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black hole

noun
/blæk ˈhoʊl/US/blæk ˈhəʊl/UK

Etymology

In reference to the physical concept (region of spacetime with extreme gravitational pull), physicist Hong-Yee Chiu attributed the term to his colleague Robert H. Dicke, who stated around 1960–1961 that the objects were like the Black Hole of Calcutta. The first known usage in print was by journalist Ann Ewing in 1964. Widespread popularization of the term is generally credited to a lecture in 1967 by the physicist John Wheeler.

Definitions

  1. A place of punitive confinement

    A place of punitive confinement; a lockup or cell; a military guardroom.

    • ‘I will convince you that I do know [my duty] by clapping you for the remainder of the night into the black hole, young gentleman, do you see, and have no doubt but the air of that agreeable apartment will restore your senses.’
    • A discipline of unlimited autocracy, upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black hole.

  2. A region of spacetime that exerts a gravitational pull strong enough that no matter or…

    A region of spacetime that exerts a gravitational pull strong enough that no matter or energy, not even light, can escape it.

    • Astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe’s most enigmatic objects.

  3. A void into which things disappear for good

    A void into which things disappear for good; an inscrutable area or subject.

    • Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group which tracks censorship around the world, put it more bluntly. “It is by far the worst Internet black hole,” he said.
  4. ›+ 4 more definitions

    1. A dangerous optical illusion that can occur on a nighttime approach with dark,…

      A dangerous optical illusion that can occur on a nighttime approach with dark, featureless terrain between the aircraft and a brightly-lit runway, where the aircraft appears to the pilots to be higher up than it actually is, potentially triggering a premature or overly-steep descent and a crash short of the runway.

    2. A place where incoming traffic is silently discarded.

      • One way of fighting spam is to use a blackhole list maintained on a blackhole server.

    3. A bit bucket

      A bit bucket; a place of permanent oblivion for data.

    4. To redirect (network traffic, etc.) nowhere

      To redirect (network traffic, etc.) nowhere; to discard (incoming traffic).

      • Select a nonglobally routed prefix, such as the Test-Net (RFC 3330) 192.0.2.0/24, to use as the next hop of any attacked prefix to be blackholed.

The neighborhood

Derived

black hole jet, black hole star, blanet, BZ black hole, eternal black hole, extremal black hole, intermediate black hole, intermediate mass black hole, Kerr black hole, Kerr-Newman black hole, micro black hole, mini black hole, optical black hole, primordial black hole, regular black hole, Reissner-Nordström black hole, Schwarzschild black hole, stellar black hole, stellar mass black hole, supermassive black hole

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for black hole. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA