isotope, plutonium 186, and the result was a fantastic explanation for something that, in real life, could only be explained with the theory of black holes.
I should warn you: SPOILERS AHEAD for The Gods Themselves.
But first, the science.
A compact history of black holes
During the fifties, astronomers detected radio sources with no corresponding visible objects that could be responsible for emitting those strong signals. In 1964, these received the name of quasars, which stands for quasi-stellar objects. In that same year, the astrophysicists Yacob Zel’dovich and Edwin E. Salpeter independently suggested that such radio sources were, in fact, gravitationally collapsed objects—astronomical bodies so dense that they close themselves within a region from where nothing can escape. Not even the fastest thing in the universe: light. If you are thinking black holes, you are spot on!
It was only in 1967, though, that the completely gravitationally collapsed objects received the name black holes. The seed of the concept, however, can be found in 1916, right after the birth of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, or even traced back to the end of the 18th century. But the idea that such objects could indeed exist was too bizarre to be believed; on top of being disconnected from observations. No wonder most of the greatest minds of the time dismissed the existence of black holes. It remained an obscure theory for about 50 years after the formulation of general relativity.
Quasars were the first observed objects that fit the description of a black hole. Only then the theory of their existence gained traction. Black holes were introduced to a wider public in 1971, in an article on Physics Today appropriately titled Introducing Black Holes. Around the same time, Isaac Asimov was writing The Gods Themselves.
Asimov and the quasars
Asimov was most likely unaware of the existence of black holes when he fictionalized an explanation for quasars. In his futuristic world, he wrote about quasars, “In the century and a half since they were discovered, astronomers have still failed to account for their sources of energy. Nothing in this Universe will account for it; nothing.” (The Gods Themselves, p.55)
That is until an electron pump appeared out of nowhere. This pump was a connection between our world and a parallel universe. In this para-Universe, the laws of physics differed from ours in such a way that the isotope plutonium 186 was stable there (do you still remember the challenge?).
In the story, this pump is worshiped as an infinite source of energy. It pumps electrons from the para-Universe to ours, and in return, it pumps our positrons into the para-Universe. It seemed a great trade until one person realized that there are more than electrons leaking from the para-Universe.
The laws of physics around the pump “weakens” because the para-Universe’s physics merges with ours. It is an infinitesimally small change, but when amounted to millions of years, it has a devastating local effect: the explosion of nearby stars. Because the laws of physics are different in that region, from far away the explosion of a regular star like the sun would be perceived as a quasar. Brilliant!
Instead of black holes, Asimov imagined a connection with a different universe with different laws of physics that resulted in a local disaster. Well, we don’t know what’s inside a black hole. It is a region completely apart from our universe. A parallel reality, one might say. And it constantly "pumps" matter into ours in the form of Hawking radiation. Who knows? Maybe Asimov was onto something.
###
That’s it for today, folks.
Have you read The Gods Themselves? Did you understand its science? Let me know in the comments.
See you next post.
Ra.
Carla Ra is a scientist by day, sci-fi writer by night.
You can check out her anthology ARTIFICIAL REBELLION here.
Comments