Superman: The Animated Series - Heart, Body, and Mind

Absolute Power

Superman: The Animated Series 'Fan Fiction Story'

By Tayla Drago

Episode #40 - Absolute Power

Out in deep space, Superman 'with Helen and Jake tagging along in their space suits' for Superman to pilot his ship to a black hole.

"It's quiet...Too quiet..."

For Jake to say from a movie line, Helen says this one next.

"And in space, no one can hear you scream."

"Helen!" he stops her. "This is a mission's discovery, not another Alien franchise movie!"

"So?!" Helen smacks Jake on the head. "We'll never know of the danger in space if we are never too careful on who's out there, stupid!"

Now Helen has done it to make Jake mad.

"I'm not stupid, you are!"

"No! You!"

"Alright, you two. Just stay in your seats please." Clark tells them to stop. "I brought you two with me to study the mysterious black hole so it wouldn't be life threatening and to let Professor Hamilton know back on Earth. With you, Jake, with your brains can aid me. And you, Helen, can feel out danger from your arm."

True, at least for Clark/Superman can handle them anytime to make Helen and Jake to stop fighting each other a lot.

"I guess so, the Professor trusts us with this type of job." said Helen to look through the window. "Still, it's nice to see space like this."

"It is and to learn more from school." Jake took some photo shots. "And these suits are cool. Me in a blue and green, and Helen in her pink and purple. Nice touch."

Their mission: to send in a probe to study the black hole for S.T.A.R. Labs.

"There it is. Okay, get ready. Both of you, the black hole."

They've found it to stop the ship to study it where in front of them. What's a black hole you may ask?

Tayla: A black hole is a region of space time exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform space time to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, no locally detectable features appear to be observed. In many ways a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved space time predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is on the order of billionths of a kelvin for black holes of stellar mass, making it essentially impossible to observe. Objects whose gravitational fields are too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace. The first modern solution of general relativity that would characterize a black hole was found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, although its interpretation as a region of space from which nothing can escape was first published by David Finkelstein in 1958. Black holes were long considered a mathematical curiosity; it was during the 1960's that theoretical work showed they were a generic prediction of general relativity. The discovery of neutron stars in the late 1960's sparked interest in gravitational collapsed compact objects as a possible astrophysical reality. Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, super massive black holes of millions of solar masses (M) may form. There is general consensus that super massive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies. Despite its invisible interior, the presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with other matter and with electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Matter that falls onto a black hole can form an external accretion disk heated by friction, forming some of the brightest objects in the universe. If there are other stars orbiting a black hole, their orbits can be used to determine the black hole's mass and location. Such observations can be used to exclude possible alternatives such as neutron stars. In this way, astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates in binary systems and established that the radio source known as Sagittarius A*, at the core of the Milky Way galaxy, contains a super massive black hole of about 4.3 million solar masses. Cool, huh?