Μαύρες Τρύπες: Η μεγάλη περιπέτεια μιας ανατρεπτικής επιστημονικής ιδέας

by Marcia Bartusiak, Νέστορας Χούνος (translator), Παναγιώτης Δρεπανιώτης (translator)

Ο νομπελίστας φυσικός Κιπ Θορν δήλωσε κάποτε ότι οι μαύρες τρύπες φαίνεται να ταιριάζουν περισσότερο στην επιστημονική φαντασία και τη μυθολογία παρά στον αληθινό κόσμο. Δεν είχε άδικο. Οι μαύρες τρύπες είναι τα πιο αλλόκοτα αντικείμενα στο σύμπαν, αλλά βεβαίως και τα πιο συναρπαστικά. Στη γειτονιά τους, ο χώρος και ο χρόνος δεν έχουν καμιά σχέση με ό,τι γνωρίζουμε από τη γαλήνια ουράνια μηχανική του Νεύτωνα. Αντίθετα, συμπεριφέρονται με τρόπο που αψηφά κάθε ανθρώπινη εμπειρία: δημιουργούν μια απύθμενη άβυσσο απ’ όπου δεν ξεφεύγει τίποτα – ούτε καν το φως. Δεν είναι παράξενο, λοιπόν, που φυσικοί και αστρονόμοι –με προεξάρχοντα τον Αϊνστάιν– αρνούνταν τόσο πεισματικά να δεχτούν την ύπαρξή τους, πριν τελικά οι όποιες αντιρρήσεις καμφθούν και οι μαύρες τρύπες γίνουν αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι του τρόπου με τον οποίο σήμερα βλέπουμε το σύμπαν. Τον Απρίλιο του 2019, η διεθνής επιστημονική ομάδα που συνεργάζεται στο πλαίσιο του τηλεσκοπίου EHT ανακοίνωσε ένα αδιανόητο επίτευγμα. Είχε κοιτάξει στην «καρδιά» του γαλαξία Messier 87, περίπου 50000000 έτη φωτός από τη Γη, και, αξιοποιώντας την τεχνική της ραδιοσυμβολομετρίας, κατέγραψε κάτι μοναδικό: τη «σκιά» που ρίχνει μια μαύρη τρύπα πάνω στον λαμπρό δίσκο προσαύξησης που την περιβάλλει. Η μορφή και η φωτεινότητα της σκιάς αυτής για άλλη μια φορά συμφωνούσαν με τις προβλέψεις της Γενικής Θεωρίας της Σχετικότητας. Το σκοτεινό, ακατανόητο, απαράδεκτο τέρας εκεί έξω είναι πλέον πρακτικά ορατό! Και συμπεριφέρεται ακριβώς όσο εξωφρενικά προβλέπει η θεωρία…

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

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2015

About the author

Combining her skills as a journalist with an advanced degree in physics, Marcia Bartusiak (pronounced MAR-sha Bar-TOO-shack) has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for three decades. Currently, she is a visiting professor with the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bartusiak is the author of Thursday's Universe, a layman's guide to the frontiers of astrophysics and cosmology, Through a Universe Darkly, a history of astronomers' centuries-long quest to discover the universe's composition, and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, about the on-going attempt to detect gravity waves, the last experimental test of Einstein's theory of general relativity. All three were named notable science books by The New York Times. She also co-authored A Positron Named Priscilla, a National Academy of Sciences book on cutting-edge science. Her latest books are Archives of the Universe, a history of the major discoveries in astronomy told through 100 of the original scientific publications, and The Day We Found the Universe.

Graduating in 1971 with a degree in communications from American University in Washington, D.C., Bartusiak first spent four years as a TV reporter and anchorwoman in Norfolk, Virginia. Assignments at the nearby NASA Langley Research Center sparked a love for science news, which encouraged her to enter Old Dominion University for a master's degree in physics. Her research involved the effects of radiation on materials sent into space as parts of orbiting astronomical observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Ultraviolet Explorer.

