I like to think of Myth and Reality as two friends—dear friends, though kept apart often by time and cultural circumstance. One day, they run into each other on the sidewalk and are both initially nervous. Has it been too long? Have they grown too different? Has Myth become too corporate and Reality too abstract? In their anxieties they make small chatter, describing the state of all that is, has been, and is to come.

Once the descriptive chatter simmers down, they have the very real task of story- making ahead. Story-making is difficult for both of them; it is daunting; it requires something more than what they each contain; it requires cooperation; it requires emergence.

Myth and Reality determine such a task too large for the sidewalk, and sort through places they might meet.

The galactic plane? Too crowded.

The beginning of time? Not enough space to really spread out and think.

They finally decide to meet at a black hole’s event horizon—the boundary layer of this curious region from which nothing, not even light, can break free. What better place to story-make than a site where escape becomes impossible? At this place, they cannot procrastinate. And so, they get to work.

These days, Myth and Reality understand that stories are more than the summation of simply “what happens”. But it was a lesson they had to learn together. Long ago, Reality dabbled in journalism, though that phase has since lapsed. In a stint as a beat reporter Reality learned to ask the standard questions: who what when where why how. But all of Reality’s stories were dry, and Myth wanted to tell them so.

Back then, they used to meet up for lunch every day in the office park they both worked in. (Myth was briefly an intern at a branding agency.) Myth told Reality that all stories, even news stories, need a soul or core.

“You can feel it pulsing when it’s there,” Myth said, hastily eating a $14 salad. “When such a soul is not there, the story is dead; arguably, it’s not a story at all.”

Reality was at first crushed by the critical feedback, but started to reflect on it. Perhaps there is a great central soul from which all stories draw. Myth and Reality began reading more books together, then watching plays and even performance art, and soon Reality felt the tug of that great central soul and became an ace reporter.

Later, this theory the two friends had of storytelling expanded into a much broader theory about the universe.

“Spacetime is not simply the composition of all events,” Reality said one day, “It is what emerges from the composition of all events.”

And so, they quit their day jobs and took a gap epoch to explore the cosmos.

Now, thousands of years later, they ponder which black hole’s event horizon they should visit on their story-making venture. It brings up a lot of nostalgic feelings about that gap epoch—a time in which they were constantly together, playing and exploring.

Myth remembers there is a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, as there is at the center of most mid-sized and large galaxies.

“It’s near a site known as Sagittarius A*, remember?” Myth says.

Reality grins. They both remember very well. They couldn’t see the black hole when they were there last time, since properly, light cannot escape from a black hole. But they remember witnessing the energy emanating from whatever gas and dust the supermassive black hole was feeding on. And so, indirectly, they surmised a black hole was there.

The black hole is still there, still feeding, when they return. They dangle their legs over the event horizon and discuss everything they believe.

“Astrophysics is a lot like you,” Reality thinks out loud.

“How do you figure?” Myth asks, munching on a sandwich brought from home.

“Well, astrophysics and myths both deal with great, impossible, extraordinary things. You must have overlapping souls.”

“Especially when you consider all that I am and contain,” Myth agrees. “Not just Greek and Roman stuff, but also folklore, comic book universes, fairy tales, social movements. Even single-authored texts like Harry Potter and Shakespeare can become emergent forms, because of all the hands that touch them. All these emergent forms are a part of me because so many people have labored on them across time.”

Reality nods, excited. “Yes, yes, and they are all riddled with contradictions, overlapping parts, multiple split pathways.”

The two friends sit silent for a while, staring at the alternating emptiness and lightness of space, and the matter that is accreting near Sagittarius A*. Here, they can easily grasp that the universe is a dynamic place, full of power struggles and mass transfers and companion systems that affect each other’s gravity and outbursts of various kinds.

“We should always meet out here,” Reality says finally, gesturing at the story-ful expanse.

Myth smiles and squeezes Reality’s hand. “After Hamlet, Prince of Denmark I’d like to see Hamlet, Black Hole with you.”

At one point, the two friends try their hand at making stories about black holes. What follows are a series of their rough sketches: little tales about black holes and theoretical black hole processes.

I. You are not always what you eat.

Certain black holes exist in binary systems, paired with other objects. Some of these black holes exist in binaries with low-mass stars (remember, low-mass for a star, which is still quite massive). Over time, one such black hole greedily swallows its entire companion star, but its life and spin doesn’t change very much. The companion was such a small fraction of the black hole’s overall mass.

II. Chew with your mouth open.

In another time, in another place, there exists another companion star and black hole pair. They both sit quietly for many decades. Suddenly the companion star puffs up for a moment and the black hole draws in some of the star’s material. As it eats the stellar matter, the black hole is indirectly visible, rather than dark. The system as a whole is said to be having an “outburst”.

III. Mother knows best.

Yet another binary system happens to consist of two black holes. They influence each other happily and move around in various formations, alternately perturbed by and perturbing the other. A supermassive black hole sits between them, influencing them both. Eventually this supermassive black hole’s influence wins the day, and the two black holes fall into long, extremely elliptical orbits. Left to their own devices, they might have gone on moving in circles for many more aeons. In these elongated orbits, however, they soon run into each other and coalesce into one large body.

“Those were pretty good,” Myth says. “We’re getting at something important.” “What is that?”

“Well,” Myth pauses, thinking. “Back when you were a journalist you might have written about black holes in terms of their properties, or how they form from collapsing supernovas, or maybe how fast a particular one is spinning or swallowing matter.”

“I get it, I get it, I was a little strait-laced.”

“You were then, but you’re not anymore,” Myth replies gently. “Now you get it. To understand black holes, we must tell stories about them."

Reality takes this in and sinks into the plush darkness.

Later, having made many black hole stories, short and long, Myth and Reality decide they want to enter and experience a black hole themselves.

As they pass through the event horizon into the chaos, Myth yells out joyfully to Reality, while they are both being shredded into billions of pieces.

“This is an even better meeting place.”

“Yes,” Reality agrees, “we can really be ourselves here.”

References

Bambi, C. (2018). Astrophysical Black Holes: A Compact Pedagogical Review. Annalen Der Physik, 530(6), 1700430. doi:10.1002/andp.201700430

Goss, W. M., Brown, R. L., & Lo, K. Y. (n.d.). The Discovery of Sgr A*. Proceedings of the Galactic Center Workshop 2002, 497-504. doi:10.1002/9783527617982.ch75

Romero, G. E., & Vila, G. S. (2014). Black Holes. Introduction to Black Hole Astrophysics Lecture Notes in Physics, 31-71. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39596-3_2

Vanlandingham, J. H., Miller, M. C., Hamilton, D. P. & Richardson, D. C. The Role Of The Kozai–Lidov Mechanism In Black Hole Binary Mergers In Galactic Centers. The Astrophysical Journal 828, 77 (2016).