Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes [Hardcover]

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.)

"Empire of the Stars" is a stellar depiction of astrophysics and the astrophysicists who make sense of it all. Miller focuses on the personalities and foibles of the men and women scientists who have contributed to our understanding of stars. The author presents their research through anecdotes and scientific discussions in the context of historical events. This gives added relevancy and significance to their work. In effect, Miller's formula for storytelling delivers new dimensions to astrophysics in "book-spacetime."

The thrust of the book revolves around the scientific battle between Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra) and Sir Arthur Eddington over star collapse. Although it becomes apparent that Chandra's brilliant insight is correct, it is Chandra who becomes disillusioned and professionally detoured by the controversy. Chandra seeks refuge at Chicago where he flourishes in his research endeavors and is recognized as world-renowned scientist.

The book is a colorful exposition on the genesis of black-hole theory. Miller uses historical events and the scientists themselves to reveal the mysteries of the stars. This book is a supernova for those interested in a biography of Chandra and a history of astrophysics.

This is a telling history of the discovery of black holes, starting with the work of Eddington and Chandrasekhar, and the conflict between the two, and the human side of the scientific cultural politics of research. Eddington's unexpected rejection of Chandra's paper was responsible in part for the long delay in the acceptance of these at first unacceptable consequences of Einsteinian cosmology.What is strange is that Eddington himself had stumbled on the idea in the twenties, but was unable to stomach the consequences of imploding stars vanishing into a singularity. In part the fact that this finding was inconsistent with his effort to produce a general theory, undermining his life work, was responsible for his opposition, but the result seems to have ended by discrediting him. The course of Chandara's career is a fascinating one, as is the portrait of an Indian scientist of great brilliance.
One thinks of Koestler's _Sleepwalkers_, stepping backwards into a new discovery of black holes

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