Atom and the Ant

In this brief series of articles I aim outline the current state of knowledge in the theory of black holes. My particular focus is in the area of singularities and the ongoing efforts to remove them and the consequent breakdown in predictability they imply from models of physical black holes. This first article is written from a historical point of view and aims to set the scene for subsequent articles which will present the scope of the problem and the proposed solutions to it. Introduction   Since the early work of Karl Schwarzschild on spherical solutions to Einstein's gravitational field equations, the notion of a black hole has presented a unique set of challenges to modern physics . They often form in the highly col lapsed cores of massive dying stars, where gravity is so extreme that e ven light, moving at its phenomenal speed, cannot escape to reach the eyes of some distant onlooker. This simple fact means that the conventional tools of science, observation and experiment

I have just completed one of my favourite and one of the hardest assignments I've done at university. Now it's submitted and out of the way, I'd like to talk about it. The module in question was about tropical rainforests, and the assignment was to fill in a grant proposal for the Royal Geographical Society. Fake, of course, they weren't forcing us to go on an expedition, but it was the actual form we had to submit. We had complete freedom, we could do it on whatever we liked, the only requirements were that we had to do something new and it had to be related to rainforests. The lecturer was Dr Mika Peck, and after telling us a series of horror stories from his previous trips, told us the one piece of advice that would shape my entire project: take that one thing that you've always wanted to do but never thought you could, and do that.  For me, that meant one thing - crocodilians. For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with crocodiles. This stems from

The Sexist Gene As a biology student, I've had a fair few book recommendations. One that kept cropping up by my university lecturers was Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. Being the good student I am, I bought a cheap copy online and started reading the second it arrived. That was the end of January 2021.     Today's date is the 25th of February 2022. I have just finished it.     I gave up on this book twice, only picking it up again because one of my lecturers loves it so much he based an entire module on it. As a result of this, my memory of the first part of the book is foggy, but I cleared the second half in the past week and I have some thoughts. This is why it took me over a year to read it and why I only rated it two stars. Structure and Writing Style      I've read a lot of scientific texts. By now, I can wade through the technical language and come out the other side with a sound understanding of what was said. Dawkins' book is supposedly written to be acce