spaghettification

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English[edit]

WOTD – 28 March 2021

Etymology[edit]

An illustration of an astronaut undergoing spaghettification (sense 1) as they fall towards a black hole, being stretched vertically and compressed horizontally. (The process would, of course, be fatal before it became this apparent.)

From spaghetti +‎ -ification (suffix meaning ‘the process of becoming’ forming nouns), alluding to the appearance of a strand of spaghetti.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

spaghettification (uncountable)

  1. (astrophysics) The gravitational stretching of objects into long, thin shapes, usually near a black hole. [from late 20th c.]
    Synonym: noodle effect
    • 1977, Nigel Calder, “Starcrusher”, in The Key to the Universe: A Report on the New Physics, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →ISBN, page 143:
      Spaghettification was due to gravity intensifying, metre by metre, in the approach to a black hole.
    • 1981, Nigel Henbest, “Black Holes”, in Mysteries of the Universe, New York, N.Y.: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, →ISBN, page 140, column 1:
      But in the approach to a black hole the effect is far stronger: the astronaut’s body is stretched out on a gravitational rack. Before he comes near the event horizon, his body will be pulled out beyond the limits that flesh and blood can stand and he will suffer the excruciating death of ‘spaghettification’ long before he is in any position to unravel the secrets of the black hole. The strength of the spaghettification effect (usually known more prosaically as ‘tidal stretch’ for it is related to the way the Moon raises tides on Earth) depends on the mass of the rack-inducing black hole.
    • 1990, Grant Naylor [pseudonym; Rob Grant; Doug Naylor], chapter 5, in Better Than Life, London: Viking, →ISBN, part 3 (Garbage World), page 153:
      ‘Spaghettification. Let me guess,’ said Rimmer. ‘I can see only two options: one – due to the bizarre effects of the intense gravitational pull, and because we’re entering a region of time and space where the laws of physics no longer apply, we all of us inexplicably develop an irresistible urge to consume vast amounts of a certain wheat-based Italian noodle conventionally served with Parmesan cheese; or two – we, the crew, get turned into spaghetti. I have a feeling we can eliminate option one.’
    • 2002, Kip S[tephen] Thorne, “Spacetime Warps and the Quantum World: Speculations about the Future”, in Stephen W[illiam] Hawking et al., The Future of Spacetime, New York, N.Y.: W[illiam] W[arder] Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 136:
      I am convinced, by arguments given by [John Archibald] Wheeler in 1957, that the end point of spaghettification—the singularity itself—is governed by a union, or marriage, of the laws of quantum mechanics and those of spacetime warpage. This must be so, since the warpage spaghettifies space on scales so extremely microscopic that they are profoundly influenced by the uncertainty principle.
    • 2005, Michael Lockwood, “Closed Timelike Curves: Science Fact or Science Fiction?”, in The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 141:
      The so-called Cauchy singularity discovered by [Roger] Penrose and his colleagues turns out to be a weak singularity, according to a classification introduced by Frank Tipler: there are no unbounded tidal forces. It is not, therefore, the kind of singularity that spells inevitable spaghettification.
    • 2020 October 15, Sophie Lewis, “Star dies by ‘spaghettification’ as it’s consumed by supermassive black hole”, in CBS News‎[1], archived from the original on 14 February 2021:
      During this violent spaghettification process, long, thin strands of material that make up the star collapse into the intense gravity of a black hole – which basically swallows it up like stellar spaghetti. The event releases a bright burst of energy that can be detected by astronomers.
  2. (rare) The act of turning something into long, thin strands like spaghetti.
    • 1965, Alfred Jarry, “Ubu Cocu (Ubu Cuckolded)”, in Cyril Connolly, transl., edited by Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor, Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, →OCLC, act V, scene ii, page 50:
      We'll have to make do with twisting the nose and nears,[sic – meaning ears?] with removal of the tongue and extraction of the teeth, laceration of the posterior, hacking to pieces of the spinal marrow and the partial or total spaghettification of the brain through the heels.
    • 1979, Cornell Review, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, →OCLC, page 61:
      We have suffered a partial or total / spaghettification of the brain. / We have kept the nails / in Christ's feet, revised the Aryan Paragraph, / and mistaken semantic discharge / for the basic language of God.

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Further reading[edit]

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