Customer Reviews

Black Holes And Time Warps

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book, written by the great cosmologist Professor Kip Thorne, leads us through some of the wonders and paradoxes of the universe.

If you want to escape from your world, you can do no better than join him. He takes us step by step through the various discoveries that have led to this understanding of the universe in which we have evolved, in our own little corner, on this little planet.

Reading is like living in a movie, so brilliantly and with such passion, does he describe this epic search for truth.

The factual information he gives about the universe and reality itself as we proceed, provides an incomparable tableau of our surroundings and universal history.

If you are interested in what lies beyond the horizon of Earth, this book is a must!

Kip Thorne is the author of one of the most authoritative texts on Gravitation and Astrophysics. "Black Holes and Time Warps" is meant to bring these recent advanced discoveries in cosmology to the masses. What makes this book most valuable is that it not only devotes many pages explaining the physics in simple terms, but also introduces the major players in the field, telling the stories of their lives, and describing in detail how they achieved their discoveries. The book is therefore very inspiring to young scientists. It is written in a highly narrative style that keeps up a heightened suspense as one wonders what the next discovery will be, what it's impact is one our world vision, and which scientist will bring about such a breakthrough.

We read about the life story of Einstein, and how he worked hard and long hours in between babysitting his children so as to come up with his masterpieces on relativity. We then read about Chandrasekhar, the young student from India, who with nothing more than his own brain and a crude mechanical calculator achieved what is perhaps one of the greatest theoretical discoveries of the 20th centuries: black holes. It would be years before astronomers concur and document the existence of these beasts, years in which Chandrasekhar had to suffer rejection and alienation from his peers in the scientific community. We read about the wonderful experiments physicists set up to understand the world: from massive arrays of radio telescopes for listening to the furthest reaches of the universe, to cosmic ray detectors to measure the minute remnants of supernova explosions. We read about the atomic and H-bombs, about Oppenheimer and his own personal feelings about his creation. Here, the attitude of the author - himself a leading scientist and contributor to human knowledge - is far from passive acceptance of all that science brings. He understands perhaps more than anyone else that science can be applied for evil purposes as well as beneficial purposes, and he does not shy away from discussing these ethical dilemmas he and his peers had to confront at some points in their lives.

Coming closer towards the end of the 20th century, Thorne discusses the complexities black hole research has led us into: apparent paradoxes and strange objects defying understanding - "singularities" in scientific lingo. We read eagerly about the competition between leading scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose to expand our limits of knowledge on black holes. We read also about the role of the cold war in advancing - or suppressing - scientific knowledge.

This wonderful book is augmented by an enormous number of simple illustrations explaining the concepts discussed, as well as photographs of the various people involved in this unending quest for knowledge. The book also boasts of a useful glossary at the end, as well as a timeline, a bibliography, a good set of notes, and a people as well as a subject index. It is definitely a book worth reading, one of the few books on science that admit that science is more than just numbers, but is also about people and is an integral part of the human story. I give it a 4 because I thought the book is too long, and tends to get wordy at times. A concise edition would be a useful contribution. The bibliography also suffers from bloatedness - it is so bulky and with no comments such that the interested reader will have difficulty deciding what to read next.

Unlike the other reviewers, I am a (retired) theoretical physicist (Ph.D Yale 1959). This probably accounts for the fact that my reaction to this book is considerably less enthusiastic than the others.

There is no question that Thorne writes well and the book has been carefully edited. Moreover, his personal anecdotes and portraits of many famous physicists are very interesting. You get the impression that Thorne was very sociable and popular with his peers. This plus the fact that he had powerful mentors and supporters probably explains why he has had such a succeesful career despite his apparent lack of any particular achievements let alone breakthroughs.

The General Theory of Relativity was formulated in 1915. Despite its reputation for being very difficult, it is actually fairly easy to understand provided that you have an undergraduate education in physics and mathematics. The easiest technical book to read is D.F. Lawdens's "Introduction to Tensor Calculus, Relativity and Cosmology". The theory of black holes was deduced from Einstein's field equation by Schwarzschild in 1916.

So here we have a theory that is brilliant and as far as we know true. But it is after all nearly 90 years old and most of the important consequences were worked out in the first few years. So what have people like Thorne done with it since? The answer I am afraid is much less that the general public appears to believe.

Books like this contain a lot of jazzy stuff about time-travel and similar exotica. But Thorne is not as bad as Hawking and others who have also made careers of thrilling the public with popularizations of arcane theories that have nothing to do with physics since they can never be tested.

Einstein was a true genius who made a real breakthrough in our understanding of the universe. Unfortunately there are no more Einsteins today, only academic poseurs who bask in his reflected glory. Physics today is a science in decline; its widely touted "discoveries" often have little relation to the real world. Unfortunately, an increasingly scientifically illiterate public can no longer tell the difference between real physics and largely irrelevant speculations such as are on display in this book.

