If a star is large enough, more than about 25 of our suns, the inward collapse becomes unstoppable, a cascade of matter and light that falls forever inward toward a bizarre and unimaginable point of singularity.
And it turns out that in the cosmos, bizarre is pretty common. In many galaxies, including our own, scientists have come to believe that black holes are the workhorse pivot wheels at the galactic center, massive enough to demand gravitational allegiance from hundreds of millions of stars.
But what happens inside a black hole, and especially what such a place might look like, is another question entirely: no such consensus exists on that one. Hamilton said what his program predicted, especially in the inner event horizon, was simply where Einstein and his equations led.
"There were times when the director Tom Lucas said, `It doesn't look right,' and my answer became, `Deal with it,"' said Hamilton, who is 54 and has been at the university since 1986. "I can't change the visualization to adjust for a conflict with what we expect. It was very important for me to get the science correct."
What the equations produced was very much like a waterfall, except that instead of water, space itself falls into the abyss. But the waterfall analogy went further still. Water that hits the bottom of a waterfall bounces back up to collide with the water falling down to create a maelstrom.
Same thing in a black hole, the equations said. Matter and energy propelled outward by the force of the black hole would collide with falling matter to produce a chaotic churn of light.
But Einstein also suggested another outcome, one that science fiction fans are happily aware of as a plot device: the wormhole leading from a black hole to another universe. And Hamilton shows that part of the journey, as well, as the waterfall-black hole turbulence ends and the audience is flung out and beyond to somewhere even stranger.
The producers of the Denver museum program worried that viewers numbed by movie special effects would not appreciate the depth of science that went into the production. Indeed, Hamilton said, some members of focus groups who viewed earlier versions of the program "thought they were watching Hollywood."
So the script, read by Liam Neeson, the actor, was tweaked to convey the depth of the research.
Still, Hamilton concedes that it can be a strange trip following Einstein's math wherever it may lead. Truly a leap in the dark.
Even worse, though, he said, would be not to go at all.
"Is it legitimate science to think we can imagine the inside of a black hole even though it's veiled?" he asked. "Yes. I think so. To make a declaration that it can't be known is to be a defeatist."
And no, he doesn't play video games. Doesn't have the time.
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