Starting her science-writing career as an intern at Science News and then as a charter member of Discover's writing staff, she continues to write about astronomy and physics in a variety of national publications. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Science, Popular Science, World Book Encyclopedia, Smithsonian, and Technology Review. For many years a contributing editor at Discover, she is now on the editorial advisory board of Astronomy magazine. She has also reviewed science books for both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Bartusiak was awarded the distinguished 2006 Andrew W. Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics, a prize given annually by the AIP to recognize "significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics," and in 2008 was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1982, she was the first woman to receive the AIP Science Writing Award and won the award again in 2001 for Einstein's Unfinished Symphony. She was also a finalist in NASA's Journalist-in-Space competition. For the 1994-95 academic year, she was a Knight Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Marcia Bartusiak lives with her husband, mathematician Steve Lowe, and their dog Hubble in Sudbury, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

Reviews

[John Gribbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marcia Bartusiak has an impressive track record for writing about the development of astronomical ideas. This time, for the centenary of the general theory of relativity she covers the history of black holes, from Isaac Newton up to date, and all in just over 200 pages. She introduces the topic step by step, the way astronomers discovered it, from white dwarf stars and neutron stars to black holes themselves, via supernovae and pulsars. With no equations, this is an easy read that provides insight into the way that scientists work and think, as well as into the mysterious subject matter of the title. And I was surprised to find out who really was the first person to use the term in an astronomical context.

[Ariyan Abidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

هرچيزى رو كه از قبل ميدونستم و تو كتاباى ميچيو كاكو خونده بودم فهميدم و هرچيزي رو قبلا نخونده بودم نفهميدم. نميدونم مشكل از منه يا كتاب. به احتمال زياد هر دو

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent, but somewhat lifeless. Good for tracing the history of a single concept.

[Renay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice, light overview of the discovery of black holes. There are, however, gaping holes in the commentary the author provides, like when an Indian scientist comes up with a solid theory and his white colleague humiliates him in public, driving him away from the topic for decades; the tone is very "ha ha quirky scientists!" instead of "wow, there is some racism happening here!". The narrative is full of sexist metaphors and the author seems to find it funny that Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking bet "racy magazines" over the existence of black holes instead of pointing out it's kind of crass for men to offer objectified women as a prize for scientific discoveries. She was all "and Thorne's wife was super bummed when Thorne won that Penthouse subscription!!!" :| :| :| :| :| :| :| :| :|

So this is definitely a book that is meant to impart ONLY the surface history of how black holes came to be discovered, and leaves out the social implications of the roadblocks it might have faced due to systemic racism, sexism, etc. It gave me the info without getting too heavy into the math/science parts, and when it did delve into them, managed to explain them well enough that I got the concepts.

(But wow, the way she framed the treatment of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is A P P A L L I N G. White privilege at work, holy moly.)

[Vishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book on the history of black holes and how the idea evolved, and how they were finally discovered. Starts from the earliest times and ends with the discovery of gravitational waves. For me the strength of the book was the depiction of the personalities of the scientists involved. For example, Fritz Zwicky, Walter Baade, Karl Schwarzschild, Hermann Minkowski, Chandra (Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar), Arthur Eddington, Robert Oppenheimer, J.A.Wheeler, Lev Landau and others. One of my favourite passages in the book was about Fritz Zwicky –

"Despite Caltech’s relaxed campus atmosphere, a hallmark of the California lifestyle, Zwicky retained the authoritative air of a nineteenth-century European professor. He was an aggressive, original, and stubbornly opinionated man, the supreme scientific individualist. He regularly annoyed his physics and astronomy colleagues by studying anything he pleased (he called astronomy his “hobby”) and championing along the way some pretty wild ideas, some that waited decades to be proven true. In 1933 he was the first to propose, for example, the existence of cosmic “dark matter” (what he called in German “dunkle Materie”), today one of astronomy’s outstanding mysteries. “Zwicky was one of those people,” recalled Caltech astronomer Wallace Sargent, “who was determined to show the other guy was wrong. His favorite phrase was, ‘I’ll show those bastards,’” which he did to the fullest."

I couldn't stop smiling when I read that 😊

I enjoyed reading this book. Hoping to read more books by Marcia Bartusiak. Have you read this one?

[Brie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read on the history of the black hole. The book focuses mainly on the scientists involved with discovering, explaining, and proving the existence of black holes. I enjoyed learning how many different people actually contributed to the story over time, with many scientists building off the ones that came before them.

[Ami Iida · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring! It's only science history about black holes only.
You must not read it, it's a wasted time to read it.

[Scott Nvenue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well written account of the development of black hole physics. It is written for the general audience, and no mathematical formulae are involved. It's main focus is on the history of this branch of physics more than on the actual physics itself. I enjoyed reading it, and I recommend it to anyone wanting an initiation into this subject.

[Roisin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Living for the beef between astrophysics

[J.D. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is quite a comprehensive account of the history of the concept of a black hole. It covers a lot of ground and tries to be both succinct and precise. But these are characteristics of much larger textbooks, and, as a whole, the books reads as a bland volume from a specialized series in History of Science. The chapter’s headings are at times more exciting—“I’ll show these bastards”—than the actual content.

