Ask Ethan News Today

"I don't watch it, but I know enough to comment on it." -Dan Quayle

“Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.” -Alfred A. Montapert You might not think of falling into a black hole as a choice, but in the case of this week's Ask Ethan, someone is choosing to explore exactly that!

“All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.” -Cesare Pavese

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." -C. S. Lewis And yet, when you search for the truth, you often find answers that butt up against your sensibilities, your preconceptions, and even your very notions of common sense. Such is the case in this week's Ask Ethan, where longtime reader and commenter MandoZink asks:

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” -Muhammad Ali

“You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 × 10^18 joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.” -Bill Bryson

"There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know." -Lewis Carroll It's the end of the week once again, and so it's time for yet another Ask Ethan column! This week, I was asked a wonderful math question by Keith H., who wanted to know:

“While friendship itself has an air of eternity about it, seeming to transcend all natural limits, there is hardly any emotion so utterly at the mercy of time.” -Robert Hugh Benson If you were headed out into the Universe -- spaceship and sci-fi technology and all -- it simply wouldn't make sense to keep on counting time in Earth-days and Earth-years, would it? When you're no longer bound to our planet, and particularly if you're gone long enough, as our planet changes its orb...

"They will see us waving from such great heights 'Come down now,' they'll say. But everything looks perfect from far away 'Come down now.' But we'll stay." -The Postal Service

The dominating form of energy in the cosmos dark energy is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, but its nature remains a mystery.