Kip Thorne is an eccentric author who reveals scientific enterprise of quantum gravity and black holes research in a simple language. This book is rich in history, and classical (Newtonian physics and theory of relativity) and modern physics (quantum mechanics) are presented in non mathematical form. We get rare first hand insights of scientific styles and temperament, and his personal involvement in various aspects of black holes research and his interaction with scientists all over the world especially those from former Soviet Union and the impact of communism on black hole research. The first part of the book describes theory of relativity, concept of spacetime fabric of the universe and curvature of spacetime in presence of matter (stars, galaxies, etc.) to generate gravity. The author gives us a good historical background to build his case for black hole concept. Theory of relativity predicts the existence of black holes but Einstein refused to accept it and so is Arthur Eddington another leading exponent of theory of relativity. The idea of black holes remained in academic obscurity among few who believed in it and it progressively became clear that dying giant stars undergo implosions in which nuclear force the strongest of all four forces of cosmos buckles under gravitational force creating a blackholes. Black holes have been discovered in the center of dying giant stars and in centers of galaxies, and efforts are underway to detect the black hole gravitational waves carried to earth from distant parts of the universe and to seek the secret of what is inside a black hole: a route to another universe? The author warps up the second part by discussing the possibility of constructing wormholes with exotic matter (tunnels in space connecting two widely separated locations in the universe) through hyperspace for interstellar travel and back to the future. He is one of the leaders in proposing interstellar travel. Physicists and academics are too conservative to get involved in space travel research as it is traditionally linked to science fiction and Star Trek junkies. The author can mesmerize the reader with his incredible knowledge and ease with which he can communicate to the reader; at the same time he is eccentric enough to work in one of his laboratory (Palomar Mountains) nude and draw criticisms from peers. He is also crazy enough to take bet with peers for things such as Penthouse magazine and annoy his wife and family with Mormon heritage. This book is free of marketing strategies of the publisher as the author shares his knowledge with the reader to his best of abilities to make everyone understands it even by offering few simple calculations and formulas. Do not be discouraged by the size of the book (619 pages). The text flows well and it is deeply engrossing. Anyone interested in black hole and space travel must have this book.

This is a great book. It describes the history of how the idea of black holes developed. Even in the 18th century Newtonian physics was shown to predict 'dark stars', because even light could not escape from them. With the great revolution brought about by Einstein and his theory of relativity the subject came alive when people started asking what happens to a star when its fuel is all burnt up. A black hole seemed to be the inevitable result if the star had enough mass. Astronomers are now generally convinced that black holes do exist and have identified a number of them.
Now what happens inside a black hole? Theory is now on very uncertain grounds. Thorne indicates it predicts travel in ways that are more familiar to science fiction fans. This is entertaining stuff, but should be read with a healthy dose of skepticism.
What is really great about this book is that Thorne gets the history from 47 taped interviews he did with most of those who have contributed to the development of the subject, thus providing a wonderful history of who contributed what idea and when. These tapes appear to be a treasure that belong in a public archive.
I don't think there is a single equation in the book. The ideas are explained with numerous diagrams to get them across. They work well. Do not expect to understand relativity without doing some mental work of your own though; one cannot draw pictures that show four dimensions.
Short biographies of the significant characters, a chronology, a glossary and 23 pages of documentary notes are welcome inclusions.
I am an experimental physicist. For me, the writing is wonderful and I had a hard time putting the book down. A non-scientist should enjoy the first half, but might get bogged down well before the end.
This book was finished in 1993, so for developments since then one needs to look elsewhere.

_____________________________________________

Like many, I started Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"
(1988), bogged down, and set it aside. Thorne's book got equally good
reviews, but my God, the thing's 600+ pages.... so it sat on my "to-
read" shelf for years. This tardy review is intended for others in
similar circumstances -- or for anyone interested in modern physics &
astronomy.

The book is written as a history of 20th century physics, from
Einstein's theory of the relativity of space & time (1905), to black
holes, gravity waves and wormholes in the 90's. I found this a very
engaging approach. Thorne's writing is (usually) clear and direct, and
he includes enough biographical tidbits and anecdotes to keep the
human juice in potentially dry topics.

A few gems: Einstein's college math professor Minkowski, who had
called the young genius a "lazy dog", later worked out the
mathematics combining space and time into "absolute spacetime."
Einstein made cruel jokes denigrating Minkowski's work, not
realizing, until after Minkowski's death, that his old teacher's math
was essential to Einstein's special relativity work.

