Vreemd toch, onderstaande opmerkingen.
An astronomer, even if he/she works on planetary nebulae, should be
prepared for The Three Questions when meeting anyone from the general
public: (1) Is there life elsewhere in the Universe? (2) What was
there before the Big Bang? (3) What are black holes? The answer to (1)
is YES, but we don't know where yet; the answer to (2) is that such a
question is intrinsically impossible, like the question `what is south
of the South Pole?'; the answer to (3) is found on a vast quantity of Black
Hole Web links. There's much more out there than I have listed, of
course, but I think that these are extremely good ones. By the way,
you can always tell the silly people from the genuinely curious,
because the former always ask `What is the Black Hole?' in the
singular. That is about as bizarre as asking `What is the star?' The
only proper use of `the' in this way is with Winnie (who is, of
course, THE Pooh).