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Vinony

black hole

noun

  1. object so massive that nothing can escape its gravitational pull
  2. place in a network where incoming traffic is silently discarded without informing the source
L2890 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /blæk ˈhoʊl/ / /blæk ˈhəʊl/

noun

Etymology: In reference to the physical concept (region of spacetime with extreme gravitational pull), physicist Hong-Yee Chiu attributed the term to his colleague Robert H. Dicke, who stated around 1960–1961 that the objects were like the Black Hole of Calcutta. The first known usage in print was by journalist Ann Ewing in 1964. Widespread popularization of the term is generally credited to a lecture in 1967 by the physicist John Wheeler.

  1. A place of punitive confinement; a lockup or cell; a military guardroom.

    “‘I will convince you that I do know [my duty] by clapping you for the remainder of the night into the black hole, young gentleman, do you see, and have no doubt but the air of that agreeable apartment will restore your senses.’”

    “A discipline of unlimited autocracy, upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black hole.”

  2. A region of spacetime that exerts a gravitational pull strong enough that no matter or energy, not even light, can escape it.

    “Astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe’s most enigmatic objects.”

  3. A void into which things disappear for good; an inscrutable area or subject.

    “you'll have to love U.S. District Court Judge John Kane's decision to keep Denver-based Exactis.com out of an Internet black hole.... MAPS maintains a database of Internet addresses that it believes send or relay spam. It’s called the "Realtime Blackhole List"”

    “2004 November 16, Jenifer Hanen, “How I fell down an Internet Black Hole....”, Black Phoebe, at www.blackphoebe.com https://web.archive.org/web/20061017203928/http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen/archives/2004/11/how_i_fell_down.html I finished some client work and gave myself 30 minutes to fall down one of my favorite internet black holes: genealogical research. Four hours plus some later, my eyes were burning in my head”

  4. A dangerous optical illusion that can occur on a nighttime approach with dark, featureless terrain between the aircraft and a brightly-lit runway, where the aircraft appears to the pilots to be higher up than it actually is, potentially triggering a premature or overly-steep descent and a crash short of the runway.
  5. A place where incoming traffic is silently discarded.

    “One way of fighting spam is to use a blackhole list maintained on a blackhole server.”

  6. A bit bucket; a place of permanent oblivion for data.

verb

Etymology: In reference to the physical concept (region of spacetime with extreme gravitational pull), physicist Hong-Yee Chiu attributed the term to his colleague Robert H. Dicke, who stated around 1960–1961 that the objects were like the Black Hole of Calcutta. The first known usage in print was by journalist Ann Ewing in 1964. Widespread popularization of the term is generally credited to a lecture in 1967 by the physicist John Wheeler.

  1. To redirect (network traffic, etc.) nowhere; to discard (incoming traffic).

    “Select a nonglobally routed prefix, such as the Test-Net (RFC 3330) 192.0.2.0/24, to use as the next hop of any attacked prefix to be blackholed.”