Black Holes By Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw And Existential Physics By Sabine Hossenfelder 2 Books Collection Set

Science with Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

by Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw, Sabine Hossenfelder

Please Note That The Following Individual Books As Per Original ISBN and Cover Image In this Listing shall be Dispatched

Black Holes By Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw And Existential Physics By Sabine Hossenfelder 2 Books Collection



Black
By the star physicist and author of multiple #1 Sunday Times bestsellers, a major and definitive narrative work on black holes and how they can help us understand the universe. At the heart of our galaxy lies a monster so deadly it can bend space, throwing vast jets of radiation millions of light years out into the cosmos. Its kind were the very first inhabitants of the universe, the black holes. Today, across the universe, at the heart of every galaxy, and dotted throughout, mature black holes are creating chaos. And in a quiet part of the universe, the Swift satellite has picked up evidence of a gruesome death caused by one of these dark powers.



Existential
Do we have free will? Is the universe compatible with God? Do we live in a computer simulation? Does the universe think? Physicists are great at complicated research, but they are less good at telling us why it matters. In this entertaining and groundbreaking book, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder breaks down why we should care. Drawing on the latest research in quantum mechanics, black holes, string theory and particle physics, Existential Physics explains what modern physics can tell us about the big questions.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Space, Astronomy, Audiobook, Stem

560 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2022

About the author

Not to be confused with actor [Author: Brian Cox].

Brian Edward Cox, OBE (born 3 March 1968) is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow, PPARC Advanced Fellow and Professor at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 metres from the interaction points of the main experiments.

He is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC, boosting the popularity of subjects such as astronomy; so is a science popularizer, and science communicator. He also had some fame in the 1990s as the keyboard player for the pop band D:Ream.

Reviews

[Nataliya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s always tempting to bask in the self-congratulatory delusion that if I just really concentrate on something hard enough I’d be able to understand it. But this book proved me wrong from the very first spacetime Penrose diagram that slowly sent my protesting brain over the event horizon and to the singularity while being simultaneously vaporized and spaghettified.

I suppose owning a “Schrödinger’s cat: Wanted dead and alive” t-shirt didn’t actually qualify me to understand this book (although it certainly increased my nerd cred).

And yet I enjoyed it even if a lot of it sailed right over my head, probably at the speed of light, quantumly. The authors are clearly very excited about black holes and did their best to be accessible, and it’s not their fault that when it comes to information of Mona Lisa level my brain gets stuck in an equivalent of a clumsy sidewalk chalk drawing by an overexcited toddler.

But the things that I did understand were quite fascinating, although my brain slid off a few pages that looked like this and gave me a flashback to a college physics textbook that may have caused a few nightmares a couple of decades ago.

(Luckily most pages were NOT like that, and the fascination with black holes has rubbed off on me.)

I would advise a bit of a science background and perhaps a few other easier books in the subject first if you want to get the most out of this book, but if you don’t mind a bit of challenge and denser stuff flying over your non-physicist head then like me, you can brave it, and maybe you’ll like it, too.

3.5 stars.

——————

Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Mark Porton]

I got to around 50% of this book. I borrowed this from my library because I really enjoy Professor Brian Cox's presentations and thought this would be informative and entertaining.

I found it really hard work and not enjoyable and moderately interesting. The physics in the book was complex. The diagrams depicting space-time and black holes were also mind-bending.

However, it is a complex topic to be fair.

DNF - no rating.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘At the heart of the Milky Way, there is a distortion in the fabric of the Universe caused by something 4 million times more massive than our Sun. Space and time are so warped in its vicinity that light rays are trapped if they venture closer than 12 million kilometres. The region of no return is bounded by an event horizon, so named because the Universe outside is forever isolated from anything that happens within. Or so we used to think when the name was coined. We have named it Sagittarius A* and it is a supermassive black hole.’

