"Paul J. McAuley - How we Lost the Moon - A True Story by Frank W. Allen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

It took two more months.

As the end neared, the MoonтАЩs surface split into short-lived plates
afloat on a wholly molten mantle, with lava-filled rifts opening and scabbing
over and re-opening along their edges. There were frantic attempts to
insure that the popu-lation of the EarthтАЩs southern hemisphere would all
have some kind of shelter, for the Moon would be in the sky above the
Pacific in its final hour. Those unlucky or stubborn enough to remain outside
saw the Moon rise for the last time, half-full, the dark part of her disk riven
with glowing cracks which spread as the black hole sucked in exponentially
increasing amounts of matter. And then there was a terrific flare of light,
brighter than a thousand suns. Those witnesses who had not been blinded
saw that the Moon was gone, leaving expanding shells of luminous gas
around a fading image trapped at the edge of the black holeтАЩs event
horizon, and a short-lived accretion disk as ejected material spiraled back
into the black hole, which, although it massed the same as the Moon it had
devoured, had an event horizon circumference of less than a millimeter.

The radiation pulse was mostly absorbed by the EarthтАЩs atmosphere;
the orbit of the space station had been altered so that it was in opposition
when the Moon vanished. I was aboard it at the time, and spent the next six
months helping repair satellites whose circuits had been fried.

There are still tides, of course, for the same amount of mass still
orbits the Earth. Marine organisms which synchronized their reproduction by
the MoonтАЩs phases, such as horseshoe crabs, corals, and palolo worms,
were in danger of extinction, but a cooperative mission by NASA and the
Russian and European space agencies lofted a space mirror which reflects
the same amount of light as the Moon, and even goes through the same
phases. ThereтАЩll be a big problem in 5 X 10 43 years, when by loss of mass
through Hawking radiation the black hole finally becomes small enough to
begin its runaway evaporation. But long before then the sun will have
evolved into a white dwarf and guttered out; even its very protons will have
decayed. The black hole will be the last remnant of the solar system in a
cooling and vastly expanded universe.

There are various proposals to make use of the black hole тАФas the
ultimate garbage disposal device (I want to be well away from the solar
system when they try that), or as an interstellar signaling device, for if it can
be made to bob in its orbit (perhaps by putting another black hole in orbit
around it), it will produce sharply focused gravity waves of tremendous
amplitude. Meanwhile, it will keep the physicists busy for a thousand years.
Mike is working at one of the stations which orbit beyond its event horizon. I
keep in touch with him by E-mail, but the correspondence is becoming
more and more infrequent as he vanishes into his own personal event
horizon.
 As for me, IтАЩm heading out. The space program has realigned its
goals, and it turns out that the black hole retained the MoonтАЩs rotational
energy, so it provides a useful slingshot for free acceleration. After all,
there are plenty of other moons in the solar system, and most are far more