Our universe is actually the inside of a giant black hole, located in another universe. This idea is a result of the author's decades-long commitment to a public observatory. He came frequently in contact with the public, which is often fascinated by cosmology. A recurring theme is the big bang: common sense revolts against it, and the witty one-liner in the beginning there was nothing, which exploded (Terry Pratchet) caches much of it. Even if physics manages to explain the singularity with a new theory, why did it happen then, and not now, or anytime? In this book the big bang 'of creation' is eliminated altogether. Instead, it places the origin of our universe in a very distant past, as the creation of a black hole in a 'mother universe', acquiring mass by infall from our 'mother universe'. In turn, the black holes in our universe are possibly then the seeds of new universes. The book also holds a surprise: under certain conditions matter can escape from a black hole! This work does not fundamentally challenge conventional cosmology, nor does it require new physics either: conventional general relativity suffices. Anybody with some notions of that great theory can read it. Skryť popis