The Start of Something Spectacular
- Mohammed Mehkari
- Oct 9, 2015
- 2 min read

Today is when it all began. I was in my first period physics class, taking notes on the lesson we learned today. Then the classroom phone started ringing in our classroom. My teacher picked up, then told me that my parents were in the office. I was confused, because my parents were on vacation, but I agreed on going to the office to see what was going on. As I walked in, I saw two people; a man and a woman. At first, I was unable to recognize them since their backs were facing me, but as they turned around, I would say that it was the most shocking moment in my life. Dr. Chinmay Patel, an astrophysicist at MIT and Catherine Pan, a research engineer at NASA were waiting for me. It took some time to process what was actually going on, but eventually, I was able to let it all sink in.
I was told that my teacher, Mr. Hill, had given us three months to research a project of our interest. This would be called the “Genius Hour.” Dr. Patel and Dr. Pan knew my deep passion for the study of black holes. This topic would be something we would explore in the upcoming weeks.
We sat down in our physics classroom and discussed the possible areas of this topic that we could explore. It is such a broad concept with so many different theories and ideas that it would be difficult to narrow it down to something specific. Eventually, we were able to come to an agreement to look at the characteristics of a black hole and explore the idea of the extraction of energy from these bodies
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