What if such tiny black holes are relatively plentiful but too small to be a major threat in terms of sucking in whole planets?  Maybe they can only suck in whole atoms...or dark matter...

What if they could warp space-time in such a way that a loop is created, bringing a point in time in the past close to a point in time in the present?

Could this, I wondered, explain hauntings and ghostly apparitions?  After all, behind every fantastic myth there lies a tiny grain of truth, distorted.

It was only a short hop from that to the thought that the huge coils used in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) - what used to be called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance before everyone took fright at the word 'nuclear' - could, if over-revved along with the imagination, create an artificial miniature black hole.

I had a very peripheral involvement in some of the early research using NMR coils, and a friend of mine (Howie Rowe) was involved in their manufacture.  Howie had some interesting stories about the testing of the coils, and another friend, the late John Bradley, also had some interesting stories about using the machines in a clinical setting.

Putting all of that together with my time at Oxford - both as a resident in and around Oxford and as a member of staff of the University of Oxford - gave me the basic storylines for this dark tale.

For some reason, as I wrote the treatment I saw Jodie Foster as the female lead (and possibly director) and Johnny Depp as the male lead...

I also see it as a book, and while I don't know yet if I'm capable of writing a script that is good enough, I do feel confident that I could write the book.