Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe

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But it is intriguing, to learn purely theoretical black holes derived only from Einstein's General Relativity. As a science book, I'm sure this must be a remarkable and accurate piece, but as a popular science book, it must be considered something of a failure.

It started off very basic, simple enough for most educated readers to follow along, but around 30% it really got into the science of black holes and the space around them. Richard Feynman, one of the smartest people who ever lived and did ground breaking work in the field said don't feel bad if you don't understand quantum mechanics - nobody does. An amazingly in depth insight into what the greatest minds are currently uncovering about some of the most fantastical aspects of our reality. Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, developed in 1915, laid the theoretical foundation for the existence of black holes.This is a bit unusual start (at least for me, a nonphysicist who learn only from popular science book), because I always learn about a black hole from a physical process (the collapse of a star), not a purely theoretical one like Schwarzschild's. It's time to explore our universe's most mysterious inhabitants Black Holes At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole 4 million times more massive than our Sun. So no problem, except that according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, you can also ask the question, what does that look like from the perspective of the book or an astronaut falling in? The authors' passion for the subject is evident in every page and makes for a captivating and educational read.

It's a complex but amazing book - the authors walked me through very many things I have previously not understood at all (despite intensive reading). But the things that I did understand were quite fascinating, although my brain slid off a few pages that looked like this and gave me a flashback to a college physics textbook that may have caused a few nightmares a couple of decades ago. Authors Brian Cox and Jeffrey Forshaw do an excellent job at simplifying complex theoretical physics concepts into something digestible for an amateur audience.Some say it’s no problem, because they can never meet again, some say otherwise, but I’m not sure I understand exactly what they say lol. This book, however, requires you to trust the math behind all the black hole physics and their interpretation. Einstein and Hawking plus others are no longer around to explain concepts and theoretical physics, but Brian Cox is and has the ability to hold an audience.

Originally thought to be so intellectually troubling that they simply could not exist, it is only in the past few years that we have begun to glimpse a new synthesis; a deep connection between gravity and quantum information theory that describes a holographic universe in which space and time emerge from a network of quantum bits, and wormholes span the void. My experience this morning: I finished reading a pop science book about black holes that I tried very hard with but largely didn't understand.Hawking discovered that when you put those two frameworks together, there's a prediction, which is black holes have a temperature.

But if you like to know more about the universe, and would like to really like to see how the real scientists go about it, try this book. The supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 was originally photographed by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration in 2019, left, and was spruced up in a 2023 image generated by the PRIMO algorithm, right. If all of the contents of a sphere could be completely described by its surface (as in black-hole thermodynamics), then maybe “volume” and “gravity” are secondary properties, that arise only from quantum entanglement interactions on the surface?We have a picture where the interior of the black hole becomes — in some sense — the same place as the exterior. We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. If the wheel rotates faster than the cameras FPS then the wheel on film is seen to Counter rotate, seeming to spin in the opposite direction.