2009: The year we discovered 2001 was eerily prescient in 1968.

Just a quick little space/cinema mash-up today, starting with a cool video from over at New Scientist; Andrew Hamilton and Gavin Polhemus from the University of Colorado, Boulder, took Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and built a computer simulation of what it would look like if you fell into a black hole roughly the size of the one at the center of our galaxy:

Cool stuff on its own, but does it remind you of anything? Specifically the part after you’ve passed the Black Hole’s event horizon and are heading towards the singularity? Perhaps some particularly iconic bit of cinema? Like, say, this sequence:

I’m really not a particularly good scholar of “2001” (I’m on the record as being a bigger fan of Clarks “Childhood’s End”) but it wouldn’t suprise me one whit if the similarities between these two sequences are simply due to trying to graphically represent the same math, just with technology 50 years apart.

My apologies if that’s a little dense for a Friday (BLACK HOLE HUMOUR – HAR HAR HAR), if so – I cordially direct you to “The adorable leopard cubs who are best friends with a baby orangutan”.