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Royal Observatory Greenwich Illuminates #5
Black Holes
An expert astronomer explains the phenomenon.
Black holes. What even are they? In brief, a black hole is a region of spacetime so curved by gravity that even light cannot escape it. Peculiar objects, and notoriously difficult to understand, black holes are a fascinating fusion of the simple and the complex. Although the mathematics of their behavior is fiendishly difficult, we can explore the subject by starting with basic principles and straightforward thought experiments.
Read on to uncover what’s inside a black hole, how scientists discovered this amazing phenomenon, what to do if you find yourself falling into one, and—since no one is likely to turn up and help (you’ll find out why)—what you need to do to escape! The author dispels common myths about black holes, provides guidance on how to win several Nobel prizes, and reveals the eventual fate of the Universe (maybe).
Black Holes is part of the Illuminates series of short, accessible books that examine amazing aspects of space, brought to you by Royal Observatory Greenwich.
Black holes. What even are they? In brief, a black hole is a region of spacetime so curved by gravity that even light cannot escape it. Peculiar objects, and notoriously difficult to understand, black holes are a fascinating fusion of the simple and the complex. Although the mathematics of their behavior is fiendishly difficult, we can explore the subject by starting with basic principles and straightforward thought experiments.
Read on to uncover what’s inside a black hole, how scientists discovered this amazing phenomenon, what to do if you find yourself falling into one, and—since no one is likely to turn up and help (you’ll find out why)—what you need to do to escape! The author dispels common myths about black holes, provides guidance on how to win several Nobel prizes, and reveals the eventual fate of the Universe (maybe).
Black Holes is part of the Illuminates series of short, accessible books that examine amazing aspects of space, brought to you by Royal Observatory Greenwich.
- GenresScience
128 pages, Paperback
Published April 13, 2022
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 15, 2025
Black holes is a smart and witty comprehensive guide by Dr Ed Bloomer about, you guessed it, black holes!
This book begins with explaining some basics (I say basic, but they weren't really) fundamentals; Newtonian physics and Einstein's spacetime. Before then, move on to explain the Schwarzschild radius and finally, delving (or should I say, falling) into black holes.
A whole range of subjects are then explained, from the anatomy of black holes to wormholes and time machines!
The build-up to talking about black holes is necessary and actually well laid out. I appreciated it as it better explains the basics of black holes.
This is the shortest book that has taken me the longest to read!
There is so much information crammed into its pages.
I feel maybe reading this book in one sitting is the best advice, as I had to keep flicking back to remind myself of what I had read each time I picked this book up. Which probably isn't a bad thing, as it hopefully helped my neurons to grow some long-term-memory-black-hole related-pathways.
I am not a maths-y kind of guy, far from it, in fact I have Dyscalculia (like Dyslexia but with numbers), so some of the maths points and occasional equations went straight over my head and flew out into space. (Maybe even into a black hole!)
I found some of the diagrams a little hard to understand as well, though others weren't difficult at all.
I enjoyed the multiple footnotes from the author. They gave clarity and jokes without over explaining the subject material.
There are some beautiful colour images of black holes and other celestial bodies within this book as well, with little notes on their positions.
At one point, Bloomer says to look at a paragraph on page 33 for clarity, but it is actually on page 34.
(I don't know if this is due to layout/sizing differences?)
I had written a paragraph here about how Bloomer, throughout the book will introduce a new reference that relates to the current one, but fails to explain it in full detail, so I'd be confused– but then I discovered that at the back of the book there is a glossary that explains every new word/topic brought up in conversation in full detail! So, there is no need and no confusion! :)
Notes: (or rather, me yapping about what I've learned)
From this book, I've learned new things about black holes I never knew before, and in all my internet scouring, I never came across.
This book introduced the idea to me that when (most) people talk about black holes, they are talking about the event horizon, which is inside the black hole. There is the ISCO (innermost stable orbit), the ergosphere, and the photon sphere, all as layers before that, then you reach the Schwarzschild-radius sphere which measures the radius of the “boundary of no return”, aka the event horizon, once you pass that, you cannot go back, in fact “going back” will only take you forwards, or inwards:
I'd also never heard of the photon horizon/photon sphere. Which is another layer to black holes. It's the outermost layer and is the “effective size of the black hole”, wherein light photons will be unable to escape.
