I am not a science guy, but doesn't there need to be an end to the vortex?

no..i'm pretty sure black holes are actually just holes with tremendous amount of gravity so technically it's just "smushing" everything together into nothing.

No one knows. Thats the mystery.

Freaking scary stuff right there, for sure.

They go where all of my lost socks go.

The SFX were awesome!

Too bad we'll never get to see him again, he was kind of cool.

theres suppose to be an end but no1 knows its just theoretically

that power was CRAZY!

I'm glad Sylar didn't get it though.

It's quite unfortunate that they killed him. He was a great character.

I'm sorry they killed him too - he was interesting with a cool power.

Side note as an anime fan: his power reminds me of Miroku on InuYasha. He was a monk who basically had a vortex in the palm of his hand as the result of a hereditary curse.

I liked him, his family was mean though. All he wanted to do was see them.

vortex power shouldnt harm himself; wouldnt it be some sort of teleportation ( worm hole ).

Yeah. This power was insane! Pretty cool to get to see something like this on the show. Imagine if this power had belonged to someone with truly bad intentions. Scary enough on this Stephen guy who is just wanting to be normal. This power is I think one of the most devastating we've seen. To just suck anything into nothingness. That's pretty crazy.

Ruined this poor guy's life, though. Using it on himself was a bit of a shock.

Last they heard he murdered someone and ran, leaving them high and dry. What were they supposed to think? 2 1/2 years?

yeah i can see him re-appearing sometime because if his power could affect him like that he really got the worst power. He could have killed himself the first time and never would have had a purpose.

I'm guessing the vortex takes him somewhere and when he opens another one he returns back to where he was. at least i am hoping because he seemed to fit the mold for a main character. Tragic fall in life due to his power, he hates the company, has bad issues with HRG.

seeing as how Meredith demonstrated that she couldn't be hurt by the lack of oxygen from her own power, my bet is that Stephen just opened another vortex somewhere else. This would also account for his quick exit from the house.

That totally makes sense , bit I think he killed himself. His family rejected him ,a nd the company which would lock him up can't be trusted and HRG made it seem like he only wanted him around to kill someone else when hes not a killer.

Theoretically on the other end of a black hole is a white hole. Umm...black holes are black cause they're sucking all the light into it and white holes are white because all the light is exiting it. And a black hole/white hole system is a worm hole. Stephen could've ended up anywhere. I hope he shows up again tho because I thought his character had a lot of depth.

He said it in the show, "you people have taken everything away from me. You won't turn me into a monster."

Really, with him suceeding & Peter, Claire & Tracy trying it, anybody watching this show aught to be put on a code red suicide watch, this kind of thing can't be good for the clinically depressed.

I liked the guy, too, he's played a few stock thugs in movies & TV shows so it was nice to see him doing something different for a change.

I'm under the impression that the vortex basically just obliterates matter, I don't think it "sends" it anywhere.

I liked how it was displayed. It was a dangerous and powerful power, indeed.

You can't "obliterate" matter. It's impossible. Matter can't be created or destroyed, just converted to energy so it's gonna go somewhere.

Technically, no it can't (though, it's a theory). But in effect, it can. My point is is that the people (and things) are no longer human (or the things they were), they are "converted" - dead. As I see it, the people (and things) are, in effect, "obliterated".

its just feels like they wasted a really good ability in one episode. I really think they could have used his ability like Blink from Marvel. If he could control his ability and send people places it might make for a really cool power. He would be a GREAT asset to the company if he could be accurate at where he sends people. "Straight to level 5 for you!"

Not 100% true.

Technically that is still a theory - there's no proof that matter cannot be destroyed just proof that we dont know of a way to do it XD They could make a power that does just that, though it would be ridiculous and pointless...

But it seems to be a miniature black hole which theoretically can have another opening somewhere in time and space - or it might just go into a mass of super dense mater that dissipates into energy...

Well the E=mc^2 seems to work and that deals with that conversion so I'm siding with science and Einstein here

Go ahead, but not even those two can answer where it all began, and for something to begin, it must be created.

Couldn't you just say that it always WAS? i mean you can't put a time one something that has been for eternity.

You could , but then I would be limiting my mind.

