If there's gonna be black holes, then there's gotta be event horizon effects (or else what's the point?)
So what does an event horizon do? Obviously it's a boundary region from which light can't escape, but what effects would this entail from an observer's point of veiw? Can these effects be modelled in-game?
For example, picture the following thought experiment:
Imagine our ship is travelling at a constant speed relative to and towards a black hole. The ship's attitude is perpendicular to our descent, so we're doing a bellyflop through the event horizon. Let's suppose we have an upper viewing deck, perhaps a little hydroponic biodome garden, as in the 80s movie Saturn 3.
As the ship enters the horizon, it crosses a threshold point where light basically goes into freefall around the black hole. The massive curvature of space-time creates a closed loop - light is still going in a perfectly straight line, but light waves travelling perpendicular to the horizon orbit back on themselves because of this warping of space-time itself.
At this point, if we take a pair of binoculars and look forward across the bow, in the far distance we can see the back of our ship. We'd be looking up our own tailpipes, so to speak, and if we zoomed in on the viewing deck we'd see the backs of our heads.
If we cross over to the stern view and look back we can see the front of our ship in the far-off distance. Likewise if we look starboard we see our port side, and vice versa. Wherever we look across the horizon, there we are off in the distance. An unprepared pilot or navcom system would find they were suddenly surrounded by a multitude of identical ships, literally appearing out of thin air. As we continued on course, these phantom replicas would appear to fly past us in the opposite direction, as if they were travelling back out.
Now suppose there is a second ship accompanying us. As before, our speed is constant travelling towards the black hole. The second ship is stationary, at a safe distance from the horizon.
From the stationary observer's point of view, as our ship nears the horizon it appears to slow down. In reality it hasn't, but the illusion is caused by the same effect described above. As we cross the point of no return, from ship 2's perspective we appear to come to a full stop at the edge of the black hole, and just sit there. From our point of veiw though we've sailed straight through the horizon without even slowing down. The sky above us still looks normal, and besides that brief encounter with our multiple alter egos there's no obvious indication that we've passed the point of no return - in fact, it might take another million years of descent before we experience any adverse effects. However if we try to thrust towards any of the stars above us they will never get any closer - the only escape is hyperspace.
It would be cool to be able to experience these kinds of relativistic effects first hand... temporal/spatial superpositions would be common artifacts in a realistic Elite-like experience.
So what does an event horizon do? Obviously it's a boundary region from which light can't escape, but what effects would this entail from an observer's point of veiw? Can these effects be modelled in-game?
For example, picture the following thought experiment:
Imagine our ship is travelling at a constant speed relative to and towards a black hole. The ship's attitude is perpendicular to our descent, so we're doing a bellyflop through the event horizon. Let's suppose we have an upper viewing deck, perhaps a little hydroponic biodome garden, as in the 80s movie Saturn 3.
As the ship enters the horizon, it crosses a threshold point where light basically goes into freefall around the black hole. The massive curvature of space-time creates a closed loop - light is still going in a perfectly straight line, but light waves travelling perpendicular to the horizon orbit back on themselves because of this warping of space-time itself.
At this point, if we take a pair of binoculars and look forward across the bow, in the far distance we can see the back of our ship. We'd be looking up our own tailpipes, so to speak, and if we zoomed in on the viewing deck we'd see the backs of our heads.
If we cross over to the stern view and look back we can see the front of our ship in the far-off distance. Likewise if we look starboard we see our port side, and vice versa. Wherever we look across the horizon, there we are off in the distance. An unprepared pilot or navcom system would find they were suddenly surrounded by a multitude of identical ships, literally appearing out of thin air. As we continued on course, these phantom replicas would appear to fly past us in the opposite direction, as if they were travelling back out.
Now suppose there is a second ship accompanying us. As before, our speed is constant travelling towards the black hole. The second ship is stationary, at a safe distance from the horizon.
From the stationary observer's point of view, as our ship nears the horizon it appears to slow down. In reality it hasn't, but the illusion is caused by the same effect described above. As we cross the point of no return, from ship 2's perspective we appear to come to a full stop at the edge of the black hole, and just sit there. From our point of veiw though we've sailed straight through the horizon without even slowing down. The sky above us still looks normal, and besides that brief encounter with our multiple alter egos there's no obvious indication that we've passed the point of no return - in fact, it might take another million years of descent before we experience any adverse effects. However if we try to thrust towards any of the stars above us they will never get any closer - the only escape is hyperspace.
It would be cool to be able to experience these kinds of relativistic effects first hand... temporal/spatial superpositions would be common artifacts in a realistic Elite-like experience.