Review by Choice Review
Black holes have always captured the imaginations of astronomy students, who often want to follow up with more reading on the topic. There are many books to recommend that focus on the exotic physics of these objects and present modern understanding of their properties and behavior. However, the historical debates over black holes are just as fascinating as the science behind these strange astronomical phenomena. Even as more and more eminent physicists and astronomers calculated that these unique objects were possible in theory, black holes were continuously discounted as impossibilities that simply could not exist. In this book, Bartusiak (MIT) presents an exhaustively researched history of the development of understanding these infinitely dense objects from Newton's work on gravity through Hawking's discovery of their ability to radiate. The story does not include just the development of scientific understanding; Bartusiak also examines how the personalities involved, including Newton, Einstein, Schwarzschild, Chandrasekhar, Zwicky, Landau, Wheeler, and others, contributed to pushing understanding forward. Bartusiak's description of the context in which each scientist worked makes this book stand apart from the volumes on black holes that have come before. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Christopher Palma, Pennsylvania State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bartusiak (Archives of the Universe), professor in the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT, reveals the story and science of black holes in all their "stark and alien weirdness." Black holes begin, and end, with gravity. The first person to propose this idea was 18th-century English polymath John Michell, who imagined a star so massive that "all light... would be made to return towards it, by its own proper gravity." As Bartusiak relates, the idea remained a curiosity until Einstein proffered his theory of special relativity (1905) and the idea that gravity could bend light and motion. German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild envisioned an "event horizon," the point of no return beyond which nothing could escape a massive star's extreme gravity, but no one believed it could happen. Then Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed how a massive white dwarf star could shrivel to nothing under its own gravity. Bartusiak notes that Einstein and many others rejected the idea, but by the 1960s, observational evidence and computer advances that allowed astronomers to model stellar collapse showed that black holes were real. Bartusiak's lively, accessible writing and insight into the personalities behind the science make her book an entertaining and informative read. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Black holes enthrall physicists and astronomers, as well as Hollywood filmmakers, and readers of this fine popular science account will understand why.It all begins with gravity, writes Bartusiak (Science Writing/MIT; The Day We Found the Universe, 2009) in this entirely engaging narrative of "the cosmic object [astrophysicists are] most likely to be asked about." Although the concept of black holes is ancient, it was Isaac Newton who explained it more or less correctly in 1687. By the 18th century, imaginative scientists realized that since gravity was a universal force, light was not exempt. Gravity from a star far more massive than the sun would slow the light it emitted to zero, and it would become invisible: a black hole. They were rightsort of. In 1916, Einstein's theory of relativity showed that light speed never slows but that gravity distorts space, so light near a large body appears to curve. Examining Einstein's equations, early researchers calculated that as gravity increases, distortion becomes so great that the light would double back. Einstein insisted that no such invisible star existed, and few disagreed until the 1960s, when astronomers detected quasars: strange, distant objects emitting unimaginable quantities of energy equivalent to billions of suns. These turned out to be supermassive black holes; most galaxies have one, ours included. Formerly a mathematical hypothesis, black holes of all sizes became front-page news, occupying brilliant scientists such as Stephen Hawking and John Wheeler, who revealed that they are a normal product of stellar evolution and even more bizarre than predicted. Superior science writing that eschews the usual fulsome biographies of eccentric geniuses, droll anecdotes and breathless prognostication to deliver a persistently fascinating portrait of an odd but routine feature of the cosmos. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
