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Customer Reviews (12)

Informative, entertaining, but marred by technical errors
I enjoyed this book and recommend it. It is a highly entertaining, informative, and well-researched book. If you've read Wali's bio "Chandra", you should read this book, which gives a somewhat darker view of Chandrasekhar the man. I particularly liked the detailed endnotes, which give many historical insights.

The villain in this story is Eddington, who did excellent work in his early career, but simply lost the power of rational argument in his old age. Like Linus Pauling, Eddington suffered from "great old man disease". (It only strikes males, perhaps because testosterone levels are involved.) The course of this disease is: tremendously successful early career causing self-confidence to morph into hubris, followed by the belief that one's intuition is so powerful that it cannot be wrong. In late stages, the disease causes the victim to attempt to alter experimental evidence to match beliefs.

I think the author exaggerates the importance of the Chandra-Eddington "debate" in 20th century physics, but that does not detract from the book's value.

Unfortunately, this book is marred many technical errors. Clearly, the author is not a scientist and the book was never edited by someone with a technical background.I list a few statements, some of which are wrong, and others are, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, "are not even wrong".

p.45 Referring to Sirius A, the brightest star in the sky: "The fact that it can be observed with a telescope shows how extraordinarily bright it is."Is this a typo? Did the author mean "without a telescope"? Doesn't matter, since the sentence makes no sense either way.
p.48,49. Explaining that Eddington incorrectly assumed that a star has a chemical composition similar to Earth's (rather than the Sun's actual compostion of 3/4 H, 1/4 He which gives it a molecular weight of 2) and so "Eddingtion adopted a mean molecular weight of 2.1."At first I assumed this was a typo, but the mistake is repeated throughout the text.
p.54. "Another mystery that Eddington wanted to crack was how a white dwarf could be so small yet so dense."Throughout, the author makes puzzling statements about density.
p.69. "... the electrical charge of the electron, which is 10^-10 in terms of size (measured in centimeters);...;the Planck constant, as measure of scale in the atomic world and smaller still, 10^-27; ..."Which is bigger: 20 pounds for 400 inches?
p.157 Referring to a teaspoonful of stellar matter: "The same tiny amount of neutron star matter would weigh a billion tons, probably enough to take it plunging through Earth."Yes, probably.
p.160. Kapitza is referred to as "a discoverer of superconductivity"(confusing superfluidity with superconductivity)
p.165 "Another question was whether fusion could be initiated by thermonuclear reactions."fusion is a thermonuclear reaction

Throughout, the author uses the word "dim" and it is never clear whether he intends the word to mean intrinsic luminosity, apparent brightness, surface brightness or what.This leads to very odd statements such as p.180 referring to a white dwarf, "It has burned up nearly all of its fuel, making it dim, but has undergone extreme contraction... making it hot."or p.221 "If Cygnus A were closer ... it would have a "luminosity" 10 million times that of the entire Milky Way."
The author reports all stellar distances in miles, never light-years, and he refuses to use scientific notation: p.221 Cygnus A is "4500 million trillion miles away"
p.225. Referring to Chandra's calculations of a supermassive stellar remnant in a quasar "it would have to collapse completely and would therefore cease to exist."
p.227 "its spin is the number of times it rotates per second".Confusing angular momentum and angular velocity.
p.225 Author explains that the Large Hadron Collider will be able to produce photons with a wavelength equal to the Planck length. I wish!
p.269, Referring to neutrinos: "They interact so weakly that they can fly through space for 3 trillion miles unhampered."Through space? Empty space? (As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up.)

Excellent History of Astrophysics
This is really a book on the history of astrophysics - the science of stars. However, in developing this exposition, the author has chosen to focus on two of the main contributors to the field: Eddington and Chandrasekhar. Both were geniuses of the highest order - one (Eddington), feared for his venomous attacks (in scientific fora) on those who disagreed with his theories but who, otherwise, was a truly likeable gentleman; the other (Chandrasekhar), a more complex individual "confident in his own brilliance, yet permanently bitter at never having received the recognition he thought was his due" (p. 297). The writing style is clear, engaging and free of unnecessary technical jargon, thus making the book accessible to a wider audience. Various theories on how it was thought that stars shine and eventually die are presented, culminating with modern day theories. This excellent book will likely be most appreciated by science buffs.

