The Black Hole Truth

The Naked Sing-ularity and the EVent Horizon

1974

mixed technique h 135 cm (LED internally lit)

Dedicated to Steven Hawking, John Michell & John Wheeler

(Paraphrasing a proposed cosmic censorship by Stephen Hawking? ‘God abhors a naked singularity.’)

‘Revolving, billowing incense, playing music, Gregorian chants and ‘clicks’ of a ‘pulsar’ in the Crab Nebula, 6,300 light years
from Planet Earth, registered at the Arecibo (Puerto Rico) Radio Telescope. Puts the s-fear of God in you!’

The black-hole truth (the whole bleak truth) is that nothing can escape a black hole, and what is inside cannot be observed, as the area surrounding it - the event horizon - prevents light travelling outwards. Further, the force of gravity emitted by the black hole or ‘singularity’, prevents observers seeing in, whereas a hypothesized ‘naked singularity’ would be visible to observers.
It is unclear if a naked singularity can exist, though perhaps the sight of matter collapsing to an infinite density would be more fearful even than the singularity which we cannot see! Here we see a naked singularity sitting on top of a black sphere - the s-fear of God - while beams of ultra-violet light head towards the EVent horizon of a black hole. To the left we see a crab, which represents the crab nebula - an exploded star. Both terrifying and sublime, the familiar images we see beamed from the Hubble telescope can never transmit the whole truth. For that a leap of imagination is required.