Ever wondered how to explain primordial and stellar nucleosynthesis to six year olds?

No?

Well on the off chance that you are ever called upon to perform such a duty, let me tell you the best way.

Twilight builds a model of an argon nucleus.

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To one of my past blog posts, Booster Spice gave the random comment:

Dark Energy is Magic?

I can’t remember the context, but I’m taking it as a prompt for this post.

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If there weren’t already enough reasons this year to write a story about apocalyptic visions of a world consumed by darkness, the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez gave me the excuse to write something about black holes. It took me a few weeks to finish it, but I am pleased to have got it done ready for Nightmare Night.

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First of all, watch this if you haven't already.

So basically, according to our current models, the universe will expand forever, all the stars will eventually die, and black holes will be the only noticeable things left. But of course, even black holes are not eternal; over time, they evaporate, and finally disappear in a burst of radiation. The last black holes can be expected to evaporate somewhere shy of a googol years from now.

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