Not even going to try to pretend like I understood every single thing in this book completely. There are some bits that I have to ‘look up’ to understand better; and a few bits that I was like alright – I will highlight this now, but I’ll come back to it later. But all that I did understand, I enjoyed a great deal of. And besides, it’s Brian Cox – he’s not only brilliant in so many ways, but also extremely ‘cool’? Glad I read this; but I might have to come back to it again at some point. Personally, I just really love reading about space stuff. Even if I don’t fully ‘get it’, it’s just so ‘relaxing’, you know? Am I just being weird about this? This is most likely a 5* book, but I’m only rating it on my own reading experience (including my obvious ignorance to space stuff). If anything, I found the writing very engaging, and I think it could easily appeal to anyone who is willing to put in a little extra effort. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think that this book is only for the space-ey academics; anyone can enjoy it too.

‘In the film Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey dives into a black hole called Gargantua and emerges inside a multi-dimensional reconstruction of his daughter’s bookshelves. That’s not what happens in Nature. But what is the fate of an astronaut who decides to embark on a voyage beyond the horizon into the interior of a black hole? We are now equipped to answer that question for black holes that do not spin, according to general relativity…For our purposes, we are going to recruit three more astronauts to join Red and Blue from the previous chapter in their exploration of the supermassive black hole in M87.’

Also, as a reader who is not using these texts for any academic purposes, I think Cox’s writing is so much easier to ‘digest’ (and much more enjoyable in general) than Hawking’s (only comparing this to a few of Hawking’s books that I’ve previously read). I think it might be important to clarify that – I’m not comparing them based on ‘who’s the better (astro)physicist’ or whose ‘work’ was more ‘important’; but only of whose writing/books I had found more ‘enjoyable’. Hope that helps?

‘But in science, unlike modern-day politics, principles matter. If Hawking was right, black holes would render the Universe fundamentally unpredictable and the foundations of physics would crumble. We now know that Stephen Hawking was wrong – information is not destroyed and physics is safe – as Hawking himself came to accept with delight, not regret, not least because the ongoing programme of research stimulated by his original claim continues to propel us towards a new understanding of space and time and the nature of physical reality.’//

‘Today, the study of black holes appears to be edging us in a new direction, towards a language more often used by quantum computer scientists. The language of information. Space and time may be emergent entities that do not exist in the deepest description of Nature. Instead, they are synthesised out of entangled quantum bits of information in a way that resembles a cleverly constructed computer code. If the Universe is designed, it seems, the designer is a programmer. But we must take care…we are in danger of over-reaching. The role of information science in describing black holes may be pointing us towards a novel description of Nature, but this does not imply we were programmed. Rather we might conclude that the language of computing is well suited to describing the algorithmic unfolding of the cosmos. Put in these terms, there is no greater or lesser mystery here than Wigner’s miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics. Information processing – the churning of bits from input to output – is not a construction of computer science, it is a feature of our Universe. Rather than spacetime-as-a-quantum-computer-code pointing to a programmer, we might instead take the view that earth-bound computer scientists have discovered tricks that Nature has already exploited. Viewed in this way, black holes are cosmic Rosetta Stones, allowing us to translate our observations into a new language that affords us a glimpse of the profoundest reason and most radiant beauty.’//

‘This is the ultimate vindication of research for research’s sake: two of the biggest problems in science and technology have turned out to be intimately related. The challenge of building a quantum computer is very similar to the challenge of writing down the correct theory of quantum gravity. This is one reason why it is vital that we continue to support the most esoteric scientific endeavours. Nobody could have predicted such a link.

‘Be clearly aware of the stars and the infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all’, wrote Vincent van Gogh. The study of black holes has attracted many of the greatest physicists of the last 100 years because physics is the search for both understanding and enchantment. That the quest to understand the infinities in the sky has led inexorably to the discovery of a holographic universe enchanting in its strangeness and logical beauty serves to underline Van Gogh’s insight. Perhaps it is inevitable that human beings will encounter enchantment when they commit to exploring the sublime. But it’s bloody useful too.’

