Enough biological stuff. Time to do something non-living.

Image credit: NASA via nasa.gov

I figure you can’t get any less alive than a black hole.

It’s super easy to make. You don’t even need 5-10 solar masses.

I was working on this in the car on the way to my grandparents’ house. When my Grandma saw it, she said, “Oh, how pretty! Is that a flower?”

Well. Close.

Make Your Own Black Hole Flower of Death in 3(-ish) Easy Steps

1. Make a circle.

I started with a ring, put about 12-13 double crochet stitches into the first round, and did 2 double crochet per stitch in the second round.

2. Add an event horizon.

Special thanks to Giphy’s gif-making tool!

I alternated between two single crochets and one single crochet per stitch.

3. Accrete some stellar matter.

First, make a chain… (I did about 6-7 chain stitches in mine)

my hand is blue because science takes my breath away (also because of the windshield tint)

 Then, hold the tip of the chain as you make slip stitches all the way back down the chain. This will curve it toward your thumb.

Then do a single crochet in the next 2 stitches of the circle, make another chain, and repeat all the way around to make something that looks like this:

You could stop there, or you could make your swirling death bloom look really snazzy and add another color to your accretion disk:

The arms of this second round are made the same way as before. However, when you get to the bottom of the chain, you’ll join the base to the circle with only one single crochet.

Now here’s the trick: chain 2…

 …take your crochet hook out of the loop and stick it through the bottom of the next arm, like this…

I promise this isn’t cheating

…and pull the whole chain through the orange arm.

Do a single crochet into the next stitch, make another chain, and repeat.

There you have it. A lovely, swirling, world-swallowing void, to give to friends and loved ones. (Don’t forget, Valentine’s day is just 6 months away!)

If you use a 6 mm crochet hook like I did, you’ll end up with a black hole approximately the size of your palm (not counting the accretion disk). A black hole with a radius of this size would have a mass of about 4x1025 kg, so if it were real, you’ve just made something with about seven times the mass of Earth.

At such a convenient size, you could use it like a really efficient, bagless vacuum cleaner. As it consumed the Earth from the inside out, it would eliminate those pesky carpet stains extremely effectively.

It would also make a really nice coaster for drinks you don’t like. (As long as it’s in a room you don’t like either.)

You can read more about what you could theoretically do with your pocket-sized black hole by Quarks and Coffee here, or watch the Kurzgesagt animation here.