Fascinating, informative, but not altogether convincing
This biography of the astrophysicist and mathematical prodigy Subramanyan Chandrasekhar is a very good survey of the twentieth-century flowering of astrophysics.Physics, chemistry, and astronomy were beginning to feed into each other and reach critical mass, which would result in the supernova of celestial discovery that marked the rest of the century.In this telling, Chandra had a brilliant insight which, although it would prove to be the key to most future theorizing about black holes, was at the time unsupported by anything except a seemingly airtight set of mathematical calculations.These were rejected by Sir Arthur Eddington, the foremost astrophysicist of the day, in a most public and humiliating way.As is the way of science at its best, time and the accretion of aggregate research finally proved Chandra correct and Eddington wrong.

The public hiding Eddington gave Chandra rankled the young Indian for the rest of his life.Even winning the Nobel prize didn't make bygones be bygones.Chandra is depicted as being alternately resentful and ostentatiously collegial with Eddington, a sign of his conflicted feelings. Eddington isn't around to stick up for himself, and as the author notes, there is very little in the way of biographical information about him.The author goes on about class, racism, and even closeted homosexuality in an effort to explain Eddington's refusal to accept Chandra's insight.Those qualities were indeed extant in 1930s England, but the author comes very close to unfairly tarring Eddington by implication.There's no proof, so he should have let the mystery stand as is.

That said, the story of Chandra is a great starting point for telling the story of astrophysics over the last 80 years. As such, it is warmly recommended.

Some fair use quotations:

"On next Monday I am 21!I am almost ashamed to confess it. Years run apace, but nothing done!I wish I had been more concentrated, directed and disciplined in my work.
-- Subrahmanyan Chadrasekhar, letter to his father, 1932, in Arthur I. Miller, Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

"Technical journals are filled with elaborate papers on conditions in the interiors of model gaseous spheres, but these discussions have, for the most part, the character of exercises in mathematical physics rather than astronomical investigations, and it is difficult to judge the degree of resemblance between the models and actual stars.Differential equations are like servants in livery: it is honourable to be able to command them, but they are "yes" men, loyally giving support and amplification to the ideas entrusted to them by their master. -- Paul W. Merrill, The Nature of Variable Stars, 1938, quoted in Arthur I. Miller Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

"In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realisation that [New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr's] exact solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity provides the *absolutely exact representation* of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe.This "shuddering before the beautiful," this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound.
-- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 1975, quoted in Arthur I. Miller,
Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest
for Black Holes, 2005"

"You may think I have used a hammer to crack eggs, but I have cracked eggs!
-- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, on his habitual use of zillions of equations in his papers, quoted in Arthur I. Miller Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

Ample, Clear, Informative, Intelligent
If you like books described by the title above, you'll enjoy Empire of the Stars. The core of the book is a straightforward biography of Chandrasekhar, but that story is well wrapped in a social history of the international scientific community of the 20th Century. Author Arthur Miller does not convince all readers of his bold thesis that the clash between Chandra and Eddington impeded scientific progress by decades, but the interest of the book does not hinge on that dramatic device.

Lacks Focus
An interesting read, but this book lacks focus. Sometimes it is a biography of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar with a little physics background; sometimes it's a history of thinking in the astrophysics community with a little biographical background; and sometimes it feels like a who's who of astronomers and physicist from the 30's to the 80's. As an extra-added bonus, we get a random collection of information about the Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons design. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An attractive subject...
Harry Shipman of the University of Delaware wrote this book on black holes, quasars and other astronomical phenomena before they had become (if you'll forgive the pun) attractive subjects.One of the stated purposes, from his introduction, is to supplement classical introductions to astronomy -- most introductory surveys of astronomy cover these subjects as a matter of course now, but this was not so in the 1970s.

Despite the age of the text and the fact that many discoveries and advances have been made since the original publication date of this book, it still provides an interesting and accessible survey to some of the more interesting objects and topics in astronomy.Shipman designed this book to be a supplement to introductory astronomy texts, a stand-alone volume for those without significant scientific background, and a primer for those who were preparing for more advanced work in the sciences.

The introduction begins with preliminary terminology and definitions, a brief survey of astronomy and the related physics concepts.It also looks at scientific method.This introduction leads to the first primary topic -- black holes.Shipman covers the aspects of gravity, stellar growth and decay, the different kinds of star 'death' (white dwarf, neutron star, pulsar), and devotes several chapters to aspects of the black hole itself.These address the event horizon and changes there, searching for black holes and issues of detection, and future directions in research.Shipman's general descriptions are still very good scientifically.