If he could just open the vortex and teleport, why wouldn't he have just teleported out of Level 5? The Haitian can't be around all the time to stop powers. I know the Company has shatterproof, fireproof, etc., etc. proof cells but black hole-proof, Not likely!

I thought the character was interesting and had a cool ability.

This is one of the things I don't like about series and prime time TV.

They create characters, just to have them killed off in one episode. I have never watched Lost but, I have heard they do the same thing.

I guess that's this producer's thing. it won't stop me from watching the show but, that sucks.

Liked the vortex guy. I just don't see how someone could commit suicide using his own power. Or maybe that was another power he had? Suicide power- you can only use it once!

A black hole is space with such a gravitational force that nothing can escape it, not even electromagnetic radiation. Theoretically, it works that all matter drawn into the black hole is imploding. The atoms are breaking into particles, imploding into themselves into a zero-volume region at the center (called the gravitational singularity). The fact that most of you believe the black holes are the entrances to some sci-fi warp gates/worm holes is absurd. Only a scientific illiterate could believe that such a gravitational force wouldn't break everything. The fact is that everything drawn into a black hole is spaghettified (yes, that's what it's called) which means it will split and split and split into smaller particles.

The vortexes in this show doesn't really make sense, because a vortex which is seemingly that small as the ones he does, would still suck in all the oxygene and matter around them in seconds. Nothing would remain intact, and that they can survive being so close to one is ridiculous. And the fact that the vortex later disappears is even more of a mystery.



Hehehe. No, no, no. That's not at all how it works.

I think you can blame Sliders and Deepspace9 for making everyone think you can just scoot on through to somewhere else.

To answer that question, you need to study particle- and quantum physics. Feynman's theory proves very well how a vaccum in fact isn't completely empty, but he also said that physics can't be comprehend by the human mind. I have understood, from my current limited knowledge of modern physics, that you must try to understand it with an abstract mind to see the poetry of the universe. There are answers to everything (even the beginning of time and space), we just can't comprehend the answers with our limited understandings of nature.

We have developed a system which can translate the laws of nature into something we can work around. This is called mathematics. The mathematics show us how things work, but we still can't figure out why things work in that way. I`m both an aestethical writer and a science geek, so I look at the universe as the best poem ever written. What differs me from many others though, is that my mind is set that the poem has written itself over time while others think its written by a "god".

My point is that you can't argue about how something can't answer when and how something began, when you don't have the basic understanding of how things work in the here and now.

Overthinking much? This isn't reality- it's comic/sci fi physics. And, in comics and sci fi, what he did is perfectly reasonable and acceptable.

As is the theory that anything that went in one vortex should be able to exit another. (Especially if they have to go somewhere as seems likely.

Personally, I found it to be a fantastic use of a character to achieve a purpose. The character came into the show, did what he was required to do for the story and left.
Whilst he was fantastic as a character, I hope we never see him again.

It would depend on how much mass the singularity was here in question. According to popular theory, if our sun shifted through all it's phases and ended up a black hole (very unlikely because of it's solar mass) The earth would still remain in orbit, although dead (or consumed by the transition to red giant), the event horizon (point at which the break away speed is greater than the speed of light) only being miles from the actual singularity. The created Vortexes, if they are infact black holes would likely be millimeters to centimeters from the the actual created singularity, the force/speed to escape would diminish massively even meters from the event. In addition it looked as if he could create them at different sizes.

The fact that the Vortexes actually create a light (bluish flashes), and are not black spheres (light cannot reflect off them, or escape them) where ever they are created implies they are not black holes at all. Should this have been a real black hole of proper solar size the event horizon could be more than a Astromonical Unit (AU) and consume Earth and our nearest planets in nanoseconds.

I for one am glad it doesn't look like they are black holes, as anyone close enough to be grabbed would be ripped to pieces in seconds from the "Tidal Forces" meaning the pulling force at the finger tips is greater than at the hand, and the hand is greater than at the wrist, that kind of force would have literally destroyed someone before they even entered the votex... Not to mention they would be horrifically frozen in time as thier mass passed the Event horizon as light and time stopped, they would, to external observers slow to a near stop drifting into the event forever... (Who in this case would resemble a glob of beef stroganoff due to the tidal force.)

