- Hardcover: 210 pages
- Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc (May 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0471125806
- ISBN-13: 978-0471125808
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.7 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 522 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,761,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Clifford Pickover, an extraordinarily prolific and polymathic research scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, has consistently been one of the most creative writers about computer graphics, scientific visualization, and mathematical models of natural and physical systems. This latest offering is classic Pickover in its wealth of information, ideas, bold speculations and and propositions -- including proposed "hands-on" experiments with black holes -- which just may turn out to be plausible. Recommended.
From Library Journal
Black holes. They're exotic, violent, mysterious-a paradoxical phenomenon not easily understood. Acclaimed author and computer artist Pickover (Mazes for the Mind, LJ 12/92) has succeeded in presenting a skillful and entertaining explanation. Through a lively dialog between imaginary space explorers, he invites the reader to participate in experiments, puzzles, and computer programs that investigate and reveal the properties of black holes. Unfortunately, to travel this realm you need a science degree for a passport. Though filled with thought-provoking literary quotations and amusing real-life analogies designed to make science accessible to the lay reader, this text is loaded with mathematical formulas and weighty topics like gravitational time dilation, blueshift, and wave recoil. Despite its good intentions, it is way over the general reader's head, but it could become a cult classic for computer junkies and the scientifically literate. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.
Valerie Vaughan, Hatfield P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Valerie Vaughan, Hatfield P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing and Entertaining,
By
This review is from: Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide (Paperback)
I enjoyed this book. It was easy to get into and hard to put down. Don't get discouraged by the equations. I skipped over the calculation as all that interested me was the concepts which the author did well to get across. There was perhaps only a couple of sections I re-read and mainly because I was trying refresh them in my mind to relate them to sections later in the book. As a bonus there's also a cheesy little sidestory that while not exactly rife with tiwsts and turns does well to get across basic concepts in an amusing manner before delving into the knitty gritty of it. If you enjoy studying black holes buy this book. If you don't enjoy studying balck holes, well it'll look good on your coffe table with it's snazzy cover:)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Happy trails....,
By
This review is from: Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide (Paperback)
The term "black hole" was coined by the Princeton physicist John Archibald Wheeler. What, exactly, a black hole is (if there even is such a thing) has been a source of debate and confusion for decades. Clifford Pickover inserts you as the main character of this book. You are on a spaceship (complete with aliens) way the heck in the future & your ship is near a black hole. So, you & your friends decide to do a close (literally) study of the cosmic anomaly.The story is entertaining & has many didactic features. Pickover also inserts some humor so as to make the book enjoyable as opposed to a dense treatise of rather complex mathematical concepts. Also, at the end of each chapter is a section called "The science behind the science fiction." It is a detailed account of what we presently know (or think we know) about the notions which were presented in the narrative. And, the concepts are many. We learn of various weird things that happen in & near a black hole, such as time slowing, the "shrinking" of one's perspective due to the singularity & the mind-numbing gravitational power which is projected by black holes.....a gravity field so immense that the escape velocity exceeds light speed. We learn how black holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of Relativity as well as how the many principles of quantum mechanics come into the picture when one is attempting to understand the nature of singularities. Much of this book is speculation, but it is educated speculation. The conjectures on what happens inside of a singularity, as well as the possiblity of wormholes which lead to other universes & dimensions is exciting & based on our best available current knowledge of the cosmos. As an added bonus, there is a chapter in the back of the book in which many of the world's leading cosmologists answer questions posed by the author on various topics about & related to black holes. There are also computer animation pictures of some of the more dazzling geometrical effects that are generated by black holes. For anyone who is planning to visit a black hole anytime soon, this book is a must.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb. A wonderful introduction!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide (Paperback)
This book is the most wonderful and useful introduction to black holes and parallel universes that I have ever read. It is fun, loaded with color images, and sure to hold the attention of all kinds of readers -- from computer progammers to science fiction readers to laypeople interested in mysterious objects in outer space.
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