The second primary section addresses the phenomena of galaxies and quasars.Issues of the expanding universe, distances to quasars, redshift and its causes, different types of galaxies, and observational problems are addressed in the several chapters.Quasars may or may not be related to black holes, just as active galaxies might be fueled by black holes.

The third section pulls the information together, looking at broader cosmological issues.The life cycle of the universe is presented, concentrating primarily on the Big Bang theory.The issues of dating the universe, based on different kinds of observational data, and the large scale structure of the universe from galactic clusters to superclusters are set forth.Issues in the final fate of the universe (total mass, expansion rate changes, etc.) are explored -- this has become a hot topic for cosmology today, too.

Shipman writes in an engaging and interesting style, and sets forth complicated issues in easy-to-grasp ways.This was one of the earliest books of astronomy I read, and I still refer to iton a frequent basis.

Fantastic, Interesting, Informative...
Need I say more? It's remarkably clear; it includes an introductory chapter to teach the basic concepts and definitions of physics for those not familiar with the field; it is very interesting as well! I was pleasantly surprised (after all, it is a technical book) to find it so easy to read and so informative! I have learned so much from this book. ... Read more

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A journey that begins where everything ends...now a spectacular motion picture. Deep space...alien life...an epic voyage into a giant black hole!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Too Bad The Ending Gets Sucked Down The Black Hole
I picked up this novelization to find out what in the world happened at the end of the movie.In almost all cases the book is better than the movie, but not this time.If you want a coherent ending, this book disappoints. The last page (213) of my 1979 Del Rey / Ballantine edition has hanging sentences and paragraphs that have no beginning.Seems like someone else didn't know how to end this book either, so they choose not to.
I had to press forward through the first fifty pages but the middle and most of the ending is a great read - burn the last three pages.
This is not a kiddie book.A good read for young adults and adults.It is refreshing to read a novelization using vocabulary like "desiccation", "subsumed", "quiescent", and "stanchion".I appreciated the major themes, such as good and evil, more with the book than the film.
Not a bad little science fiction jaunt with a fascinating topic.A better ending would have helped tremendously.

The book is always better than the movie
Alan Dean Foster is a prolific science fiction writer and he occasionally novelizes screenplays (he also wrote "The Thing" and "Alien") and here he takes the plot for the abysmal 1979 Disney film "The Black Hole" and makes it come alive.The plot concerns a deep space mission to search out intelligent life via the spaceship Palomino, who eventually come across a ghost ship of sorts: The Cygnus, long believed to be lost amongst the stars.However, the captain of the Cygnus has a grandiose plan befitting the mad scientist that he is:he plans to travel through a black hole.

Not Free SF Reader
There's been one good attempt at a cute movie robot that I can think of, and that one doesn't talk, and gets strapped into the back of Luke Skywalker's X-Wing quite a bit, too.

Here we have a mission to find out what went wrong with a spaceship - the answer basically boiling down to a very bad man, and a black hole.

The investigating crew gets caught up in these problems, and it isn't the best idea to have problems next to a black hole.

Slightly dodgy ending, too.

Much more coherent than the movie.
This novelization was so much better than the movie.It flowed and did not get caught up in the special effects for kids that the movie featured.

If you thought the movie lacked something--it's in thisnovelization. ... Read more

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Discusses the formation and possible behavior of black holes and why we believe that they exist. ... Read more

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Our universe is a magnificent place, full of exotic entities like black holes and blue moons, white dwarfs and red giants. And it’s out there for anyone who takes the time to look up! As this engrossing popular astronomy book makes clear, you don’t need a degree in astrophysics to explore the vast reaches of outer space. All you need is curiosity and a little imagination.From Blue Moons to Black Holes is written specifically for those who have always been intrigued by or have been developing a growing interest in astronomy and space, but have had little time to explore the amazing world of exploding stars, distant galaxies, rovers on other planets, and more. The book consists of three sections: Questions and Answers, Quick Facts, and A Brief History of Lunar and Planetary Exploration.Knocke—who has often lectured at the prestigious Mount Wilson and Lowell Observatories—provides answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding astronomy, outer space, and space exploration in the Questions and Answers section.She gives simple and easy-to-understand answers to such provocative questions as: "What is a blue moon?" "Could you travel through a black hole?" "Is the North Star the brightest star in the sky?" "Is Pluto really a planet?"The Quick Facts section offers the reader an easy way to look up fascinating statistics about the moon and planets, bright stars, constellations, and more. This section also includes a guide to upcoming meteor showers and lunar and solar eclipses.A Brief History of Lunar and Planetary Exploration includes a chronological listing of every mission that has been launched to the moon and planets. By listing both the successes and failures, readers gain a better understanding of just how difficult it is to travel beyond our own planet. This generously illustrated volume will also include a color insert containing, among other pictures, beautiful images of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft, currently in orbit around the planet. Whether read from cover to cover or used as a reference tool to search for specific answers, From Blue Moons to Black Holes will prove to be fun, accessible, and wonderfully thought provoking. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Review of From Blue Moons to Black Holes
This is an excellent book, both for satisfying one's curiosity about the universe where we all live, to being a reference for the astronomical and cosmic facts.