Anyway, I ramble.

From the Insider ISMS for v03e05 thread:

Heroes: The actors were suspended by wires to help achieve the effect of a vortex's dimensional pull.

Seems like it's to another dimension (and not a black hole), perhaps he will be back.

I like to think that he'll be back, just because that's one of the coolest powers the show's had in a long time... but as said above, he did what he was supposed to do and left. Only bad part about that is just plain the fact that heroes seems to just be creating characters, some of which are intriguing, specifically to just throw them into a wood chipper for fun 2 seconds later. It takes all shock factor away from a character's death. I'm sure that within the next 2 episodes we'll see doyle die as well.

Well if he's brought back they can intro a new comic relief power hero who's powers shoot back into the real world items that are consumed by the Vortex, you know Pulsar like. Half a house here, a person there, a couple guns...

EDIT: I'm not sure Heroes has ruined shock value for me yet, Votrex killing dropped my jaw to the floor, and Sylar's neck being snapped made me shoot Dr.Pepper out my nose... Anyway... Perhaps it's just me...

This seems like a sad ending to a really interesting character.

See this is what annoys me about the Company and Level 5. I can understand locking the likes of Flint up because he is a Psychopath, but Stephen kinda made one error and was taken away from his family and locked away. It seems like he doesnt even want this power, just to be with his family again. Surely the Company could have given him the supressant pills and allowed him to live a normal life?

Sorry, probably should have started a new thread but this seemed like a good place to get my thoughts out there.

Repeats - It's only a TV show, it's only a TV show...

it the writers of heroes get enough "we want vortex back" i'm sure he can be written back into the show at some point. the of the better characters lately; the puppetman is cool too. these 2 characters have depth.

Who says he's dead? It would be awesome for him to show up one day and save Claire somehow, then explaining the vortex just landed him in some old abandoned warehouse in New Jersey, or somesuch, with tons of junk that got sucked in their before.

Yeah silly I know, and hard to believe, but so is living with no air, time-travel, "dreams", TK, etc. etc.

Weelll, some things do escape black holes for reasons not yet understood. Every time a BH annihilates matter, jets of powerful X-Rays (EMR I believe) spew from the poles. Matter being converted to energy the black hole has no use for.

But thats another story. Why do they keep killing these people!?!? This was full of *didn't see that one coming* moments. Suicide by vortex was too wicked. Poor Claire, now she sees HRG for what he really is. That just having powers doesn't make a person a monster.

It's not possible that he's just alive and in New Jersey. I'm pretty sure that in the 2 years worth of testing the Company performed on Stephen, some researcher/doctor would have thought to throw a GPS-emitting object into the vortex to see if they could track it.

They probably even asked (or will ask) Molly to see if she could locate the missing neighbor and Stephen himself. That could be the basis of an interesting novel. I'm not sure what her response would have been or will be. One possibility is she would say that he's not on the Earth, then she'd see a star chart and she'd say he's there (pointing to some star), or more likely she'd say he's not there either.

Has anyone else brought up the idea that his ability is to be a human Sliding machine, like from the TV show Sliders? That's my guess as to what happened to him. Though there are many possibilities, winding up in a warehouse in New Jersey (in our own dimension) is probably not one of them.

I like how you assume that the end to the swirling vortex of suck is in New Jersey.

I thought it was an especially dangerous power for either Claire or Sylar to be around. If you can't die, what would happen to you? Would you just be in a state of perpetual limbo?

for me, i thought that stephen's power was one of the best ever created.
i really really really loved his little story in the show and him sacrificing
at the end was truly brilliant writing. i dont think there is an end to
the vortexes, however, what if the future we saw last week was in a vortex?
or something...

yeah i imagine it would be like purgatory

Ok for starters, get off the high horse.
1. Black wholes in Hero verse can be just like many other FICTIONAL black holes. They enable travel through worm holes send particles past the speed of light.
2. you are arguing straight science in a show that has people breaking every other physics law/theory they want to.
3. If you really looked at the "black hole" that he opened it didn't look anything like normal black holes. It had like a blueish storm over it and to my knowledge no theory has storms over usually considered an invisible black hole.