On Wednesday, astronomers released the first image of a black hole: A fuzzy flaming orange, yellow and black ring. But it would never have been possible without major contributions from the city of New Orleans.
Scientists have spent the last decade in New Orleans perfecting methods to study supermassive voids by examing the city’s own black holes.
“We were able to upscale our data from studying the worst potholes in the universe,” said Dr. Jillian Buckley, one of the 7,000 scientists working on the $684 billion project first approved by former mayor Mitch Landrieu among other work.
Popular thought says that whatever goes into a black hole never returns — the same characteristics of potholes found in the streets of New Orleans. One of the city’s public works officials noted some interesting findings after attempting to fill the holes.
“We knew something wasn’t right when we kept filling the same potholes for years,” said Department of Public Works director Steven Sloan.
“We continually poured tons of dirt and gravel to fill the voids but the holes kept coming back. So, we tried adding plants, folding chairs, ice chests, Mardi Gras beads, and even burial plots in hopes they would stay full but everything that went in eventually disappeared.”
The incredible similarities between the two kinds of holes intrigued NASA scientist Taylor Heston who caught wind of the anomalies after Landrieu tried to outsource the work to Landrieu Concrete and Cement Industries.
“I was fascinated by what seemed to be an extremely strong gravitational pull around these holes so I reached out to the mayor and asked if I could take a stab at it,” Sloan said.
More than 7,000 scientists joined the study as reports circulated of cars and other items being pulled deep below the asphalt and money flowed from NOLA’s coffers.
“No regrets on Freret!” yelled one local woman from her porch before darting to Neutral Ground News reporters to share details of her story and other unrelated information. Linda Bucher claims to have lost two husbands and a small dog to the potholes near her home in the Freret neighborhood but says, as previously mentioned, she has no regrets.
The scientists were able to use the measurements taken at the potholes to better study and finally capture images of larger black holes outside our universe.
“We believe these potholes may be either a link to other black holes or the source of them. We need more information but we’re excited about the possibilities,” Sloan said.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who was thrilled to inherit such incredible city infrastructure from Mayor Landrieu, believes the New Orleans is poised to become the next capital for a burgeoning research and development industry.
“Thanks to the forward-thinking of my predecessor, our decaying infrastructure was part of a long-term vision to help advance understanding of what we do not know and provide the base for a new, lucrative industry for the city New Orleans.”
The city is also working on plans to blow up one of the largest potholes in an attempt to activate a wormhole as a solution to the city’s transportation problems.