(As I was saying), the book says most conversations about black holes focus on the event horizon not the actual ”singularity” & Schwarzschild radius “measurement” (or just the whole mass) that is the black hole- “A point of zero spacetime and infinite curvature”.
Which was something I had never realised before!
Also, just adding that Bloomer refers to the ‘layers’ of a black hole as being more like “events” or “a series of frozen occurrences”, which (theoretically) if you were travelling through the black hole, you would experience.
A simple explanation that Bloomer gives for the creation of black holes is this:
collapse > black hole
Which I thought I'd mention as it's so concise.
(Of course, you need the right circumstances for this to happen.)
Bloomer also explains briefly how once you go through a black hole, you will not emerge the same afterwards, aka, you're still a goner! (Which was something I'd been wondering about)
I genuinely can't believe that nobody else talks about all these things when discussing black holes. I think it's the difference between articles online and books written by professionals.
I've really enjoyed reading this book. Black holes are so interesting!
Edit: My book ends on page 119, not 128
This book begins with explaining some basics (I say basic, but they weren't really) fundamentals; Newtonian physics and Einstein's spacetime. Before then, move on to explain the Schwarzschild radius and finally, delving (or should I say, falling) into black holes.
A whole range of subjects are then explained, from the anatomy of black holes to wormholes and time machines!
The build-up to talking about black holes is necessary and actually well laid out. I appreciated it as it better explains the basics of black holes.
This is the shortest book that has taken me the longest to read!
There is so much information crammed into its pages.
I feel maybe reading this book in one sitting is the best advice, as I had to keep flicking back to remind myself of what I had read each time I picked this book up. Which probably isn't a bad thing, as it hopefully helped my neurons to grow some long-term-memory-black-hole related-pathways.
I am not a maths-y kind of guy, far from it, in fact I have Dyscalculia (like Dyslexia but with numbers), so some of the maths points and occasional equations went straight over my head and flew out into space. (Maybe even into a black hole!)
I found some of the diagrams a little hard to understand as well, though others weren't difficult at all.
I enjoyed the multiple footnotes from the author. They gave clarity and jokes without over explaining the subject material.
There are some beautiful colour images of black holes and other celestial bodies within this book as well, with little notes on their positions.
At one point, Bloomer says to look at a paragraph on page 33 for clarity, but it is actually on page 34.
(I don't know if this is due to layout/sizing differences?)
I had written a paragraph here about how Bloomer, throughout the book will introduce a new reference that relates to the current one, but fails to explain it in full detail, so I'd be confused– but then I discovered that at the back of the book there is a glossary that explains every new word/topic brought up in conversation in full detail! So, there is no need and no confusion! :)
Notes: (or rather, me yapping about what I've learned)
From this book, I've learned new things about black holes I never knew before, and in all my internet scouring, I never came across.
This book introduced the idea to me that when (most) people talk about black holes, they are talking about the event horizon, which is inside the black hole. There is the ISCO (innermost stable orbit), the ergosphere, and the photon sphere, all as layers before that, then you reach the Schwarzschild-radius sphere which measures the radius of the “boundary of no return”, aka the event horizon, once you pass that, you cannot go back, in fact “going back” will only take you forwards, or inwards:
"Beyond the event horizon, the only direction that can be said to exist is inwards."
I'd also never heard of the photon horizon/photon sphere. Which is another layer to black holes. It's the outermost layer and is the “effective size of the black hole”, wherein light photons will be unable to escape.
(As I was saying), the book says most conversations about black holes focus on the event horizon not the actual ”singularity” & Schwarzschild radius “measurement” (or just the whole mass) that is the black hole- “A point of zero spacetime and infinite curvature”.
Which was something I had never realised before!
Also, just adding that Bloomer refers to the ‘layers’ of a black hole as being more like “events” or “a series of frozen occurrences”, which (theoretically) if you were travelling through the black hole, you would experience.
A simple explanation that Bloomer gives for the creation of black holes is this:
collapse > black hole
Which I thought I'd mention as it's so concise.
(Of course, you need the right circumstances for this to happen.)