There are, however, some interesting sections (like the revealing story of quasars, and a brief but entertaining discussion about Roy Kerr’s contribution). For some reason, S. Hawking feels a lot less lively than his legendary persona, and his famous bet of sexy magazines over the theory of black holes gets such sterile rendition it made me want to watch again the movie version of it.

I've noticed that the international bestselling book of Leonard Susskind, THE BLACK HOLE WAR, is not even mentioned in the bibliography. Omission of a well-known laymen’s book on the subject (I bought my copy in Dubai) raises doubts about the objectivity of the overall selection of material and its intended public (whatever the author may think about it, this isn’t a book heavy on research and destined for the specialist or advanced student.)

In the same way that THE BLACK HOLE WAR was too passionate and biased, this book is such a dispassionate account, so ‘correct’ in the not-so-good way we now use the term, and so devoid of any demanding concepts on Physics that, over time, I will have trouble remembering that I’ve read it.

[Dhanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in black holes and gravitational force, this book is a good read on how the ideas and proofs evolved around those over the last 3 centuries. The book gives a birds eye view of how the concept of black hole was ridiculed or rejected throughout the years, though it surfaced in many scientists' mathematical calculations and thought experiments. And evetually something that seemed fictional proved to be a beautiful reality. It is a stark reminder to the humanity as well, what we consider truth now is always limited by our brain's comprehension, what it could perceive through our senses. It is also a reminder to keep an open mind to anything around us, as tomorrow might bring an entirely new perspective. Marcia sure did a thorough research and she made sure to include all the scientists involved with black holes and gravity, along with their personalities and struggles they faced. Referring analogies from everyday situations after introducing each scientific concept was thoughtful. And the timeline at the end of book is a nice addition to sum it up !

[Daniel Caballero López · Rating 4 out of 5]

Estamos ante un libro que repasa con detalle la historia del descubrimiento de agujeros negros, va muy de la mano del libro de Kip Thorne, pero con más detalles y de una manera diferente.

Es un libro con el que explorarás el inicio de la cosmología, lo recomiendo para todos los amantes a la astronomía.

[Gökhan Can · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kara delik fikrinin tarihsel olarak ortaya çıkışından kanıtların elde edilmesine kadar geçen uzun bir dönemde teorik ve bilimsel bakış açısının gelişimini yakından takip edebileceğiniz keyifle okunabilen bir kitap. Meraklılarına tavsiye olunur

[Elier Mancilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me acabo de dar cuenta que Jacob Bekenstein era mexicano 😮 El libro es muy bueno, es básicamente la biografía de la idea de los agujeros negros, tal como el título lo señala; pero también lo puedo ver como una historia de superación de muchos físicos en los que nadie creyó al principio, como por ejemplo el intento de Chandrasekhar de defender su teoría de que una estrella al colapsar tiene un límite antes de que se cree una singularidad, teoría que Eddington rechazaba casi de manera grosera. El tiempo se encargaría de darle la razón a Chandra.
O cuando Wheeler acuña el termino: hoyo negro.
Un libro que sin dudas volvería a leer, y que recomiendo ampliamente a cualquier amantes de la astrofisica y los hoyos negros.
Postdata: recomiendo leer este libro acompañado de la sinfonía de Gustav Holst "the planets" para más placer.

[Cynthia Ceva · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well written account of the development of black hole physics. It is written for the general audience, and no mathematical formulae are involved. It's main focus is on the history of this branch of physics more than on the actual physics itself. As Marcia Bartusiak discusses the topic of the centenary of the general theory of relativity she covers the history of black holes, from lsaac Newton up to date, and all in just over 200 pages. She introduces the topic step by step, the way astronomers discovered it, from white dwarf stars and neutron stars to black holes themselves, via supernovae and pulsars. This is an easy read that provides insight into the way that scientists work and think. I was surprised to find out who really was the first person to use the term in an astronomical context.