[Aoibheann · Rating 4 out of 5]

So very woman in STEM of me to listen to this while crocheting as a former astrophysicist. I have no idea how anyone who doesn’t have some knowledge of astrophysics and/or maths could ever hope to understand this book, it’s highly technical throughout but there were some witty moments which added some levity

[Mike Futcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether on stage, television or in a podcast, Brian Cox is one of the most approachable science popularisers alive today. And black holes remain some of the most alluring phenomena in astrophysics, which is why it's a surprise that Black Holes, a marriage of a subject that captures our imagination with an author usually so adept at firing our imagination, turned out to be a tough and overly-academic read.

It starts promisingly, with Cox positing that black holes are "cosmic Rosetta stones" (pg. 21) that give us many valuable – and unexpected – scientific insights. They are, the book's subtitle has it, "the key to understanding the universe", and after providing an overview of black hole research, from Einstein to Hawking, Cox leads us deeper into the rabbit hole with discussions of worldlines, the 'Kerr wonderland', quantum gravity and the idea of the universe as a hologram.

Leads us, but soon leaves us behind. I recently attended one of Brian Cox's Horizons Live lectures in Manchester (which I reviewed here), where Cox proved to be engaging and able to explain difficult concepts clearly to a general audience. He was also keen to impress a sense of wonder about the makeup of the universe. This, to my great surprise and dismay, wasn't really replicated in Black Holes, even though the topic was much the same. This book, co-written with Jeff Forshaw, one of Cox's colleagues at the University of Manchester, reads for the most part like a dry textbook for undergraduates. It is packed full of diagrams (moving far beyond the Penrose diagram which Cox utilised in his live show), graphs and equations of rapidly increasing complexity.

Now, as a general rule, whenever someone produces a graph I reach for my revolver, but I imagine even those readers who are more inclined to jump through the various mathematical hurdles Cox and Forshaw erect will find them a bit excessive. I once read a popular science book (The Universe in Your Hand by Christophe Galfard) which gamely introduced the reader to all the wonders of then-contemporary astrophysics with the promise that only one equation (Einstein's famous E=mc2) was needed in order to understand it. Black Holes doesn't do this – not even close – and my eyes began to glaze over every time a new equation was introduced and then explained in a dense and academic series of paragraphs without much in the way of respite.

Very well, you might say – what did you expect? And certainly I didn't go into Cox's book expecting an easy time of it. The topic is an intense and difficult one, even before you get to the cutting-edge stuff which the authors discuss in the final chapters. And yet, it did feel like a textbook, like there might be an exam waiting at the end. "It is worth checking that you understand the diagram well enough… before you read on," Cox writes on page 59. If I had, I might well still be on page 59. I have read – and mostly understood – a fair chunk of popular science in my time, and found this book severely wanting when it came to popular science's most important task: bringing the reader along.

It's a great shame, because the cutting-edge ideas delivered, however imperfectly, in the book are fascinating and profound. The 'Rosetta stone' analogy proves apt, as the authors show that a study of black holes leads us to a greater understanding of the makeup of the universe and the nature of spacetime, gravity and reality itself. This is why, the authors argue at the end of the book, "it is vital that we continue to support the most esoteric scientific endeavours", because no one could have predicted that we would find such links in studying black holes (pg. 263).

It's a fair point, but the book itself doesn't do enough to bring those esoteric ideas into the minds of the mainstream reader, and the impact of this profound discussion is consequently diminished. In the Horizons Live show I attended, Cox joked about performing an 'equation solo' in the arena (which is usually reserved for musical acts), but Black Holes' equations are less a blistering thirty-second solo of astonishing impact and more like those indulgent twenty-minute soloes where you wish the guitarist would bring it home and we can get back to the song itself. Too often, I was left wondering who Cox and Forshaw believed they were talking to in the book – surely they must have noticed many of their readers had fallen behind?