Bloomer also explains briefly how once you go through a black hole, you will not emerge the same afterwards, aka, you're still a goner! (Which was something I'd been wondering about)
I genuinely can't believe that nobody else talks about all these things when discussing black holes. I think it's the difference between articles online and books written by professionals.
I've really enjoyed reading this book. Black holes are so interesting!
"This is why black holes are just… the end, in both space and time. Effectively, things crossing the event horizon (of a black hole) play no further part in the universe."Isn't that so cool!? Also damn, sometimes I want to go into a black hole and not be a part of the universe anymore! It sounds macabre, but I think it's poetic…To be consumed by the void….
Edit: My book ends on page 119, not 128
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January 16, 2023🎶sucked into a bagel…
March 20, 2024
Interessant å lese, men finner vel mer og mer ut at eg synes skjønnlitteratur er gøyere ✌️
July 30, 2022
I want to preface by saying that I probably don't know much more about black holes than what's in this book. I haven't even taken physics; I'm a high school rising Junior. I picked up this book looking for a calm overview of what I was already familiar with, and was pleasantly surprised at Black Holes' contents.
In 106 small pages (mine measure 7 x 4.25" or 17.7 x 10.7 cm, since this was written in England.), Dr. Bloomer summarizes black holes and their background concepts in a (–dare i say–) fun way. [Within the Brief Introduction, I was already called out: see pages 3 then 4. (He says that "If you were to repeat any part of the previous paragraph to a group of astronomers, you would be met with a chorus of 'well, sort of ...' and 'hmm, I suppose that depends on what you mean by...'" (Considering myself an "amateur astronomer,") I had done just that– the "well, that depends...")]
Dr. Bloomer covers the subject with a sense of humor that I think would welcome any reader interested black holes with an honest and simple presentation.
Even being familiar the concepts presented already [While already understanding the concepts presented previously,], this is the kind of introduction I would have wanted; the way he acknowledges its complexity and that no one really understands them anyway quickly puts this book within my favorites on the subject– with Janna Levin & etc. (Maybe I'm partial to hand-held BH books... Unrelated, I would also suggest Janna Levin's Black Hole Survival Guide for more introductory topics if you want more than one perspective/summary.)
The language of the book –especially the footnotes– makes you feel like having a hundred-page conversation with the author. I can almost picture a pleasant talk with quick jokes about a mutually understood weird concept (...subtle science/math in-jokes are a very unique comedy form, in my opinion).
To anyone interested in black holes for any reason; no matter your base level of knowledge or level of interest; please consider Ed Bloomer's introduction!!
LKT
In 106 small pages (mine measure 7 x 4.25" or 17.7 x 10.7 cm, since this was written in England.), Dr. Bloomer summarizes black holes and their background concepts in a (–dare i say–) fun way. [Within the Brief Introduction, I was already called out: see pages 3 then 4. (He says that "If you were to repeat any part of the previous paragraph to a group of astronomers, you would be met with a chorus of 'well, sort of ...' and 'hmm, I suppose that depends on what you mean by...'" (Considering myself an "amateur astronomer,") I had done just that– the "well, that depends...")]
Dr. Bloomer covers the subject with a sense of humor that I think would welcome any reader interested black holes with an honest and simple presentation.
Even being familiar the concepts presented already [While already understanding the concepts presented previously,], this is the kind of introduction I would have wanted; the way he acknowledges its complexity and that no one really understands them anyway quickly puts this book within my favorites on the subject– with Janna Levin & etc. (Maybe I'm partial to hand-held BH books... Unrelated, I would also suggest Janna Levin's Black Hole Survival Guide for more introductory topics if you want more than one perspective/summary.)
The language of the book –especially the footnotes– makes you feel like having a hundred-page conversation with the author. I can almost picture a pleasant talk with quick jokes about a mutually understood weird concept (...subtle science/math in-jokes are a very unique comedy form, in my opinion).
To anyone interested in black holes for any reason; no matter your base level of knowledge or level of interest; please consider Ed Bloomer's introduction!!
LKT
November 2, 2025
Great, short book.
it's pretty simply explained, but since it's white short it might now tell you anything new if you already know quite a lot about black holes/physics.
it's pretty simply explained, but since it's white short it might now tell you anything new if you already know quite a lot about black holes/physics.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews