#bothros

[quasarlasar]

Postdoc application season is upon us so I’m going to have less time to make comics :(

In lieu of more of the Wrath of Enigma comic, here’s more about BOTHROS the little black hole.

[thejohnlockedfemboy]

Your comments do really help! I don’t have access to the grave/urn so there isn’t really anyway for me to physically put one there. How would I offer one through prayer? Who should I pray to? I looked stuff up earlier and it said Hermes and Hades, but they’ve all specified within a month of their death.

Sorry for the late reply, I got busy 😭

Hmmmm. Had to think about this for a bit, and do a little research.

As I said earlier, it would be best to start with Charon. Create a bothros -- plural: bothroi-- a circular or d-shaped depression in the earth, translating literally into "trench" or "pit" in Ancient Greek.

The ritual should take place preferably at dusk or night. It should be performed with your head bowed and hands facing downward, palms towards the ground.

First, sweep any debris from the ground. Sticks, pebbles, leaf litter, ect. Then, it's time to create lustral water, also known as "khernips."

Khernips is for purification from miasma. Miasma is the spiritual "uncleanliness" contracted from everyday living. This includes physical dirtiness, incest, murder, hubris, connection with those who are unpure ( much like the modern day "guilt by association" ) and more. However, miasma is NOT the same as sin. Miasma is classified as transgressions against the natural order, which is called Themis.

Childbirth, menstruation, and natural death all contract miasma. Some sources also state sexual contact and some foods as polluting.

Attending a funeral, handling a corpse, or even being in the presence of the dead may attract miasma. Mishandling a former ritual or failing to uphold an oath may, as well, which also includes not upholding an offering to the gods. For example, if you had asked Athena for help with a test in return for giving her a ouranic offering, then failed to do so, this will have attracted miasma.

So how do you cleanse yourself of miasma?

As mentioned above, create khernips. if you have a lighter, burn the end of a small stick, leaf, or other flammable natural material. Drop it into a bowl of water. Wash your hands, not with the khernips, but with other water. Then you will be clean enough to handle the khernips without infecting it.

Sprinkle the khernips on your head, face, and over the earth you will be using for the bothros. This returns things to Katharsis, the state of all being in accordance with Themis.

Why do all this?

In his Work and Days, Hesiod writes (Hesiod Work and Days, 724–6):

“Do not pour libations of sparkling wine to Zeus and other immortals at dawn with unwashed hands—they do not hear your prayers, but spit them back.”

Homer writes (Homer Iliad, 6.266-8):

"...and with hands unwashed I would take shame to pour the glittering wine to Zeus; there is no means for a man to pray to the dark-misted son of Kronos, with blood and muck all splattered upon him.”

Next, dig the bothros. You can line the hole with stones, but you don't have to. Say a prayer while holding the coin offering, something like:

"Charon, Psychopomp of those guided in by the herdsman's staff, accept this post-humous payment in return for your services-- a ferry across the Styx and Acheron, so that they have not to wait for a century. Weigh down your skiff with the soul of the one I pray for, until their feet touch the shores beyond And they wait for judgement from that trio of respected men. Put in a kind word, for Elysium they deserve, and then your full duty is done."

Wash your hands again, as your hands will be dirty from digging and the physical filth will attract miasma. Into the bothros, pour water, honey, or milk over it, and then place the coin in and speak a dedication.

Example: "May peace be upon the dead, and nepenthe from grief be upon the living."

Fill the bothros back in with the dirt you took out of it. Stand, and leave without turning back around to look at the bothros. This will help you avoid any spirits that may linger from their interest in the site, and shows respect for the ritual.

[quasarlasar]

The BOTHROS Chapters, Collected

All of the chapters of the short story I posted about BOTHROS, a stellar black hole who had the misfortune to be cursed with feelings:

https://quasarlasar.tumblr.com/post/775556252369567744/some-excerpts-of-a-science-fiction-story-titled

https://quasarlasar.tumblr.com/post/776828256690339840/more-from-the-life-story-of-the-small-black-hole

https://quasarlasar.tumblr.com/post/781263490230960128/more-of-the-adventures-of-bothros-the-tiny-black

https://quasarlasar.tumblr.com/post/787602709807284224/more-of-the-story-of-bothros-the-tiny-black-hole

https://quasarlasar.tumblr.com/post/790146353602904064/postdoc-application-season-is-upon-us-so-im-going

https://quasarlasar.tumblr.com/post/791424432380002304/the-conclusion-of-the-backstory-of-bothros-the

I should note these are themselves chapters in a longer, novella-length story...but I don't know if I'm ever finishing the whole thing lol

[quasarlasar]

The conclusion of the backstory of BOTHROS the tiny black hole. He ultimately becomes very upset he is cursed to feel feelings, and longs for the "no hair theorem" which says the only properties a black hole has are its mass, charge, and spin. In that state a black hole cannot have consciousness. It is possible for a black hole that is interacting with another object or accreting to have more properties, which is why I imagine BOTHROS is only conscious while accreting.

