Black Holes

Caleb Scharf wrote a book:"Gravity's Engines". It is mainly about the role of black holes in the Universe. I have not finished the book, but I am already inspired to write the following.

Our current perspective of the Universe has an arrow of time. The fundamental equations do not distinguish between past and future. Nevertheless, we do know that the Universe had a beginning, and it seems it will have an end.

In a nutshell, a little more than fourteen billion years ago there was a Big Bang, and according to what Scharf writes, matter ends its life in the black holes inhabiting most of the galaxies in the Universe. What happens in between?

That is where the plot thickens, black holes are the orchestra directors of what happens in this Universe.

According to Scharf most of our Milky Way Galaxy, is not a good place for intelligent life; if you are near the black hole in the center you die, it has a mass of four million times the mass of our Sun. As it happens, our Galaxy is not a good place to be if you are near the edges either, because the black hole in the center is MAKING stars there. The only good place to be is -SURPRISE - just where we are.

I read this, a long time ago somewhere else. Guillermo Gonzalez, originally from Cuba, Peter Ward, and Donald Brownlee presented the idea. This is called the Circumstellar Habitable Zone.

What Scharf is adding, is that the black hole did it!

Curiouser, and curiouser.

BTW, I didn't see Scharf quote my friend Gonzalez.