An example of simile and metaphor in public science discourse:
"A black hole is a region of space where you have just crammed so much stuff into a such a small space, that gravity kind of goes into overdrive, it grabs onto everything, and it won't let go, and that includes light, so even if a light beam goes into a black hole it just kind of gets sucked in and stays there."
Prof. Andrew Pontzen
Prof. Andrew Pontzen (Professor of Cosmology, UCL) was being interviewed by Marnie Chesterton on an episode ('Mapping the universe') of BBC Inside Science. Marnie glossed the black hole as
"The ultimate waste disposal unit, stuff gets sucked in and can't escape."
Read about metaphor in science
Read about examples of science metaphors
Many examples of science metaphors are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.
Read about examples of science similes
Many examples of science similes are listed in 'Creative Comparisons: Making Science Familiar through Language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.
