Art Blog #177: Spaghettification: The Cosmis Horror. Also, What Happens If You Try To Eat Spaghetti In Space

Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know

Prepare to have your mind blown. "Spaghettification"—yeah, it's a thing. And space is full of even more mind-boggling stuff. For an artist like me, whose work is fueled by space exploration and the mysteries of the cosmos, this was a must-watch. And let’s be honest—when the subject matter includes an actual event horizon, how could I resist?

The Premise: Staring Into the Dark

Directed by Peter Galison, this documentary isn’t just another flashy space flick—it’s a deep dive into the event horizon of black holes, where science meets the impossible. The film follows two interconnected journeys: one, the ambitious project to capture the first-ever image of a black hole (a historic feat achieved by the Event Horizon Telescope team in 2019), and two, the theoretical battle to decode black hole mechanics spearheaded by none other than Stephen Hawking in his final years.

If you’re thinking, But we already know black holes exist, what’s the big deal?—imagine trying to take a selfie of a literal void in space that bends light and time itself. That’s the level of insanity we’re dealing with here.

Meet the Minds: The People Who (Almost) Understand Black Holes

The documentary brings together some of the most brilliant minds of our time. A few key players include:

• Stephen Hawking – The legend himself. Before his passing, Hawking worked on refining his theories about black holes and information paradoxes. One of his final papers (co-authored with Malcolm Perry and Andrew Strominger) tackled the mystery of whether information is lost forever inside a black hole or somehow recoverable.

• Sheperd Doeleman – The astrophysicist leading the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project. The guy basically had the job of uniting telescopes across the globe to create a planet-sized virtual camera. Casual.

• Andrew Strominger & Malcolm Perry – Theoretical physicists who collaborated with Hawking to challenge existing notions about black holes and quantum information.

• Event Horizon Telescope Team – A global army of scientists who made history by capturing the first image of a black hole, proving Einstein right yet again and turning an astronomical theory into a visual reality.

The Impossible Task: Photographing a Shadow

Black holes are, by definition, invisible. They don’t emit light, they devour anything that comes too close, and they distort time and space in ways that make sci-fi look tame. So how do you take a picture of something that refuses to be seen?

Enter the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of radio telescopes working in unison to capture an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. The sheer level of coordination required for this project is mind-blowing—synchronizing data across continents, processing petabytes of information, and dealing with the occasional cosmic interference. But against all odds, they did it. And the result? That now-iconic, slightly blurry, fiery donut of doom.

The Information Paradox: Where Physics Gets Weird

Beyond the mind-bending challenge of photographing a black hole, the documentary also dives into one of the greatest theoretical debates in modern physics: the black hole information paradox. Essentially, if black holes consume everything, what happens to the information about what they’ve devoured? Does it disappear forever, breaking the laws of quantum mechanics, or does it somehow survive?

Hawking, Strominger, and Perry’s work proposed a fascinating idea: that black holes might actually store information on their event horizon as “soft hair” (a term that is simultaneously poetic and unsettling). If true, this could mean that information isn’t lost but rather encoded in ways we don’t yet understand. It’s like the universe’s most encrypted USB drive, but one you can never eject.

Why This Documentary Matters (Beyond the Nerd Factor)

For artists like me who draw inspiration from the cosmos, Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know is more than just a scientific exploration—it’s a meditation on the limits of human understanding. We create sculptures, paintings, and music to express ideas that words and formulas can’t fully capture. And in many ways, black holes are the ultimate artistic metaphor: voids filled with mystery, paradoxes that defy explanation, and phenomena that challenge our perception of reality.

It also serves as a humbling reminder that no matter how much we think we know, the universe will always have bigger secrets. Whether you’re a scientist mapping the cosmos or an artist sculpting celestial wonders, the journey of discovery never ends.

A Must-Watch for the Cosmically Curious

If you haven’t watched Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know yet, do yourself a favor—grab a coffee (or something stronger), dim the lights, and prepare for a journey that will make you question everything you thought you knew about space, time, and reality itself. And if nothing else, at least you’ll finally understand why that black hole image went viral.

For me, this film reinforced why I do what I do. As an artist inspired by space exploration, I’m drawn to the unknown—to the questions that don’t have easy answers. Watching this documentary felt like staring into the abyss and seeing not just darkness, but infinite possibilities. And honestly? That’s pretty damn exciting.

Who wants more?

So, you came here for tales of zero-G spaghetti feasts and floating meatballs? I get it. The imagery is compelling. However, the reality of eating anything in space is a bit more complicated (and less appetizing) than a noodle ballet. Think more along the lines of rehydrated pouches and carefully contained crumbs. While the dream of slurping spaghetti among the stars remains just that – a dream – there's plenty of other fascinating (and slightly less messy) space food science to explore. Maybe one day we'll have a gravity-simulating space station restaurant, and then we can finally talk about spaghetti.

-Peter Von Hauerland