I loved it!
I loved this book! It was down to earth and understandable, and it didn't use a bunch of astronomical lingo that wasn't explained. It has many valuable charts and answers to questions not found anywhere else. I am interested in space and stars, and this book was perfect!

awesome!
this book is great for people who want to learn interesting facts about the universe. it had every question and topic that anyone would ever want to know! there are interesting facts about ever planets, missions to planets, moons, stars...everything. I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

One of the very best popular science books ever written
In all of human experience, there is no object more unusual than the black hole, where a part of the universe is decreased to a single point mass. It does not disappear, the object retains the properties of mass, electrical charge and spin that it had before it became a black hole. The interesting point is then what exactly are the remaining consequences of a black hole; it is possible that it could be a pathway to other universes, another place in our universe or to another time in the life of our universe. Such intelligent speculations are fascinating, truly a place where science fiction becomes potential science fact.
Kaufmann does an excellent job in explaining what black holes are, the likelihood of their existence and what the possible consequences of that existence. All of the necessary scientific preliminaries are covered and a large number of illustrations are included. If you have an interest in the cosmologically unusual, this book is an excellent place to begin your study.

Best Book I've Ever Read
I am a huge astronomy nerd and I must say thatcannot learn well by reading.I have a hard time choosing books which explain things the way I can understand them.That doesnt mean I need things simplified for me, I can understand complicated things much better.Anyway, this book covers topics in the area of stellar birth and death, and black holes.It is an absolute MUST HAVE for a hard core astronomy person such as myself.If only it was written sooner... Im sure there have been changes since 1979... oh well.The book is packed full of knowledge and the author tells the process of starbirth not too slowly or quickly, but just right.Definately the most informative and EASY TO READ astronomy book Ive ever read, hands down.

Any astrology fan should read this.
This book has it all.Wanna know about supernovas, it's in there.How about the complete life cycle of stars?It's in there.And of course there is the title subject, black holes.Provides a very simple yetextremely in-depth theories about relativity and space time.

LEARN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
Learn how the stars were formed, universes are created and the life cycle of a star until IT DIES and: becomes a BLACK HOLE and all time is consequentially WARPED because of this. Is the universe expanding orcontracting???? You decide. ... Read more

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8. Right to Receive Aid and Protection. Juan hasn't been back to the small town of San Juan del Sumapaz since his parents died, but he still has memories of the place where they used to take him on outings when he was little. Juan gets his grandmother to take him there as a birthday present. ... Read more

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Discusses the formation and peculiar features of the universe, particularly stars and galaxies emitting special types of radio waves. ... Read more

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From 1955 to 1987, the year of his suicide, Primo Levi wrote a series of articles that appeared in newspapers and journals. This volume contains a selection of these writings which shows at once the range of his interests and the skill, thoughtfulness and sensitivity he brought to his subjects, whether writing from the point of view of an eye-witness of the holocaust, of an author of novels and short stories, or of a chemist.

The first part of this collection brings together Levi’s articles about the holocaust and the concentration camp. In "With Anne Frank history spoke", Levi rails intelligently and eloquently against what he saw as the yearly assault on the veracity and moral weight of the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. The second part contains a representative selection of Levi’s essays on his own status as a writer and his profession of Chemist, and the many prefaces he wrote to others’ histories and novels.

The breadth of their subjects, the consistency and moral force of their reflections and the clarity and intimacy of their style will make these writings appeal to a wide readership, not only to those who have read and been moved by Primo Levi’s masterpiece, "If this is a Man". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Response to Old School's review
I assume that this book is a translation of Levi's "L'asimmetria e la vita: Articoli e saggi 1955-1987," published in Italian in 2002. I have not checked out the English translation, but the Italian original is a wonderful book and a great introductio to Levi.