On page 210, the authors write that "there are electrons in your hand and electrons in the Andromeda Galaxy, separated by over 2 million light years, [but] linked through quantum entanglement". It's a good line, and the sort of thing that readers of popular science like myself lap up. But such lines are too rare in Black Holes, which too often forgets to invoke this sense of wonder. It's noteworthy that the page immediately following this line provides not one or two, but four equations. As a science book, I'm sure this must be a remarkable and accurate piece, but as a popular science book, it must be considered something of a failure.

[Célia Loureiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

O grande feito deste livro foi fazer com que uma ex-estudante de Humanidades, que tinha uma vaga ideia de Física, se sentisse apta a responder a um questionário a esse respeito.

Os mistérios do universo - a maravilha do espaço infinito, inexplorado - e do espaço conhecido, que não deixa de fascinar quem se dedica a estudá-lo.

Foi fácil perder-me e sentir-me a flutuar no espaço enquanto trabalhava. Em suma: consegui traduzir e, ainda assim, aprender e maravilhar-me.

A banda sonora do Interstellar ajudou muito a criar o ambiente perfeito para explorar estes temas.

Aconselho MUITO!

[Miglė · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a great overview of “black-hole-history”, starting with theoretical black holes, the discovery and properties of real ones, and further speculation, including what it means for our worldview. It’s a nice book, even though it really lacked the explanatory power of “The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen”, which I loved. In “Black Holes” some topics are only brushed upon, and I wish the authors provided a deeper understanding through metaphors and analogies, which they're great at.

The book starts with an extremely engaging “Brief History of Black Holes”, which got me instantly hooked. The first few chapters explain the idea of spacetime interval, special relativity and spend a lot of time introducing Penrose diagrams. It was really informative and helped a lot with the understanding of the following chapters. There’s time dilation, as well as the twin paradox – I liked the idea that you can “gain time” compared with stationary observers while accelerating, but this also can cut you off from some regions of spacetime (now some ideas in Death's End by Liu Cixin make more sense!). Minkowski spacetime diagrams are however touched upon very briefly, and meeting them again in the later chapters I was a bit confused.

First we learn about theoretical Schwarzschild black holes. They were explored in depth (haha), and some concepts were really challenging (like how space and time change places inside the black hole), but the youtube videos helped making some sense of it. Kerr black holes with their wormholes got me scratching my head though. Following the “Kerr Wonderland” chapter there’s “Real Black Holes from Collapsing Stars” chapter, which got me relieved – thank God the Kerr wonderland isn’t “real”. Or is it? I don’t know.

Then we follow with several challenging, but very interesting chapters on black hole thermodynamics. Black holes are seemingly featureless – just spacetime geometry and mass. So if you throw a high-entropy object into it, the entropy of the universe would decrease? Since it contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, they (Bekenstein) came up with the solution: the information, and so, entropy of infalling objects remain on black hole’s event horizon, inscribed onto it in bits of Planck-length, making black holes the highest-entropy objects in all the universe.

Now, I’m not sure how this works (no shit), but from what I understood, it’s from the point of view of the external observer that information rests on the surface, but maximally-scattered as if the infalling person was vaporized. Meanwhile a person crossing the black hole event horizon would feel nothing out of ordinary (except for being spaghettified), but the spacetime is stretched out so much that the outside observer would never see the infalling person cross the event horizon, so the information about them would rest on the surface? This results in a paradox of essentially creating two copies of the same object / person: one spaghettified, one vaporized. Some say it’s no problem, because they can never meet again, some say otherwise, but I’m not sure I understand exactly what they say lol.

Anyway, now we come to another “real” (in a sense that it was observed) property of black holes - Hawking radiation. Empty space constantly creates pairs of virtual particles, which annihilate each other in a moment. What if this pair was created right on the event horizon? One would lead inside towards singularity, and the other one would remain outside. Then the black holes would emit radiation (in a form of virtual particles), which indeed they do! Yay!

