I didn’t realize that Stephen Hawking was most famous for proving that black holes violated the rules of quantum mechanics. Honestly, I only knew that he did work with black holes. I did see the movie The Theory of Everything but that didn’t really outline much.
I also didn’t realize the definition of a star was a bunch of nuclear explosions contained by gravity. The fact that black hole formation actually relies on violations of the Pauli-exclusion principle is something I didn’t expect to be brought up, but makes sense. Black hole formation seems to include so many relatively simple physics and chemistry concepts that come together in a crazy way. I have heard of Hawking radiation but had no idea what it was. I had a huge “OHHH” moment after he did the math and showed what it was. It was so cool!
It’s nice to know that our sun will not become a black hole. I don’t know why that’s comforting to me, but it is.
After reading the middle section of Bryson’s book I realize we have way more to worry about than the sun becoming a black hole 😀