Pearl

More photos from Pearl Harbor: Within sight of Missouri is the Submarine Force Museum. Here we can walk the decks of USS Bowfin, a WW2 fleet submarine.

Torpedo room of USS Bowfin.

On Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor is the new Pacific Aviation Museum. Its first phase includes WW2 aircraft like this Japanese Zero.

A B-25 bomber like those which participated in the "Doolittle Raid" over Tokyo.

Pearl Harbor was named for the pearls that were once harvested here. One grain of sand caught within an oyster is enough to start a pearl forming. Our planet Earth may have began with a Black Hole even smaller than a grain of sand. Many billions of such tiny singularities were created in the Big Bang. When our solar system was no more than a diffuse cloud, a number of small Black Holes collided with the gas.

The matter particles of the pre-solar disk were too tiny to form planets on their own, but a Black Hole drew matter like a magnet. Some gas fell into the singularity, causing it to glow red hot. Outward pressure from radiation prevented more gas from being sucked up. Dust gathered around the singularity until it formed a globe of matter with a hot centre. This was the birth of a planet.

Still no larger than a grain of sand, the Black Hole is still at Earth's centre. It consumes no more matter than a human eats, barely a ton per year. This small amount is more than replenished by matter falling to Earth via meteorites. The Black Hole rotates within Earth, dragging charged particles around it to generate a magnetic field. The heat produced by the singularity keeps Earth's core hot. This heat formed continents and continues to create the Hawaiian Islands.

NEXT: On the Big Island, we see results of the Black Hole's heat.