Then another problem – radiation doesn’t carry information, it’s just plain heat. But does that mean that the information about its insides is forever lost? (I don’t fully understand how this relates / doesn’t relate to the event horizon entropy?) Anyway, here the authors speak about the Hawking particles (the virtual pairs) and their entanglement. Quantum entanglement is explained beautifully, and I have a sense it’s the authors’ forte. Anyway, the two particles would be entangled, and one of them escapes, while the other one remains inside the hole. However, black holes are VEEERY VERY slowly evaporating. Would the particles inside it simply disappear, thus breaking quantum entanglement? Or would they evaporate too at some point, following their “siblings”? If so, the entropy of the black hole would start falling at some point, when the escaped particles would start matching their friends from before.

The last few chapters explore the possible ideas of connecting quantum mechanics with gravity, as well as a theory that the world might be a hologram. If all of the contents of a sphere could be completely described by its surface (as in black-hole thermodynamics), then maybe “volume” and “gravity” are secondary properties, that arise only from quantum entanglement interactions on the surface? Surface of what? We don’t know and my head is spinning.

In short, I really liked this book, but wished it had more thorough explanations, and maybe a clearer differentiation of purely theoretical from “verified”, but that might be the noob in me talking. If the same authors were to write a book “Black holes explained very clearly in 500 pages or less”, I would be the first in line to read it.

[Rog the Jammy Dodge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through reading this book I proved (yes I...as in little old me), that Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity is indeed correct. E (my level of enlightenment) was indeed directly related to the mass M (or density of my brain) multiplied by C squared (where C is the speed of light). The more the authors enlightened me about Black Holes, the denser my brain became until I eventually passed through the Event Horizon (my ability to read further) which resulted in a Singularity....or headache.

[Yuli Atta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure how to rate non-fiction books at all but I really enjoyed this one😂🤷🏻‍♀️

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars!

The beginning started strong but there were certain chapters which I preferred over others. I am familiar with some concepts and theories but the lesser known concepts required me to research outside this book.

This is definitely for readers who already have some knowledge on the Schwarzschild Radius, Black Hole Thermodynamics and The Theory of General Relatively.

Overall this book and the theories put forward interested me, especially with our understanding of nature and how space defies this. We cannot apply the usual laws of nature to space and this is a big obstacle to overcome. We have to disregard laws of nature and use our knowledge to explore unfamiliar concepts like Black Holes, Stars and Gravity.

As stated on page 37, "Nature doesn't care about your point of view, and the interval is a fundamental property of Nature".

(For the above quote, the interval relates to the different times and distances measured between events.)

[Laura Hannaway · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointingly I have to concede defeat. This book was just far too complicated for me to get my head around! Generally Cox is really good at simplifying complex ideas but here, except for the odd paragraph or two, he failed. I’m sure this is an excellent text for undergraduates but as a popular science book it fell short.

[Joris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style is clear and accessible, making the complex subject of black holes easy to follow. For me, there wasn’t much new to learn, since I was already familiar with most of the material, but I can see how this book would be a great introduction for readers who want to explore the topic. Scientific research has advanced since the book was published, so some aspects feel a little dated, but the overall explanations still hold up well. In the end, it’s an enjoyable read that shows how fascinating astronomy is.

[Miles Row · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not a light read. More in depth than any TV science stuff which was interesting but not really sure how much I understood.

[Lawrence Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw have written the most challenging book I've ever read, and I loved it.

To be fair, I've always been fascinated with black holes and astronomy in general since I was a little kid. I never thought, with my rather poor grasp of mathematics and statistics that comes with the hard sciences, that I'd ever be able to really understand something as clearly complicated as black holes. Cox and Forshaw have proven that you just need to be a good science communicator to make it happen! This is a trait they share with Paul Davies who wrote "What's Eating the Universe?", which, while challenging, was much easier to digest than this book, and was one of my favorite reads of 2024.

