Hephaistos black hole

The Hephaistos black hole is a fictional cosmic anomoly featured in the 2000-2005 science fiction television series Andromeda. It was first seen in the series' pilot episode "Under the Night" as well as the second episode of season one, "An Affirming Flame". The black hole served as a plot device that set the stage for the remainder of the series.

Description
The Hephaistos black hole was a region of space from which nothing, not even light, could escape. It was the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass and first emerged in the proximity of Hephaistos IV in the Hephaistos System in CY 9784.

An alien race known as the Nietzscheans used the presence of the black hole as a means of luring the High Guard ship, the Andromeda Ascendant into a trap. A courier ship called the Alacritous Missive issued a distress signal to the Andromeda, warning them of the black hole's appearance, stressing the fact that the denizens of Hephaistos IV were in dire need of evacuation. When the Andromeda arrived in the sector however, they instead found a fleet of 10,000 Nietzschean battle ships waiting for them. The Andromeda 's captain, Dylan Hunt, evacuated the crew of his ship in time, but he was left aboard Andromeda as it was pulled in to the black hole's gravitational singularity. Trapped inside this veritable null field, the Andromeda and Captain Hunt remained frozen in suspended animation for 303 years.

In the year CY 10087, a salvage ship called the Eureka Maru, led by Captain Beka Valentine found the Andromeda and towed it out of the singularity. Captain Hunt revived only to learn that three-hundred years had passed. After a harrowing encounter with Valentine's boarding party, Hunt made peace with her crew, but found himself at odds with her employer, a Nightsider named Gerentex. Gerentex betrayed the group and stole the Eureka Maru, using it to push the Andromeda back towards the black hole. In a desperate measure to avoid being trapped or killed, Hunt deployed forty nova bombs into the heart of the black hole. The intensity of the explosion was so immense that it turned the anomoly into a white hole - a virtual "Big Bang".

Notes & Trivia

 * The Hephaistos black hole takes its name from Hephaestus, the Greek God of fire and craftsman.