No Man's Sky & Black Holes

I’m a bit of a space nerd, I love anything involving that big black mass that constantly sits above us. I regularly keep up to date on anything NASA is doing, and I’ve recently been reading Stephen Hawking’s - A Brief History Of Time (it’s excellent, you should read it). But while reading the book I started wondering about black holes, and the part they might play in No Man’s Sky (NMS). Before I can go into it all I need to explain the different theories there are on the roles black holes play in our universe. I feel I should also mention the fact that while there have been multiple leaks, I’ve not paid any attention, why would I spoil this game for myself?

Of all the theories surrounding black holes, the wormhole theory is one of the most popular. Before I can go on, I must stress, this is only a theory. Einstein's theory of relativity mathematically predicts the existence of wormholes, but they are yet to be discovered. A wormhole essentially connects two points in spacetime that can be travelled between using what is referred to as a Schwarzschild Wormhole, it could grant humans the access to traverse millions of light years in a very short time. Many believe that any black hole could be a wormhole, but this is untrue. The collapse of a star does not create a wormhole, instead it creates an infinitely dense point known as a singularity. It’s theorized that if two black holes were entangled and then pulled away from one another, the result would be a wormhole that could be used to traverse great distances across the universe. Although, the dense gravity beyond a black hole’s event horizon would destroy anything going through it, let’s just pretend it doesn’t though.

I think it would be great if these theorized wormholes appeared in NMS, they could export players huge distances across the map or maybe just bring them out the opposite side of the galaxy - albeit, still the same distance from the centre of it. Players would hit the black hole and see millions of stars, planets and systems whizz past in an instant. Especially as travelling inside a wormhole would make you faster than the speed of light outside, kind of (Inside the wormhole, light would still travel faster). It would be really hard to accurately portray travelling in a wormhole (cue Doctor Who theme), but it’s one that presents a fascinating opportunity nonetheless.

Supermassive black holes present another interesting opportunity for Hello Games. They are essentially really dense black holes that are found in the center of galaxies, it’s believed that our very own Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at it’s centre. It’s theorized that a supermassive black hole forms when a collection of super hot gasses collapse, forming a really dense and incredibly bright black hole, one that often has trails spanning several lightyears. Supermassive Black holes could form great central points for different galaxies in NMS, serving purely as an aesthetic visual guide for where you are in any certain galaxy (that’s if NMS is set in multiple galaxies and not just the one of them).

The last kind of black hole could be a stellar black hole, this is one that forms under the collapse of an extremely huge star. These black holes are usually huge and are surrounded by accretion disks, filled with the matter of whatever it is they are swallowing at the time. There’s nothing fancy about a stellar-mass black hole, but it would be pretty awesome to warp into a solar system that has either been swallowed by a stellar-mass black hole or is currently in the process. It would be the closest we would ever get to experiencing the power of black holes.

It would also be really fucking awesome if we could just fly into one of these black holes and experience what passing through the event horizon would be like. You would obviously die upon reaching the singularity, but the journey sure would be fun. Having said that, Vsauce produces some excellent stuff on physics and has an entire video devoted to falling into a black hole.

Oh, and what I wouldn’t give to find a solar system orbiting a black hole. If our sun was instantly replaced by a black hole of identical mass and shape, chances are we’d just keep orbiting it normally. We’d still be pretty screwed by the whole “No heat and light” situation, but it’s still pretty interesting.

Regardless of how successful No Man’s Sky, or how well received it is, the game presents a unique opportunity to provide a visual experience for many theorized circumstances. Black holes are something we are very unlikely to ever see first hand, the closest one is 1,600 light years away, which is “only” 43,280,000 Earth years away.