Ultimately, he simply gives up, and lets himself fall into the stationary state, where the no hair theorem applies. He is completely unresponsive when humans take him away to turn him into the artificial gravity source and power plant for a space station.

...for the rest of his story...I'd need to finish the original story these excerpts are from, a sort-of novella called The Jetsetter. I dunno if I will ever finish it though. I feel like the BOTHROS POV chapters are way better than the ones with the human characters.

[quasarlasar]

More of the story of BOTHROS, the tiny black hole.

Material spiraling into a black hole can release up to 42% (!) of its mass-energy as energy. And that's just in the process of falling into the black hole. Once the black hole absorbs it, it will never escape.

...Of course I have to interpret this as black holes have digestive systems so efficient they never have to poop.

Other notes:

-The "chewing and swallowing" I refer to is the tearing apart of matter by BOTHROS' tidal forces and then it spiraling into him.

-The "torus" is a ring of dust and gas surrounding a supermassive black hole. It acts as a store of material that will feed the black hole's accretion disk. This is why BOTHROS tries to understand the fats of organic life in terms of Cen A*'s torus.

-The "incinerated by the light of the infinite future" is a reference to the mass inflation singularity or blue sheet. This is where, due to extreme time dilation and the fact space inside the black hole is rotating faster than light, everything that falls into the black hole after you coalesces into an infinite firewall. The "chaotic tides" is a reference to the BKL singularity, which generates very strong exponentially increasing forces that tear you to pieces in randomly varying directions.

[quasarlasar]

I just want to say I'm in love with your BOTHROS short fiction! I don't know much about astrophysics or quantum stuff but the personification helps it click (and it's just really fun to read.) I think you're doing something really special. IT'S COOL it makes dense, scientific concepts read as fun and mysterious like I'm getting a little peek at black holes okay thank you good luck with your post doc stuff

There’s more posts on my Tumblr blog. It’s actually several chapters from a whole story I wrote from 2021 involving an ex-astrophysicist who ends up befriending BOTHROS. But it turns out I don’t know nearly as much about spaceships and human technology as I do astrophysics so I never finished the story ehehe. The story is written to the ending, but there is a gap right before the climax where there is supposed to be a space battle, but I know nothing about how to depict a realistic space battle and I don’t really like reading about space weapons much lol. I need to figure something else out for that scene.

I should note that the science in the story is not 100% accurate, but given BOTHROS has conscious control over his gravity you probably already realized this.

[quasarlasar]

Some excerpts of a science fiction story titled “The Jetsetter” that I haven’t finished yet. Of course given I haven’t finished my 4th draft of my novel, Part 2 of Melissa and the Allies of Gaia, or that San Andreas Fault story I’ve been working on, don’t get too excited*…

At least, I call it science fiction because it’s fiction based on science? But my writing doesn’t really conform to genre expectations, given the main characters with a character arc are always sentient natural phenomena (the human main character, if present, is mostly a facilitator to the natural phenomenon’s character growth). It’s not hard science fiction because I mean the main character is a talking black hole who has some measure of control over his own gravity? But it’s not soft science fiction either, as it uses a lot of real life science (some from my own research as an astrophysicist).

*I have written to the ending, but there is a hole in the story where there's supposed to be a space battle, and I can't figure out how to write it because I don't like reading space battle scenes. I don't know what to replace it with though...

[quasarlasar]

More of the adventures of BOTHROS, the tiny black hole. Or, well, he's only the mass of a dwarf planet now, but he used to be a stellar-mass black hole. Needless to say his gravity is a lot weaker in his current form, and he doesn't really know how he's going to gather matter to eat without his gravity. He's starving, and if he passes out from hunger, he'll just be aimlessly drifting between the stars, never to wake up again.

Fortunately BOTHROS is able to teach himself how to use magnetic fields to enhance his accretion rate, like how neutron stars do. It's not natural for him at all, and he feels gross doing it, but he's desperate.

He finds an inhabited planet, but unfortunately they do not react very well to his presence, and he's so ravenous he loses control of his hunger...

Some notes:

-Black holes are capable of absorbing antimatter just fine, though if they have an accretion disk, it might annihilate it as happens to BOTHROS here. BOTHROS finds antimatter to taste bad, though I’m not sure every black hole would feel the same. When it comes to different types of regular matter, they don’t have any real flavor preferences.

-The Eddington limit is the theoretical rate of accretion above which the energy released by accretion will overwhelm the pull of gravity. It is often described as a maximum accretion rate, though there are ways to overcome it. Neutron stars are one of the best at it because of their powerful magnetic fields.