Black hole

From SporeWiki, the knowledge base dedicated to Spore

This is an example of a Black Hole found in the Game Play. You cannot see the Black Hole itself but what is visible is the Accretion Disk formed from matter falling toward the Black Hole.

Black Holes allow the player's UFO to traverse large distances across the Galaxy in seconds. However, they require a Wormhole Key in order to use. Flying close to a black hole without the wormhole key will not result ship destruction. On higher graphics settings they have a gravitational lensing effect.

[edit] Black holes in real astronomy

A Black Hole is formed by the collapse of the core of a High-Mass Star after ending its life-cycle with a super-nova to form a singularity. Black Holes have sufficient density to prevent the escape of Electromagnetic Radiation (Visible Light, Radio, etc), rendering them completely black.

Due to its massive gravitational pull, the presence of a Black Hole will cause gravitational lensing, the effect produced when light 'bends' around a large stellar mass such as a star. A Black Hole is technically a singularity (an object that has all of its matter in one single place) with an event horizon (the boundary around a Black Hole at which no light or matter can escape from the Black Hole) surrounding it, otherwise known as the Schwarzschild radius. Black Holes, in addition to other massive objects, produce Tidal Effects, caused by separate parts of an object or object falling into the event horizon at different speeds, which rips any cohesive matter to shreds. A current theory as to what the Galactic Core of our Milky Way Galaxy is, is an example of the largest Black Holes known to us; the super massive Black Holes. These are theorized to be in the center of many of the galaxies in our Universe, and that they form the rotational axis of that galaxy. A super-massive Black Hole has millions of solar masses, and the biggest known is OJ 287, weighing in at 18,000,000,000 solar masses.

In the Big Crunch theory, it is hypothesized that all mass in the universe will end up in a single, dense, singularity. A similar theory suggest that a hyper massive black hole will consume everything in the universe.

Black Holes are formed in the same process that Neutron Stars are made, with the mass of the dying star and the star's surrounding environment helping to determine how the star will end up. A Neutron Star is a collapsed star that is formed completely out of neutrons, giving it an extremely high density. This is because the Neutrons forming it do not repell each other like protons repel each other or electrons repel each other because Neutrons have no charge.

[edit] Navigating Black Holes in Spore

Properly used, Black holes can be the fastest and easiest way to get around the Spore Galaxy, to almost any location. Black holes are trumped only by the Return Ticket archetype ability, which instantly warps you to your home system. However, for the unwary, they can be the fastest way to getting totally and completely lost.

It should be noted that there's no 'quick and easy' map to download that lists all the black holes and where they lead to, as black holes apparently change from game to game. Although their physical locations stay the same, where they connect to and what they're named may be completely different.

A suggested rule of thumb for navigating the galaxy's black holes is to keep track of the coordinates of each black hole you come across (shown in angle & distance for any location you're at by hovering above the space ship.) And jot down the coordinates of the black hole it connects to. (For more dedicated players, using a coordinate map of the galaxy and drawing connection lines with a key may prove even more beneficial.)

However, as mentioned, you're on your own in this endeavor, as the connections and names are different for each person.

[Suggested addition: High Res Angle/Parsec map of galaxy with black hole Locations shown and labels, so all that is needed is to print it off and connect the lines when connections are discovered.]

[edit] Known Black hole Locations in Spore

(This list is far from complete, please help by adding your known wormholes to the list, could also use some cleaning up.)

For a complete list see [1]