Star Trek: 10 Strangest Space Anomalies You May Have Forgotten

Quantum singularities are a broad category of phenomena in both Star Trek and other science fiction. The name is typically used to describe something similar to real-life black holes, but mixed with whatever sci-fi mumbo jumbo the writers need to move the story along. In fact, the terms are used interchangeably at times, so the distinction is not very clear.

The Voyager crew encountered many quantum singularities during their time in the Delta Quadrant, but all were incredibly different. In the episode Parallax, a quantum singularity created severe time distortion and a mirror image of the ship, causing them to fly in and get stuck while investigating it. In Hunters, the Hirogen relay station was found to be powered by a quantum singularity (as were Romulan Warbirds in the Next Generation episode Face Of The Enemy).

But the most well-known use of quantum singularities are as inter-dimensional portals to fluidic space, the organic realm inhabited by Species 8472. The Voyager episode Scorpion was the first time we saw these anomalies used as gateways to other dimensions. We know that typical black holes are the densest objects in the universe, so perhaps the gravity of a quantum singularity is so strong that it can actually punch through the fabric of spacetime from one universe to another.