FOLDING THE EARTH IN HALF

[The astrophysicist Shep] Doeleman said a black hole formed from folding the Earth in half could power Manhattan for a year. -The Harvard Gazette, May 13, 2022.

- IAN FRAZIER

Yes, there are trade-offs. We discovered that. Trade-offs not only in astrophysics but in life.

I remember Shep became interested in folding planets in half when we were in high school. He got kicked off the tennis team for folding the tennis balls. We'd show up for practice and unfold them. You squeeze them and they pop back out. That was the moment of inspiration—that popping sound. Shep said, Do you have any idea how much energy is being released?” To me, it seemed like only a modest amount, but he said, Just one tennis ball, folded in half, could power this watch for almost half an hour!” He was still wearing a windup watch at the time.

Nobody else had his vision. He was the first to demonstrate the theoretical possibility of giant atomic-powered hands. Now you see these hands everywhere, but back then they were unthinkable, revolutionary. We both attended Princeton, and one day I was sitting in the school cafeteria which we called the Caf) when Shep burst in waving pages of calculations that he said proved you could build these hands. Make them big enough, he continued excitedly, and they would even be able to fold the moon in half, which could produce enough energy to run the entire Tokyo subway system for seven weeks.