Black holes are incredibly complicated things. We have notions of what they are from grade school science class, tv documentaries, and science fiction. The reality of what they are encompasses so much more than that. They are basically the Rosetta Stone of understanding how the universe works, as displayed in the subtitle of this book: the key to understanding the universe. I didn't realize how true that subtitle would be. It does sound dramatic after all. But it's true, and this book drags you through the last century of physics research to make you understand how.

This book teaches you everything relevant about how the physics of black holes work, without delving in to the math too much (a relief for me and another similarity to Davies' book). But you will learn about Penrose diagrams, Schwarzchild black holes, Kerr black holes, Minkowski diagrams, and a whole bunch of related iconography that goes with the skill (and boy it's a skill that REQUIRES practice) of interpreting spacetime on two-dimensional paper. This is a huge reason why I HIGHLY RECOMMEND if not require that anyone who engages with this book do so with a physical copy, I fear any audiobook listeners will become totally lost unless they keep any accompanying PDF diagrams up constantly.

Along with those graphical representations, you'll be introduced to concepts like the aformentioned spacetime, higher dimensions, lightlike and spacelike infinity, event horizons, general relativity, singularities, wormholes, spinning black holes, Hawking radiation, drama within the theoretical physics community, quantum theory, quantum entanglement, thermodynamics, and a whole host of other things I've already probably forgotten. But it's all there, and somehow, it's all understandable to the layperson due to Cox and Forshaw being excellent writers and interpreters of complicated science. Sure, I got lost a couple of times here and there, but I still understand the gist of what they wanted me to learn, and that's the key.

Now, despite the significant achievement in the translation of highly advanced physics to common-speak, I do think this book will be a challenge to everybody. It kicks your brain in the ass. For some people who aren't used to exercising their minds in a way that breaks your fundamental understanding of how time and space work, I can actually see this as a rather uncomfortable read. But I highly recommend it BECAUSE it kicks your brain in the ass. This book will make you reconsider everything about how the universe works, and that's cool. It might be scary to some, but it's cool. If anything, it fundamentally teaches you how to be okay with saying "I don't know" about the nature of the universe, a skill that I truly believe we need to teach more people about.

A super high recommend to me for mostly everyone, but especially anyone interested in science, and definitely anyone interested in physics or astronomy. This book has inspired me to do more reading on quantum physics, a great next step in which I'll hopefully find an equally approachable book somewhere.

[Wynand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prachtig boek dat beschrijft hoe de natuurkunde van zwarte gaten verweven is met de wiskunde van quantum computing. Ook zonder de wiskunde te begrijpen, goed te volgen. De beschrijving van de formule voor de temperatuur van een zwart gat is natuurlijk ook superhandig om te hebben voor als je ooit in de buurt bent.

[Joshua Houghton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read, I found this book completely fascinating. The reality of these things is really more incredible than any sci-fi novel you could find.
That said, it's not for everyone thanks to being a little technical in places by necessity

[Andi · Rating 3 out of 5]

sorry brian, not a clue what you were talking about until thermodynamics and then you lost me again at holographic principle

[Michael Doubek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be rereading This book as it felt to me like one of the most simple and complex books on black holes , that neither made me feel smart or dumb. I would highly recommend, and challenging folks to keep reading it over time.

[francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

my head hurts

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable and up-to-date. I especially appreciated the clear explanations of Penrose diagrams and their use to explain different types of black holes. The last three chapters, however, concerning the relationship between quantum entanglement and spacetime were something of a slog. I'd like to see another book that gave those topics a clearer treatment.

[Angus Crawford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting, but have to confess I only understood about 5 % . A good reminder of the incredibly complex, interlinked and fascinating world we live in explained probably as simply as it could be which was still really really complicated.

[Daragh Haughton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and well written, very helpful diagrams and analogies.

Explains lots of different areas of science from quantum computing to cosmology, I loved it.

[Ajith Ashokkumar (LordOfBooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blackholes are fascinating. These mysterious objects out there play an important role in the shape and design of this universe. After the movie Interstellar, this Blackhole thing haunts my mind. Wanted to know more and more about this nature's wonder.