I do want to respond to "Old School" who wrote the first review to "The Black Hole." I urge him or her to read Ian Thomson's magnificent biography "Primo Levi: A Life." That Levi committed suicide--and Thomson has no doubt that he did--had its roots in a lifelong battle with depression. Auschwitz may have have compounded his depressive tendencies, but it did not cause them. And there is no evidence to suggest that he committed suicide because his laments about the Holocaust were not being heard. None. Nor will the book under review here supply such evidence. See Thomson, pp, 493ff.

Primo Levi's suicide was far from ironic.
The Amazon blurb about the author shows how little he or she understands about what drove Mr. Levi to commit suicide.He had spent so much energy and effort trying to explain if that's even the word, what had happened during the Holocaust.He felt toward the end of his life that no one was listening and as he and others knew so well, we were bypassing knowledge that would hopefully have led to the end of the madness of war and genocide.It was total despair that caused him to throw himself over the balcony in his apartment building and to me there isn't a touch of irony in what he felt he had to do.The worst sin of all as Eli Weisel has so often pointed out is that of indifference.We the reading public were not heeding the warnings coming from gentlemen such as these two and it is easy to see how Primo Levi was simply driven back into madness because of it.

Levi as commentator on himself and others --
Primo Levi gives us his insight on other authors' works as well as further details of nis own. A book for those who have already read some of his work, especially The Periodic Table and If This Is a Man and The Truce. Levi (and his translators, who are excellent)holds the mirror to humankind's deeds - and still wonders WHY such things came to pass. Not always able to fully explain certain actions (but for pure evil), Levi makes us look inside our own souls, our sence of dignity, our favor for respect of others - or the lack of it. Articles and lectures current to the time of his death - a wonderful book. ... Read more

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Astronomers' Universe Series

The aim of this book is to provide an up-to-date account of active galaxies that is appropriate to the background knowledge of amateur astronomers, but might also be picked-up and read for interest by any reader with a scientific bent.

Active galaxies (including Quasars, QSOs, Radio galaxies, BL Lacs, Blazars, LINERS, ULIRGS, Seyfert galaxies, Starburst galaxies, N galaxies, etc.) are a major field of current astronomical research. Up to a fifth of all research astronomers are working on active galaxies. Huge amounts of time on major telescopes are devoted to their study. In almost all cases the galaxies are thought to be powered by 100 million solar mass black holes at their centres.

Some of the objects are bright enough to be seen in small telescopes, and an amateur astronomer with a 20 cm telescope and a CCD detector could obtain images of many more. Lists of such objects, and their visual and imaged appearance in commercially available telescopes are an important component of this book. This detailed but accessible work will be the only coherent and complete source of information for non-technical readers on an area of astronomy that fascinates many people and whose spectacular images from the Hubble space telescope, Gemini, VLT and other major telescopes frequently make the pages of the quality newspapers and occasionally appear on TV.

It also has the potential to be chosen as a set text or background reading for university courses on the subject, althought he writing style is such that it will appeal to all readers.

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While zipping through space in their rocket-powered washing machine, Eek and Ack get sucked into a black hole. Moments later, they're spit out on the other side of space. The new universe has its own planet Earth, but it's weird pink color. Of course, that won't stop this terrible twosome from trying to conquer it. ... Read more

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Special and General Relativity are concisely developed together with essential aspects of nuclear and particle physics. Problem sets are provided for many chapters, making the book ideal for a course on the physics of white dwarf and neutron star interiors. Norman K. Glendenning is Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Nuclear Science Division, Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books.

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Customer Reviews (1)

Good book, but not for everybody
Robert M. Wald is more known by his (very technical) book "General Relativity", where he explains Einstein's theory using a somewhat (sometimes too much) hard mathematical description. The main problem withthis book, "Space, Time and Gravity" seems to be, for me, alsoits hardness; it is a clear and well written book, but maybe with languageand focus some steps too high for the general public. Let give me anexample: the book has ten chapters; the three first ones give a beautifullogical description of how space and time are viewed in Physics, but thenext chapter becomes a bit too complicated, having a simple description ofthe Singularity Theorem, which for me seems a technical matter not veryappealing. The final five chapters give an interesting account of thetheory of black holes, but again this account seems to lack some taste,reminding me of a breakfast made of a superb toast served without jam orbutter or anything to drink... However, I would recommend this book forundergraduate students of physics. For readers with a not-so-goodmathematical background I would also suggest "Flat and CurvedSpace-Times" by G.F.R. Ellis and R.M. Williams (unhappily out ofstock). The general public probably would enjoy more the reading ofEinstein's "Relativity : The Special and the General Theory"(Paperback - May 1995) (a very recommendable book!) or the lengthy"Black Holes and Time Warps : Einstein's Outrageous Legacy",byKip S. Thorne, et al. (Paperback - January 1995). ... Read more

