You wake up alone on a research station orbiting a black hole. Your task is to measure it, build a descent capsule from the station's remaining materials, and find out how far you can go.

The exploration isn't just about falling in. You have to plan your trajectory, navigate around radiation and thermal anomalies, monitor the capsule's condition, and study what happens as you approach and eventually cross the event horizon. Capsule design matters too — hull materials, shielding and engines all involve trade-offs.

For the visuals, I use a closed-form approximation of exact Schwarzschild light deflection. Each pixel's view direction is bent before a single cubemap lookup, rather than using ray marching. This lets me render gravitational lensing at roughly skybox cost.

One important distinction: the physics-based simulation has its limits. Beyond the Cauchy horizon, the game moves into a speculative interpretation informed by published research on mass inflation. I'm not presenting that part as established physics.

The game is called Event Horizon Research, releasing November 4:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5260090/Event_Horizon_Research/

I'd be especially interested in hearing what people here think about the approach to black hole physics and where I've drawn the line between simulation and speculation.

Disclosure: Generative AI was used for some visual assets, audio and parts of the code, all reviewed by hand. The physics model and game design are my own work, developed from published astrophysics research. The same disclosure is on the Steam page.

A black hole with no disc around it. Would you only be able to tell its there because of a warped sense of light?

I know the black hole isnt actually black, but how do you describe something colorless? Would you only see what is supposed to be behind it, but just warped beyond hell?

See also: The publication in Physical Review D

See also: The publication in ArXiV

Let's assume I'm conducting experiments with my private particle accelerator in my basement, and let's assume a tiny black hole is created in the process. How long would it take for this baby black hole to become a serious threat? Could it, for instance, sink into the Earth's core?

Edit:

Back then when the LHC experiments started media was full with story's about the LHC experiment could end earth and humans. I never believed that story but recently during a discussion where people brought up bullshit and science non sense from public media the LHC example came up.

There comes my question from, to figure out how much off was this story.

Say you’re in your living room, doing whatever you do in your free time, and a black hole the size of a fist appeared in the middle of the room and instantly disappeared. Whats the longest amount of time that black hole can be there without destroyed the entire world? Or, the longest amount of time it can exist without destroying your house?

is it true that we focuse on schwarzchild equation for black holes: Rs=2GM/c² or M=v² . r / g

Do we have any proof that black holes occur naturally, or could they in fact be Dyson Spheres created by a more advanced entity?

What if a more effective Dyson Sphere means having gravitational pull and slowly using energy from a galaxy or solar system instead being wrapped around a star (due to maybe longevity or efficiency issues).

See also: The publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

Like what if hawking radiation is higher for smaller blackholes and so they radiate away quickly being the reason we have not detected them or reason they probably don't exist. I'm a med student and this is my shower thought. I would really like to know about this.

I’ve seen pictures and movies about black holes, but all those are extremely bright. If I ventured to space could i randomly fall into a black hole, or would it emit some light for me to see? I know it look distorted, but what are the chances I would know “yup, that’s a black hole” let me turn left.

I had an opportunity to spin this out of a game I am making and It got out of hand with some of the design features, but you can still make a pretty convincing black hole and seeing it lensing properly in your own room is a weird feeling as you walk around it. Or through it or put your hand into it!

Tried to keep it as scientifically accurate as possible, Each pixel's light ray gets bent around the hole (Schwarzschild-style deflection, with a short geodesic march near the hole), rays inside the photon radius make the shadow, and the bent rays hit the disc plane, so the far side of the disc shows up above and below the shadow as it should.

On the app store here

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6810945165

Hope you find it interesting or get a laugh out of it!

As I understand it an object X falling into a black hole as witnessed by a distant observer O will experience relativistic effects such that time for X compared to time for O will run progressively slower the nearer it gets to the mass of the black hole. If this is happening for all the mass forming the black hole, will any of it ever form a singularity that O can witness? (All this ignores observing stuff inside an event horizon event horizon, though the event horizon could be another way of describing this effect)