B18: Hungry Skies

The article “Star Eater” about black holes and the idea of time was super interesting. The author brought up the physics and facts that are not common knowledge and helped the reader understand the extent of amazingness using comparisons. For example, relating the energy of an atomic bomb to the energy that would be generated from a marshmallow coming in contact with a neutron star’s gravitational pull. By making other comparisons to familiar objects, such as “crumbs on a table cloth after a hearty meal,” “smaller than an eyeball,” “a separate bubble in the Swiss cheese of reality,” and “sugar-cube-size fragment,” the author pulls off making this prickle-filled article understandable and engaging. Another technique I noticed is that the author seems to keep his paragraphs short and sweet. If the author had written long paragraphs, the reading would have felt like it dragged on and the reader might have felt as though they were increasingly likely to get lost in the author’s lengthy writing. Another way to keep the readers engaged was that the author only shared the facts that were necessary and avoided dragging on and on as that may cause the readers to lose interest. The reader kept terms common while still appropriate and correct for the science he was discussing. The author also debunked some false statements, which I found interesting and valuable. The author addresses Huxley’s three directions and by heading towards the universal, he engages society/his readers with his topic. Since this was a researched article, providing information about the history of this idea of “black holes” added to the overall topic. The information about Einstein accounting for, but not allowing himself to believe that black holes exist added some comfort to me as a reader because black holes are complex and complicated to describe and define or imagine, so the fact that Einstein and many other physicists could not wrap their heads around the concept of black holes was comforting. It is paradox how much we know, yet how little we know about something that has never been seen (in action) by the human eye. 

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