An example of metaphorical language in popular science discourse
"Black holes are called black holes because the gravity is enough to swallow light, right, so there's what we call the event horizon, the outside edge of a black hole, and anything that goes past that, even light, is swallowed. But we can see black holes because before things fall past the event horizon they sort of swirl around the cosmic plug hole a bit. [Black holes are quite messy eaters, anything that falls in sort of gets all kind of churned up into this what we call an accretion disc,] this sort of swirling maelstrom of stuff being gobbled up by the black hole. And because the gravity of the black hole is so strong that swirling maelstrom goes incredibly fast, and gets incredibly hot, and at those temperatures you glow with X-rays. So if you take an X-ray of the sky you can see black holes glowing – its incredible."
Dr Matthew Bothwell (Public Astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge) was speaking on an episode ('Invisibility Quest') of the programme*/podcast* 'Curious Cases'
* I heard this programme broadcast live, and (being able to pause and replay using BBC Sounds) transcribed this quote. However, I was not satisfied I had accurately heard with the section that had transcribed as
…things fall past the event horizon they sort of swirl around the cosmic plug hole a bit. This sort of swirling maelstrom of stuff…
So, I went back to listen again, which meant accessing the podcast – and found the extra material shown here in square parentheses. Presumably the broadcast version had been edited to trim it to fit the allocated time slot. I have noticed edits in similar interviews on radio science programmes (noticing an apparent shift in background sounds: I assumed editors removing less relevant digressions; or speakers stumbling over words, and restating), but here I did not hear any edit, and only checked because I was not satisfied with the flow of language.
