But he that laughed before at his fellow, said againe, Verily this tale is as true, as if a man would say that by sorcery and inchantment the floods might be inforced to run against their course, the seas to be immovable, the aire to lacke the blowing of windes, the Sunne to be restrained from his naturall race, the Moone to purge his skimme upon herbes and trees to serve for sorceries: the starres to be pulled from heaven, the day to be darkened and the dark night to continue still.

A Persian scholar of the early tenth century, lbn Khurradadhbih, reported the lyra to be in widespread use throughout the empire, along with organs and bagpipes.

If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.

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.