Black holes are the stuff of sci-fi legend. Inescapable gravity carries with it a dread of inevitable disaster should that malignant object ensnare your vessel. Some stories talk about passing through a black hole to distant parts of the galaxy, though quite how you pass through an object that couldn't be physically denser is rarely explained. I found a more serious explanation of black holes in a science magazine the other day. Interestingly, scientists are trying to find ways of researching 'event horizons' without having to approach a real one (It's a bit dangerous, you see, and the research would take an awful long time to come back).

It turns out that such analogues do exist. The behaviour of light in a fibre optic cable can be made to simulate the effects of an event horizon. So too can water in a bath. By pushing water faster than ripples naturally spread, you create analagous physical conditions to gravity waves on the event horizon of a black hole.

So be warned the next time you take a bath. Push water too hard and you might be sucked down a plug hole.

Black Hole of the Week

It seems our Ministers of Parliament have been been spending a lot more of our taxpayers money than we realised. After all the campaigns and advertising to catching benefit fraud and dole cheats, isn't it right that dubious claims by Ministers should be treated the same way? Or is there one law for the poor, another for the rich? That's the problem with money disappering down a black hole. Eventually someone notices.