This essay is one of the five winners in the 2019 writing competition held by the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University. "The Black Hole Initiative offers a unique environment for thinking about the topic of black holes more creatively and comprehensively," says BHI director, Avi Loeb. To add context to the exciting April 10 announcement that astronomers have observed a black hole for the first time, this week Nautilus is featuring all five winning essays. The way up and the way down are one and the same," says the Sage. Paradox has a way of plaguing thought.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Today's newsroom and any business incentives. Nothing gets me more excited for the weekend than finding a good deal on Amazon. Not only am I saving money, but with Prime shipping, I can have it on my doorstep on Saturday or Sunday--which is even more reason to celebrate. There are hundreds of deals to choose from, which makes it a little more tricky to decide if things are actually a good deal and not just a bad product at a good price or a good product at a not-so-great price.

Hyundai's Digital Key allows drivers to unlock and start their car with a smartphone using near-field communication technology. It will debut on the 2020 Hyundai Sonata. Self-driving cars are coming – someday. But for now, carmakers and suppliers are focused on technologies that improve vehicle safety, security and convenience. With the 2019 New York Auto Show set to begin next week with media previews, car companies are looking for ways to stand out from the competition in an era when quality and reliability are similar across brands.

When Uber filed the paperwork for its initial public offering on Thursday, the quintessential bad boy startup signaled to the world that it was ready to grow up. In a letter to potential investors, the CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, acknowledged the "greater responsibilities" the company will take on once it goes public, and promised to act with "passion, humility, and integrity". But references to the company's checkered past are littered throughout the more than 300 pages of public disclosures filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here's a rundown of some of the biggest "risk factors" from Uber's past that may come back to haunt its $100bn future: When Uber's ride-share rival Lyft went public with its own pre-IPO disclosures in March, its "unique culture" was referenced as a positive aspect of the company dozens of times; any possible loss of that culture in the future was identified as a risk factor. For Uber, the challenge is the opposite.

Contemporary Christianity does not have a reputation as a vanguard of technological sophistication, or even enthusiasm. Sure, many churches have embraced smartphones' abilities to spread their messages, for example. But Christian institutions are not often leading the big conversations about technology and culture. Traditional theist religions have "turned from a creative into a reactive force," as historian Yuval Noah Harari put it in his 2016 book, Homo Deus. "They now mostly agonize over the technologies, methods and ideas propagated by other movements."

NASA has announced a new round of funding for 18 futuristic projects that could help propel humans further into our solar system and beyond. Many of the ideas'sound like the stuff of science fiction,' the agency acknowledged, but they're not too crazy to one day become a reality. Among those that received funding are micro-probes that take after spiders to safely fly through the air, as well as a futuristic'smart suit' with self-healing skin to protect astronauts. Among those that were funded are micro-probes that take after spiders to safely fly through the air, as well as a futuristic'smart suit' with self-healing skin to protect astronauts (pictured) The cutting edge technologies are part of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, which awards applicants up to $500,000 to develop their ideas. There are 12 Phase I ideas, like the smart suit, which are awarded $125,000 over nine months.

Space is the final frontier for understanding how extreme environments affect human physiology. Following twin astronauts, one of which spent a year-long mission on the International Space Station, Garrett-Bakelman et al. examined molecular and physiological traits that may be affected by time in space (see the Perspective by Löbrich and Jeggo). Sequencing the components of whole blood revealed that the length of telomeres, which is important to maintain in dividing cells and may be related to human aging, changed substantially during space flight and again upon return to Earth. Coupled with changes in DNA methylation in immune cells and cardiovascular and cognitive effects, this study provides a basis to assess the hazards of long-term space habitation. Science, this issue p. eaau8650; see also p. 127 To date, 559 humans have been flown into space, but long-duration ( 300 days) missions are rare (n 8 total). Long-duration missions that will take humans to Mars and beyond are planned ...

In science news around the world, Sydney Brenner, the Nobel laureate who made seminal discoveries in genetics and developmental biology, dies at age 92. Japan's Hayabusa2 mission continues its novel exploration of the asteroid Ryugu by blowing a crater in it so the spacecraft can collect samples; scientists are eager to study material from beneath the surface that has not undergone eons of space weathering. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has begun to restrict visitors from certain countries at its campus in Bethesda, Maryland, for national security reasons, sparking concerns from its staff scientists. Only 10 days after Google created an eight-member external advisory council on the ethics of artificial intelligence research, the company pulled the plug last week amid controversy over the views and affiliations of the council's members. The use of chemicals to disperse oil spills largely doesn't create a mixture more toxic than the oil itself, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reports.

The year of the gig economy IPO continues, when Uber Thursday made public its first bit of official paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission--a sign that the tech company is preparing to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The filing shows a sprawling transportation business with operations stretching into 63 countries and over 700 cities, providing 5.2 billion rides in 2018: roughly one for every person in Europe and Asia. Uber pulled in $11.3 billion in revenue in 2018, a 42 percent jump over the year previous. And though its operating losses are still heavy--$3 billion in 2018--the company has managed to stem them, at least a bit, bringing operating losses down from $4.1 billion in 2017. Uber had 91 million active users at the end of 2018, 23 million more than a year earlier.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang appeared on "Fox and Friends" Friday morning to defend his campaign's key proposal of giving $12,000 to each American adult every year and criticized Democrats for their newfound support for the abolition of the Electoral College. Yang, former ambassador of global entrepreneurship in the Obama administration and a long-shot candidate for the party's nomination, was grilled by the show hosts and the audience about his universal basic income program, dubbed "Freedom Dividend," and his other views. "You have to look up who are going to be the biggest winners from artificial intelligence and self-driving cars and trucks and new technologies. The American people are gonna see very little of the gains in the innovation," said Yang. "The American people are gonna see very little of the gains in the innovation." He added that due to an increasing automation, "most of us" won't work at Amazon or other companies, leaving the rest of the people at a disadvantage because their source of income will disappear.