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Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space QUOTES

Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space QUOTES

1 " An idea sparked in the 1960s, a thought experiment, an amusing haiku, is now a thing of metal and glass. "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

2 " Joe’s scientific life is defined by these significant near misses… He was Shackleton many times, almost the first: almost the first to see the big bang, almost the first to patent the laser, almost the first to detect gravitational waves. Famous for nearly getting there. "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

3 " Somewhere in the universe two black holes collide — as heavy as stars, as small as cities, literally black (the complete absence of light) holes (empty hollows). Tethered by gravity, in their final seconds together the black holes course through thousands of revolutions about their eventual point of contact, churning up space and time until they crash and merge into one bigger black hole, an event more powerful than any since the origin of the universe, outputting more than a trillion times the power of a billion Suns. The black holes collide in complete darkness. None of the energy exploding from the collision comes out as light. No telescope will ever see the event. "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

4 " In the far future, which promises to be vastly longer than our past (like a googolplex of years to our future versus 13.8 billion years to our past), all of the stars in the universe will have run out of fuel. Those that can will collapse to black holes; eventually everything will fall into stellar-mass black holes, and those black holes will fall into supermassive black holes, and then all of the black holes in the universe will eventually vaporize into Hawking radiation. This will take a very long time. ("Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.") All of the Hawking radiation will dissipate in an ever-expanding cosmos, unable to fill the swelling void, and the light in the universe will go out. Eventually, ever particle will find itself alone, no bright sky above, no luminous solar systems below. For now, we're here and the skies are bright, if somewhat quite. The gamble is that the skies aren't silent. "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

5 " The collapsing star pushes past the resistance of crushed electrons, past the resistance of the neutrons. When the stellar material is compressed enough, the curves in spacetime around the collapsing mass become so sharp that even light can be caught in orbit. As collapse continues, light cannot escape the surface, as though the spacetime spills behind the crushed material faster than light can race outward. A horizon defining the region of no return, the event horizon, is inscribed in the very geometry of spacetime. The event horizon casts a lightless shadow, and a black hole has formed. The black hole is not a star anymore. It’s not really even a thing. The pulverized matter that cast the shadow of the event horizon continues to fall and is gone. The black hole is nothing but its shadow. Wheeler "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

6 " quotidian "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

7 " An experimental physics lab is probably unlike any other room you’ve been in before. The lighting is harsh, of course, aggressively bright and beyond the reach of aesthetic concerns. There are sounds of machines, a harmonic hum, sometimes just from fans on computer equipment as opposed to any motorized parts. There’s never any bespoke sound absorbers, so the machines have a sonic clarity that seems intentional, cranked up for some postindustrial experimental orchestra. "

― Janna Levin , Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space