In this book "Blackholes,the key to understanding the Universe,” authors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw provided a captivating and insightful exploration of this nature's mysterious creations - blackholes.

Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, developed in 1915, laid the theoretical foundation for the existence of black holes. The equations of general relativity describe how matter and energy influence the curvature of spacetime, and they predict the formation of singularities, regions where gravity becomes infinitely strong, as in the center of black holes.

Stephen Hawking, in the 1970s, made significant contributions to the understanding of black holes. His work on black hole thermodynamics and the concept of Hawking radiation revolutionized our understanding of these cosmic entities. Hawking radiation theorizes that black holes are not entirely black; they can emit radiation and gradually lose mass over time.

In the 1930s, the proud Indian, the scientist from Chennai, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar developed the concept of the "Chandrasekhar limit," which describes the maximum mass that a white dwarf star can achieve without collapsing into a neutron star or a black hole. Chandrasekhar's work laid the groundwork for understanding the conditions under which massive stars can evolve into black holes, contributing significantly to the theoretical framework of stellar astrophysics and the formation of black holes.

It's not just Einstein, Hawking, and Chandrasekhar. Many other scientists have played a part in studying black holes. This book goes into detail about different studies done in this area, providing a lot of information. Reading this book will help you understand black holes better.

“Einstein was wrong when he said, ‘God does not play dice’. Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen” !!! -
Stephen Hawking.

[Jestin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brian Cox delivers a tantalizing glimpse into the mysteries of black holes, all while weaving in the essential mathematics that grounds it in rigor. I must confess, I dove into this book solely based on glowing reviews, without peeking at the contents first. What I found was a profound exploration of black holes as the very foundation of our universe one that demanded I reread each page three or four times to fully absorb the intricate descriptions and equations. As someone who works in finance but has long harbored a passion for the cosmos and the stars, I've devoured science books before. Yet those were always distilled to their basics, enriched with vivid examples that made the concepts easy to visualize.
A physics major might glide through the formalism with ease, but for the rest of us stargazers? Expect a rewarding wrestle, two or three passes to unlock the full symphony of ideas Professor Cox conducts so masterfully.
This isn't a flaw, it's the book's quiet genius. It respects your curiosity enough to challenge you, emerging not as a gentle primer but as an invitation to think like a scientist. If you're ready to trade easy epiphanies for profound ones, Black Holes will leave you forever altered, gazing at the night sky with eyes wide to its hidden architecture. Highly recommended for the bold hearted explorer in all of us.

[Anthony M · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is that time of month again when I write a book review for a book that I chose to read out of an obligation to read it. This month, I chose to read Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe by Brian Cox. Recently in my Physics class, we had a short unit on Black Holes, which intrigued me, so when I saw this book, that interest sparked. Right after opening the book, on the backside of the cover, the book claims it’s “the key to understanding the universe.” This is immediately a red flag considering in Physics we learned how little humans understand the universe, so I doubt this book will fix that. This book does go deeper into Black Holes then we went in physics, and instead of talking about Black Holes in a more general way, it will explain some of the little things that make Black Holes different from one another. There are also equations through out the book, some of which I understand from Physics, others are way beyond my comprehension. Overall this is a decent book, but I will rank it 3.5 out of 5 stars for the lie that this book is “the key to understanding the universe.” I don’t care if some of the top experts in Black Holes helped write this book, they still don’t completely understand the universe.

[George Hetherington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Off to contemplate the tangibility of reality. Hopefully the CFTs entangled at the boundary of the universe that encode and manifest the spacetime in which I exist aren’t destroyed in the meantime.
Quite enjoyed learning concepts such as Black Hole complementarity and the RT conjecture. Thermodynamics of black holes, ER bridges, even coming to understand Penrose diagrams.
I won’t be making a quantum computer anytime soon but the revelation that most of the interior of an old (later than the Page Time) black hole actually lies on the outside - with entangled Hawking Radiation escaping from within via a network of wormholes has truly blown my mind.
I need to lie down - loved every second of this book

[Dennis Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I understand why the book is titled in such a way. At first, I thought it was just a catchy title to attract readers. But, by the end of this book, you will understand, why black holes are indeed the key to understanding the Universe.

