Ray

“Your genome is the totality of your DNA, 3 billion letters of it, and due to the way it comes together – by the mysterious (from a biological point of view) business of sex – it is unique to you. Not only is this genetic fingerprint yours alone, it’s unlike any other of the 107 billion people who have ever lived. That applies even if you are an identical twin, whose genomes begin their existence indistinguishable, but inch away from each other moments after conception. In the”
― Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes

“Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.”
― Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

“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

“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