The black hole is one of the most mysterious objects in the universe, a source of fascination for many wanna be astronomers. The history of an idea, the concept of a black hole made possible, theoretically, by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. For those interested in black holes and their reluctant acknowledgement that they existed, given in the late twentieth century, this book the book for you. As Marcia Bartusiak discusses in the book It took that long to verify their existence because regular (optical) telescopes could not see them. Radio and/or X-ray telescopes were needed to pinpoint the attendant energy associated with matter-hungry black holes. Black hole research reinvigorated interest in Einstein' general theory of relativity. "After the flurry of excitement in 1919," Bartusiak writes, "when a famous solar eclipse measurement triumphantly provided the proof for Einstein's general theory of relativity, the noted physicist's new outlook on gravity came to be largely ignored. Isaac Newton's take on gravity worked just fine in our everyday world of low velocities and normal stars, so why be concerned with the miniscule adjustments that general relativity offered?" General relativity had no practical use and, in 1955, when Einstein died, "general relativity was in the doldrums."

Roy Kerr, a mathematical physicist advanced the study of black holes by finding a way to refashion Einstein's equations to handle the rotation of a star. "The rotating object [in his solution] was dragging space-time around with it," says Bartusiak, "like the cake batter that circulates in the bowl around a whirling beater."Then Stephen Hawking, of A Brief History of Time fame,decided to look at the black hole from the perspective of an atom. His mathematical approach led to the discovery "that all black holes - spinning or not - would be radiating" energy Hawking announced his discovery in February 1974. Bartusiak adds, "In applying the laws of quantum mechanics to a black hole, Hawking found that black holes create and emit particles as if they were hot bodies. As a consequence,the black hole slowly decreases in mass and eventually disappears in a final blast!" Besides this startling breakthrough, it was found that the temperature of a black hole was not zero at all, although it is close to zero - less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The temperature of the radiation leaving the black hole is now known as "Hawking radiation." And that's where we stand today, with physicists trying to unify the world of quantum mechanics (using the perspective of the atom) with that of general relativity (leveraging the perspective of space-time). And now that gravity waves, as Einstein had predicted, have been discovered (and subsequent to the release of this book), theorists can re-focus their energies to describe a theory consistent with this latest experimental result, with the hope of finally finding the theory of everything. There is no doubt that black holes will be at the center of this unifying work.

[Anthi Mastrogiannaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Οι Μαύρες τρύπες του σύμπαντος αποτέλεσαν από την αρχή που ανακαλύφθηκαν ένα αληθινά συναρπαστικό γεγονός. Πολλοί ερευνητές παρομοιάζουν μια μαύρη τρύπα όπως όταν κάποιος πλησιάζει από ψηλά στο χείλος από τους καταρράκτες του Νιαγάρα. Παρολαυτά όμως όπως με τους καταρράκτες νιώθει ένας άνθρωπος ασφαλής γιατί γνωρίζει ότι μια στιβαρή κατασκευή τον προστατεύει από τον κίνδυνο, έτσι συμβαίνει και με τις μαύρες τρύπες αφού οι πιο κοντινές από αυτές απέχουν εκατοντάδες έτη φωτός από τη Γη. Πολλοί επιστήμονες θεωρούν ότι οι μαύρες τρύπες ταιριάζουν περισσότερο σε έναν φανταστικό κόσμο παρά στο αληθινό σύμπαν όπως ο θεωρητικός φυσικός και νομπελίστας, Κιπ Θορν του Ινστιτούτου Τεχνολογίας της Καλιφόρνιας που τις παρομοίαζε σαν μονόκερους και τέρατα αλλά και ο αστροφυσικός Τζ. Κραιγκ Χουήλερ του Πανεπιστημίου του Τέξας τις αποκαλεί πολιτισμικό σύμβολο.
Το βιβλίο περιλαμβάνει πολλές αλλά ενδιαφέρουσες λεπτομέρειες όσον αφορά την ανακάλυψη των μαύρων τρυπών, πολλές χρονολογίες και αρκετά ονόματα επιστημόνων φυσικών και αστροφυσικών. Παρόλαυτά δεν είναι βαρετό ούτε δύσκολο στην κατανόηση και διαβάζεται ασταμάτητα από τον αναγνώστη.

[ktsn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Flat, dry, and superfluous. Stacking historical details doesn't make a good story, and lumping physics terminologies doesn't help to establish a deeper understanding. It's partly my own fault, as the author mentions very early in the book that it's more about the history of an idea rather than about the idea itself. However, without making the idea inspiring, it's hard to see why readers should care about how the idea developed.

Perhaps an OK historical overview if the reader really knew NOTHING about black holes, otherwise better to skip it as it's unlikely add anything.

p.s. Before starting the book I have it tagged with "physics" as well, but took the tag off after reading it.

p.s.2 I am surprised to find the whole "black hole" book only mentioned gravitational lens ONCE, only passingly, while it's one of the most important applications of black hole astronomy (and cool by itself!).

[Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dry and straightforward nearly to a fault, but excellent at not only explaining areas of physics which can be impenetrable to non-physicists (like me) but also at capturing the politics, personalities and predilections of specific periods in history during the evolution of thinking about black holes. Enjoyed having completed the journey on this one a little more than making that same journey.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is essentially pop science trash. I felt generally condescended to for most of it, I don't think most people would feel they understand black holes better as a result of reading this book, and it was full of the same sort of scientist hero-worship nonsense that I hate.

That said, I find astronomy and cosmology boring as a general topic, so maybe if that's your thing you might find it more entertaining.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The black hole is one of the most mysterious objects in the universe, a source of fascination for many wanna be astronomers. I had hoped to learn something more about the science of black holes, but this book disappointed me. It's a history book rather than a science book, starting before Newton and ending in present times. But it doesn't do a good job of explaining the science, it just describes it. So for me it was a disappointment.

[Robert Koslowsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story, presented by Marcia Bartusiak, is about the history of an idea, the concept of a black hole made possible, theoretically, by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

For those interested in black holes and their reluctant acknowledgement that they existed, given in the late twentieth century, this is a must read story.

It took that long to verify their existence because regular (optical) telescopes could not see them. Radio and/or X-ray telescopes were needed to pinpoint the attendant energy associated with matter-hungry black holes.

Black hole research reinvigorated interest in Einstein’s general theory of relativity. “After the flurry of excitement in 1919,” Bartusiak writes, “when a famous solar eclipse measurement triumphantly provided the proof for Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the noted physicist’s new outlook on gravity came to be largely ignored. Isaac Newton’s take on gravity worked just fine in our everyday world of low velocities and normal stars, so why be concerned with the miniscule adjustments that general relativity offered?” General relativity had no practical use and, in 1955, when Einstein died, “general relativity was in the doldrums.”

Roy Kerr, a mathematical physicist advanced the study of black holes by finding a way to refashion Einstein’s equations to handle the rotation of a star. “The rotating object [in his solution] was dragging space-time around with it,” says Bartusiak, “like the cake batter that circulates in the bowl around a whirling beater.”

Then Stephen Hawking, of A Brief History of Time fame, decided to look at the black hole from the perspective of an atom. His mathematical approach led to the discovery “that all black holes – spinning or not – would be radiating” energy. Hawking announced his discovery in February 1974. Bartusiak adds, “In applying the laws of quantum mechanics to a black hole, Hawking found that black holes create and emit particles as if they were hot bodies. As a consequence, the black hole slowly decreases in mass and eventually disappears in a final blast!”

Besides this startling breakthrough, it was found that the temperature of a black hole was not zero at all, although it is close to zero – less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The temperature of the radiation leaving the black hole is now known as “Hawking radiation.”

And that’s where we stand today, with physicists trying to unify the world of quantum mechanics (using the perspective of the atom) with that of general relativity (leveraging the perspective of space-time).

And now that gravity waves, as Einstein had predicted, have been discovered (and subsequent to the release of this book), theorists can re-focus their energies to describe a theory consistent with this latest experimental result, with the hope of finally finding the theory of everything.

There is no doubt that black holes will be at the center of this unifying work.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Black holes are celestial objects with gravity so strong that no light can escape. On the face of it, black holes are easy to predict. There is a concept in elementary physics called the escape velocity. If you make the escape velocity of a celestial body equal to the speed of light, you won't be able to see the object.

Albert Einstein posited the idea of relativity in his Miracle Year, 1905. It took him another 10 years to apply relativity to gravity and predict different outcomes for scientists to discover. It took only one year for Karl Schwartzchild to solve the General Relativity equations for a black hole.

When scientists performed the calculations, they quickly found infinities as their solutions. To a physicist, it was unacceptable. There had to be a safeguard in place to prevent the singularity from existing. These scientists were wrong, though.

It took World War II to advance radio astronomy and other instrumentation to the point where it was beneficial. Black holes gobble up light and other electromagnetic phenomena. Still, if they pair up with another star in a binary system, the black hole can suck away the other star's matter into itself. It forms an accretion disc when the matter flows into the black hole, like a giant whirlpool. The black hole uses the extra mass to produce energy with phenomenal efficiency.

For years, scientists assumed black holes were the end of a massive star's lifespan. Stephen Hawking arrived on the scene and told everyone that black holes emit radiation. It is not exactly what happened, but it's close enough.

Marcia Bartusiak writes about all these events in her book titled Black Hole. I enjoyed the book. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Sergio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you know who discovered the black hole? How can someone on Earth know about the black hole centuries ago?