The author starts from a simple theoretical eternal non-spinning black hole, Schwarzschild's solution of Einstein's General Relativity. This is a bit unusual start (at least for me, a nonphysicist who learn only from popular science book), because I always learn about a black hole from a physical process (the collapse of a star), not a purely theoretical one like Schwarzschild's. But it is intriguing, to learn purely theoretical black holes derived only from Einstein's General Relativity. And, I didn't expect that I would learn the Penrose diagram to understand the infinities of spacetime.

With this book, we will explore the possibilities of the interior of a black hole, starting from Schwarzschild's eternal and non-spinning black hole, Kerr's eternal and spinning black hole, Hawking's non-eternal (radiating) black hole, until the duality of our reality: the Holographic Principle. I can't hold my excitement when the author introduces Quantum Computing with its relationship with the Holographic Principle to simulate our spacetime reality. It is new information for me, and it is mind-blowing.

This book, however, requires you to trust the math behind all the black hole physics and their interpretation. The author did write some equations but it is in the simplest form. There is no detail on the derivation (of course, because this is not a textbook), so we need to trust what the author said. As weird as it may seem, they did the math, experiment, and research more than I did. Hence, I trust them.

[Walden Effingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I should start my review by pretending that I understood all of this? Nope , I did my best. I concentrated really hard, I re-read sections.....
I probably understood some of it.... I suspect undergraduates in physics may have more luck.
However, if you let some of the later chapters wash over you , you do get an appreciation of the potential excitement of black hole physics and its implications for cutting edge quantum physics and cosmology.
Having heard the audiobook of E=mc2 , I wonder how much of this book is Brian Cox, and that perhaps more of it is Jeff Forshaw?
In the end : disappointingly bamboozled.....I was left wondering that there may be easier books to follow?
So, 3 stars : give it a go if you're either at degree level physics, or wanting a challenge....(I must say, I saw the recommendation of Jeremy Vine for the book (in the blurb) as being an indication of a challenge that needed to be taken up! Jeremy Vine must be a better man than me!)

[Jessada Karnjana · Rating 5 out of 5]

ประทับใจความพยายามอธิบายหลุมดำด้วย Penrose diagram และสมการต่าง ๆ ซึ่งลึกมาก สำหรับ pop science และอธิบายได้ชัดเจน แสดงให้เห็นถึงการวางแผน การ organize โครงสร้างของบทต่าง ๆ อย่างดี เพิ่งรู้สึกว่าตัวเองเข้าใจ black hole complementarity กับ information paradox ขึ้นมาหน่อยก็จากเล่มนี้ เพิ่งอินกับคำถามว่าหลุมดำทำลาย information มั้ย และพอจะเชื่อมโยงให้เห็นภาพรวมได้ หนังสือได้ให้สิ่งที่ผู้อ่านคาดหวังจากปกได้แบบเต็ม ๆ ผู้เขียนตั้งใจอธิบายจริง คนอ่านต้องตั้งใจคิดตามภาพที่ถูกบรรยาย สองบทสุดท้ายยากจนปวดหัว พูดถึง hologram กับ Anti-de Sitter spacetime ยังไม่เข้าใจ แต่อ่านแล้วสนุก และน่าตื่นเต้น

[Jimmy Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a master student in theoretical physics that wanted to better understand the connection between information theory and gravity. This is discussed at the end of the book.

The beginning of the book offered a nice refresher of concepts in black holes and I would definitely recommend the book in case you’re looking for that.

The end of the book I am slightly dissapointed with because it feels rather rushed. Though it still offers some nice conceptual insights into the matter.