Ray

“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

“A gene encodes a phenotype – that is, the physical manifestation of a piece of DNA – and differences in those physical manifestations in a population are visible to nature as a means of selecting what works better. The gene that encodes that phenotype is what is transmitted from generation to generation, the unit of inheritance. A gene for processing goat’s milk after weaning was selected in humans over a gene that did not permit digestion of a nutritious drink. Individuals are merely carriers of genes, which drive the necessity of procreating simply so that the existence of the gene is perpetuated.”
― Adam Rutherford, The Book of Humans: A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us

“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

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