I liked the book because It talks about how the black hole was created and when they discovered it and information about the black hole that I never knew about.

My favorite character in the book is Isaac Newton because he was trying to find the black hole with his inventions. Isaac Newton was mostly the main character in the book. Isaac Newton was real to me because he was the one talking about the black hole and he was also an inventor.

Some parts of the book were confusing to me. The author tried to explain how black holes were created. Some of the ideas were very hard to understand. There were some parts that did not make sense to me. Some of the diagrams were hard to understand.

I think people might like this book because they probably like to know the history and the science of the black hole. I think both younger and older people would like to read this book but they have to be interested in space and science. They should also have some knowledge in space and science as well.

I will give this book like and 4.0 stars

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the subtitle of this book suggests, this book tells the story of how we have come to understand and discover black holes, both through theoretical work and observations, throughout history.

If you are just looking for the current facts about black holes, this is not the book for you. This is a nice book if you are interested in learning about the history, developments and discoveries that lead us to our current understanding of them. Note that this book came out in 2015, and therefore does not include our discovery of gravitational waves (also in 2015) or the first photo of a supermassive black hole (2019). So if you are interested in current science of black holes more than the history of black holes, it would be good to look elsewhere.

I read this book after having read Becky Smethurst’s A Brief History of Black Holes, which I was disappointed by. I think Bartusiak's book is a better option of the two.

[Ross Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does what it says on the tin. This is the history of an idea, and not much more. That's both good and bad, good because the history is interesting, especially how the author shows that the math was predicting the idea of a black hole 200 years ago, but no one could take it seriously back then.

It's bad because it doesn't go into great detail about black holes themselves, and while it alludes to a lot of interesting science (e.g., frame dragging) we never find out that much about how that affects nearby systems.

The book was written just as LIGO was receiving it's first data and before the recent "picture" of a black hole so that information is largely missing. Not the author's fault, but a little disappointing to lose out on some of what we know now. Scoring 3 points for being a bit light, 4 points for history and clarity.

[Philippa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book following on from Fred Pohl's excellent Heechee series which has black holes as a central theme. It's a very clearly written exploration of the history of black holes, from the 17th century to date, how they were seen as impossible, contradicting the laws of Newton and Einstein but how they gradually became accepted and, eventually, proven to exist (spoiler: there's a very big one in the centre of our galaxy!) The writing is entertaining, no mean feat considering the subject, but the story is told with the aid of a series of anecdotes about the many scientists, mathmaticians and astronomers who contributed to the journey to discover the truth about these objects. Well worth a look.

[Beige Alert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Matthew Bothwell is my current standard for treating me like the idiot I am without talking to me like the idiot I am. I liked this book, but Bartusiak's writing style was, well, parental.

The book was published just prior to the announcement of LIGO finding gravitational waves and I got through it shortly after the announcement of of low-frequency gravitational waves last month, so it served as book-ends to current science news.

The book had a couple stories I hadn't heard which was nice since I have some weird need to keep reading popularized cosmology and astrophysics in the hope that somehow I'll get it through osmosis instead of effort. She also leaves plenty of people and stories out, but there are page-count limits.

...onward to the next one.

WTR-606

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I keep claiming that I'm going to stop reading popular physics books and then I see another that looks interesting. I just can't help myself. I'm an addict, and like most addictions, the deeper I fall into it, the less they satisfy. I need a twelve step program for people hooked on popular physics books.

This one is a pretty decent recounting of the history of the physics of black holes from early ideas of the Newtonian era to the breakthrough predictions of general relativity to the long struggles against the math that kept yielding singularities to Hawking radiation and beyond. It's nicely written, but for me there was nothing new here, so it was unsatisfying.

[Richard Starks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Marcia Bartusiak is an excellent writer about the universe with an enviable ability to explain complex concepts in ways that most people would find intriguing. I learned a lot about black holes and how they slowly became accepted by the scientific community, so the author achieved her stated objective as far as I'm concerned. My only (minor) complaint was that I've seen better explanations of Einstein's special theory elsewhere, but no one should expect to find all the answers in just one book.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dry but informative book that provides a good overview on the history of the concept of black holes. The book looks at gravity, relativity, space-time, entropy, quasars, pulsars, spin, and other ideas that lead to the idea of black holes. Scientists like Newton, Einstein, Hawking, and others are discussed. The resistance to the idea of black holes and repeated shunning of the concept by scientists is also covered. A short, fast read but not the most engrossing.