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Galaxies are the basic unit of cosmology. The study of galaxy formation is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning. The physics of galaxy formation is complicated because it deals with the dynamics of stars, thermodynamics of gas and energy production of stars. A black hole is a massive object whose gravitational field is so intense that it prevents any form of matter or radiation to escape. It is hypothesized that the most massive galaxies in the universe - 'elliptical galaxies' - grow simultaneously with the super massive black holes at their centers, giving us much stronger evidence that black holes control galaxy formation. This book reviews new evidence in the field. ... Read more

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Could Einstein have possibly anticipated directly testing the most captivating prediction of general relativity, that there exist isolated pockets of spacetime shielded completely from our own? Now, almost a century after that theory emerged, one of the world's leading astrophysicists presents a wealth of recent evidence that just such an entity, with a mass of about three million suns, is indeed lurking at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way--in the form of a supermassive ''black hole''!

With this superbly illustrated, elegantly written, nontechnical account of the most enigmatic astronomical object yet observed, Fulvio Melia captures all the excitement of the growing realization that we are on the verge of actually seeing this exotic object within the next few years.

Melia traces our intellectual pilgrimage to the ''brooding behemoth'' at the heart of the Milky Way. He describes the dizzying technological advances that have recently brought us to the point of seeing through all the cosmic dust to a dark spot in a clouded cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius. Carefully assembling the compelling circumstantial evidence for its black hole status, he shows that it is primed to reveal itself as a glorious panorama of activity within this decade--through revolutionary images of its ''event horizon'' against the bright backdrop of nearby, radiating gas.

Uniquely, this book brings together a specific and fascinating astronomical subject--black holes--with a top researcher to provide both amateur and armchair astronomers, but also professional scientists seeking a concise overview of the topic, a real sense of the palpable thrill in the scientific community when an important discovery is imminent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Concerning Melia's "Black Hole.."
The best thing about this book is the series of photos at the beginning which focus in on Sagittarius A*. It is a little thin on theory (purposely); and at the end, he is a little too gung-ho about the ability of science to answer all questions. But in general it is an exciting subject and the author presents it very well.

Very excited about this book
This is an exciting book for just about anyone interested in astronomy.
First of all I'd like to express all my admiration, the book is really
wonderfully written, witty, elegant, always
crystal clear and never boring, a real pleasure for the
mind. Second of all it's a real surprise to see how close
astronomers are to actually seeing a black hole. Since things
are changing so fast, does the author plan on writing an updated
edition soon?It seems that a new edition would be necessary
in a few years.

passionate, he is - but it's hard to follow
Apparently Sgr A* is shrinking - at various points in the book, it's described as the size of Mars' orbit, the size of Mercury's orbit, and several times the diameter of the Sun.Then there's the "how fast are the nearby stars going", in units of millions of kilometers per hour in one chapter, and kilometers per second in another - unit confusion!It's an enjoyable book, but somewhat choppy in nature - he introduces a segment on Hawking radiation, then mentions that it's totally useless in detection for supermassive black holes.The descriptions of Sgr A* are well done at the various wavelengths and very helpful; the background on why each wavelength conveys certain information was particularly excellent.
Now: why go to Australia to look at the Milky Way?

Fascinating indeed
The subject of this book has been one of my abiding interests since high school. My daughter strongly recommended it to me, with the assurance that it contained one of the best descriptions of general relativity for the layman, woven into the captivating story of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Finally, someone who is directly involved with frontline research on this topic has taken the time to write about it in language that nonexperts can understand. Why is it that others don't do the same?

Amazing Detective Story
Hooray for Carolyn Collins Petersen, who wrote a review of this book for the January issue of Sky and Telescope. She absolutely captured the essence of this worthwhile read, and convinced me to pick up a copy of my own. I agree with her assessment wholeheartedly. Melia's book is a detective story, but more than that, it's an up-to-date account of what black hole astronomers are aiming for. The only thing I was somewhat disappointed with was that the last chapter ended too early. The subject of supermassive black holes in general deserves a lengthier discussion. ... Read more