Customer Reviews

Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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:)

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.

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.

Stimulating, educational. I'm a physics teacher and use this book in my classes. The book is quite accurate. I also like the humor.

This book at first glance was wonderful. After the first few chapters I noticed something very peculiar. The formulas they give have MAJOR flaws. Usually Pickover forgets to include the units of measurements (see the embedding diagram formula, he says r is the radial vector..well what exactly is the radial vector expressed as..Kilometers? lightyears? inches? Who knows! One can assume that Z(r) is the amount that is depressed from normal sea-level space-time. (assuming that you imagine some 4th dimension *Minkowski's space time I suppose*)) Another problem was Pickover's tendencies to stray from the topic. He often went on a tangent about electronics and video games? (give me a break!). Explanations and proofs of the equations found throughout the chapter are brief and lack the needed elaboration. Pickover didn't explain light tunnels well enough nor did he elaborate on WHY light is trapped in a black hole. Light has no mass so gravity can't tug on it, is light trapped due to the nature of space in the hole? Is it trapped because space forever expands in a parabolic curve? Is light red-shifted because of the space-time bend or is it more of a gravitational effect? (Although both are essentially the same). I found this book rather frustrating, I loved the equations but Mr. Pickover really needs to explain his equations.

Oh yes, one last example...the formula on page 11 C(sub h)=(4*pi*G*M(sub h))/c^2. He lists G as newtonian's gravitational constant, and CLAIMS it is 1.327*10^11 km^3/s^2*M^2 where M= solar mass. He should NOT have done this, Newton's gravity constant is REALLY 6.672 59 x 10^-11 m^3/kg*s^2. Pickover converted the mass and radius of the sun into the needed values and did all the math without informing you he did this. This can be very misleading as I am very confident that the guide to universal physical constants is correct. A note to Pickover, if you plan on writing about Physiks please show your work!

(I am also trying very hard to link all his equations together and have a difficult time. I computed the event horizon for a 1 solar mass and found the circumference? I took the formula for curvature of space found the derivative and found that for a one solar mass the radial vector (radius?) would have to be 2...I thought Pickover stated that the true radius couldn't be found? The book would've been much better if he linked the equations together or put more equations in there to make all of it fit! From my personal standpoint if you want a quick introduction to Black holes this may be your book (Just ignore the equations) but if you want a complete and wonderful explanation of black holes and such buy Kip. S. Thorne's Black holes and Time Warps: Einstein's outrageous legacy. (He is , from what I know, the guru of Black holes)

I enjoyed this wonderful introduction to black holes. There's something here for everyone, from high school students to scientists. The graphics are gorgeous. The presentation was so friendly that I could not help but learn about these awesome marvels in our universe.