Cosmic radio waves were discovered by a Bell Telephone engineer in
1932. Despite widespread publicity, professional atronomers weren't
very interested -- the first radiotelescope was built by a radio "ham",
in his mother's back yard in Illinois, in 1940. The first professional
radiotelescopes weren't built until after WW2, in England and
Australia; Americans didn't become competitive until the late 50's.

Thorne has a fair command of Russian, which gave him an "in"
when the USSR started allowing scientific contacts in the post-Stalin
era. Now that Russia is such a mess, we forget that the Soviets
produced a *bunch* of world-class scientists and engineers [note 1],
from the 1930's on -- including some of the best physicists since

Einstein.

Dr. Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Physics at Caltech
is best known to the
general public for his 1988 wormhole "time machine" proposal. Press
coverage included a photo of the author doing physics in the nude on
Mt. Palomar. Embareassing, but didn't hurt the book sales. The
wormhole work grew out of a request from Carl Sagan for a plausible
FTL transport scheme for his 1985 science-fiction novel "Contact"
(which I recommend). Sagan's request made Thorne realize the value
of thought experiments that ask, "What things do the laws of physics
permit an infinitely advanced civilization to do, and what do the
laws forbid?" This style of speculation by world-class scientists has
become popular (and somewhat respectable) in the last decade, and
has resulted in some very stimulating reading, such as K. Eric
Drexler's "Engines of Creation" (1986), and Hans Moravec's "Mind
Children" (1988) and "Robot" (1999).

My last exposure to formal physics was two painful undergraduate
courses (mumble) years ago. Since then I've kept up at roughly a
Scientific American level or below (plus I read a lot of science fiction).
I think I'm close to the author's aim-point for his potential audience.
I found some of the physics tough going, but these sections can be
safely skimmed without losing the thread of his arguments. I read
most of the book in two sittings -- it's surprisingly gripping. So --
don't put off reading "Black Holes" any longer!
__________
Note 1) --along with some remarkable pseudo-science. Iosif Shlovsky tells
of many such projects in his very entertaining "Five Billion Vodka
Bottles to the Moon" (1991).

As I have with "Stephen Hawking's Universe" by John Boslough, I've read this book a number of times. The beginning pages of Kip Thorne's book give a hypothetical situation of a space traveler caught in the unapologetic and unforgiving throes of a tortuous black hole. Kip Thorne then goes into tremendous detail and great length about black holes including much history about legendary and not-so-well-known scientists and their contributions to black hole-type theories. This book effectively combines science history with science fact. While the book, at times, seems rather "heavy", a few re-reads of certain parts makes the information more easily digestible. This book is not generally an easy read, but it is a fascinating journey through the history of cosmological science. This book is, without doubt, one of the best (non-fiction) books I've ever read on any topic. Kip Thorne is an exceptional writer and, from what I can gather from this book, an exceptional scientist as well. This book laid a lot of the foundation work for my research into black holes in preparation for the writing of my science fiction novel "Temporal Armageddon".

To be completely honest, this book has its faults, so it probably deserves four stars rather than five. Still, I haven't read a better book for laymen on this subject, so it definitely deserves the five stars in comparison to others.

This book is written in a good language, and you can feel that Kip Thorne is genuinely interested in what he is saying; he manages to illustrate what is so fascinating about physics very well. He talks about all the major subjects that have to do with black holes and, in my opinion, is best when talking about WHY black holes must exist.

I didn't expect him to write so much about the personal lives and professional careers of scientists, but he does that in an interesting and informative way. Once I got used to that, I enjoyed the descriptions thoroughly. Another thing is that, for the most part, he writes about complicated things in a very simple language, but at times he obviously deals with things too complicated, so you have to concentrate fully on what he is saying. Don't be discouraged by the first and second chapter, which explain the relativity and warping of space and time, the rest of the book is easier to understand.

I was tempted to give this book a rating of four stars after all just because of the last chapter, which deals with time machines. I am sorry to say that he sounds far less convincing here than when talking about other things.

Overall I liked this book. Perhaps it is a bit too long, you'll find yourself reading about things you could have done without, but Thorne manages to put in interesting details about, for example, his bets with Stephen Hawking, which make the book even more enjoyable.

I think this book is an excellent one, especially if you're new to astrophysics!

This book is excellent. The mixed history and physics gives it a strong structure of thought and makes it flow in the right direction. This book is not for the novice but it still is, mostly, easy to understand. It does a very good job in explaining the physics behind black holes, time warps, wormholes and various kinds of stars. Overall: EXCELLENT.

This book basically is quite simple in structure and features no hard core mathematical concepts of any sort. Thorne created the book so that even the most ambiguous of concepts concerning the esoteric field of physics can be understood by almost anyone. As a high school student I highly recommend this book to those who have plenty of time to spare and love to delve into the history relativistic theory and it's presumptions in our 4 dimension universe. All in all it's worth your money and it's non condescending.