WEDNESDAY’S Cape Times is to be congratulated for presenting the excitement of UCT’s astrophysicists about a phenomenon whose history they’ve rediscovered. It stimulates our brighter young ones to take more interest in studying science.

As with most of my articles on this topic, I’d like to try to put the story in simple English for the lay public.

Using tidal theory (refer to an excellent simple explanation by Dr Mike Hunt long ago, in which he uses gravitational gradients as his necessary ingredient) it is easy to simplify curvature of plasma emissions near supermassive black holes as they munch their lunch of any inconveniently close-by gravitational morsels like neutron stars or white dwarves.

But allow me to take you back to motor cars of the last century, and the excitement they caused among car buffs when they introduced fuel-saving things called ‘overdrives’. Nowadays no-one thinks twice about cars with fifth gear.

Science fiction leaps to the rescue here, as we fondly remember Captain Kirk beaming up Scotty before engaging “warp speed” to catch and eliminate a couple more Klingons orbiting Uranus.

That’s a simple metaphor for what UCT Astrophysicists are reporting now. At the Event Horizons (mouths) of supermassive “Black Holes” the approach of massive gravitational objects sets off Colossal Forces in mortal combat. So Huge are the Tidal Waves that meet at the Mouth to mouth encounters (Kisses of Death?) that the heavier opponent (“Black Hole”) exerts superior force and goes into overdrive to conserve Energy as it strips its weaker opponent rather like an Orca ripping out the energy rich liver of an unfortunate White Shark.

There you have it. Good Big rugby players were always better than Good Little guys, unless you were up against Wynberg Boys High, in which case our chaps were simply too “never say die” and often surprised the bigger Rondebosch, Bishops, and Paarl Gym lot as we ran rapidly under and around them while they were looking the other way.

In summary, therefore, the obvious and neatest explanation of UCT’s rediscovery is a single word ‘Overdrive’.

Alan S Mitchell | Fish Hoek

Cape Times