Sign-In
Cart
Black Holes in Space and in Stories: Real Black Hole Science and the Stories That Shaped It: From Dark Stars and Science Fiction to Interstellar, the
Paperback
Series: Black Hole, Book 7
Sports GeneralAstronomy & Space
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9798185538678
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
There are two kinds of black holes. One kind is made of gravity and mathematics. The other is made of imagination and story. This book is about both - and about the remarkable relationship between them.
For more than two centuries, black holes have led a double life: as real objects in the physical universe, confirmed by gravitational waves, photographed by a telescope the size of the Earth, and shown to sit at the heart of every large galaxy in the observable universe - and as objects of the human imagination, appearing in novels, films, television shows, comic books, video games, music, and art, and serving as mirrors for some of the deepest questions human beings have ever asked about time, identity, knowledge, and the limits of the knowable.
For more than two centuries, black holes have led a double life: as real objects in the physical universe, confirmed by gravitational waves, photographed by a telescope the size of the Earth, and shown to sit at the heart of every large galaxy in the observable universe - and as objects of the human imagination, appearing in novels, films, television shows, comic books, video games, music, and art, and serving as mirrors for some of the deepest questions human beings have ever asked about time, identity, knowledge, and the limits of the knowable.
Black Holes in Space and in Stories explores both lives and the extraordinary relationship between them.
The science is real and rigorous. The book covers what black holes actually are - not the popular misconception of a cosmic vacuum cleaner but the correct general relativistic picture of a region of curved spacetime from which no path leads outward. It covers how they form, from the death of massive stars through successive nuclear burning stages to the catastrophic iron core collapse. It explains how astronomers detect invisible objects through X-ray binaries, stellar orbit tracking, gravitational wave detections by LIGO, and direct imaging by the Event Horizon Telescope. It tells the human stories of the scientists - Chandrasekhar's rejected mass limit, Jocelyn Bell Burnell's missing Nobel Prize, Andrea Ghez's twenty years of galactic center observations, Katie Bouman's viral image, Kip Thorne's extraordinary dual life as physicist and Hollywood executive producer. Across fifteen chapters, this book reveals:
The complete history of the black hole concept from John Michell's 1783 dark star proposal through Karl Schwarzschild's battlefield derivation of the first black hole solution, Chandrasekhar's vindicated mass limit, and the naming of the black hole by John Wheeler in 1967. The science fiction tradition that imagined black holes before astronomers confirmed them, and how those stories recruited a generation of physicists. The extraordinary story of Interstellar's Gargantua - how Kip Thorne's equations produced a scientifically accurate visualization that revealed new physics and generated genuine academic papers. The complete detection story: Cygnus X-1 and the Hawking-Thorne bet, the galactic center stellar orbits, the gravitational wave chirp of GW150914, and the Event Horizon Telescope photographs of M87 and Sagittarius A*. How black holes appear in literature from Greg Egan's mathematically rigorous hard science fiction to literary fiction's use of the event horizon as a metaphor for grief, trauma, and the limits of language. The NASA sound sonifications, the art, architecture, and fashion inspired by the 2019 photograph, and David Bowie's Blackstar as one of popular music's most serious engagements with astronomical imagery. The philosophical questions that black holes raise about the limits of knowledge, the arrow of time, and the nature of identity at the boundary of the unknowable. And the future: LISA, next-generation gravitational wave detectors, the first black hole movie, and the stories that remain to be told.
No previous science background is required. The science is explained clearly and completely, and the cultural chapters are engaging whether or not you have read the science ones. But read together, they reveal something that neither science nor story can show alone: that the two kinds of black holes have always been the same human project, approached from different directions.
The science is real and rigorous. The book covers what black holes actually are - not the popular misconception of a cosmic vacuum cleaner but the correct general relativistic picture of a region of curved spacetime from which no path leads outward. It covers how they form, from the death of massive stars through successive nuclear burning stages to the catastrophic iron core collapse. It explains how astronomers detect invisible objects through X-ray binaries, stellar orbit tracking, gravitational wave detections by LIGO, and direct imaging by the Event Horizon Telescope. It tells the human stories of the scientists - Chandrasekhar's rejected mass limit, Jocelyn Bell Burnell's missing Nobel Prize, Andrea Ghez's twenty years of galactic center observations, Katie Bouman's viral image, Kip Thorne's extraordinary dual life as physicist and Hollywood executive producer. Across fifteen chapters, this book reveals:
The complete history of the black hole concept from John Michell's 1783 dark star proposal through Karl Schwarzschild's battlefield derivation of the first black hole solution, Chandrasekhar's vindicated mass limit, and the naming of the black hole by John Wheeler in 1967. The science fiction tradition that imagined black holes before astronomers confirmed them, and how those stories recruited a generation of physicists. The extraordinary story of Interstellar's Gargantua - how Kip Thorne's equations produced a scientifically accurate visualization that revealed new physics and generated genuine academic papers. The complete detection story: Cygnus X-1 and the Hawking-Thorne bet, the galactic center stellar orbits, the gravitational wave chirp of GW150914, and the Event Horizon Telescope photographs of M87 and Sagittarius A*. How black holes appear in literature from Greg Egan's mathematically rigorous hard science fiction to literary fiction's use of the event horizon as a metaphor for grief, trauma, and the limits of language. The NASA sound sonifications, the art, architecture, and fashion inspired by the 2019 photograph, and David Bowie's Blackstar as one of popular music's most serious engagements with astronomical imagery. The philosophical questions that black holes raise about the limits of knowledge, the arrow of time, and the nature of identity at the boundary of the unknowable. And the future: LISA, next-generation gravitational wave detectors, the first black hole movie, and the stories that remain to be told.
No previous science background is required. The science is explained clearly and completely, and the cultural chapters are engaging whether or not you have read the science ones. But read together, they reveal something that neither science nor story can show alone: that the two kinds of black holes have always been the same human project, approached from different directions.
Also from
Publishing, Yb-Nayon
Beyond Neptune: What Is Past Neptune, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud Explained for Adult Space Readers
Publishing, Yb-Nayon
Paperback
$9.83
The Black Hole Photograph: The True Story of the Event Horizon Telescope, Einstein's Theory, and the Global Team Who Photographed a Black Hole
Publishing, Yb-Nayon
Paperback
$10.79
Quasars and Active Galaxies: What Is a Quasar, the Brightest Objects in the Universe Explained for Beginners
Publishing, Yb-Nayon
Paperback
$11.99
The Shapes of Galaxies: Why Do Galaxies Have Different Shapes, Spiral and Elliptical Galaxies Explained Simply
Publishing, Yb-Nayon
Paperback
$11.99
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way: What Is the Milky Way Galaxy, a First Space Book for Kids About Our Home Galaxy
Publishing, Yb-Nayon
Paperback
$11.99
Also in
Sports General
The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein's Princeton Lectures
Renn, Jürgen
Gutfreund, Hanoch
Hardcover
$66.00
The Science Magpie: Fascinating Facts, Stories, Poems, Diagrams and Jokes Plucked from Science
Flynn, Simon
Paperback
From $9.99
Every Dog Deserves an Adventure: Amazing Stories of Camping with Dogs
Camping with Dogs
Tracosas, L. J.
Hardcover
$23.74
Big Fan: Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love
Schur, Michael
Posnanski, Joe
Hardcover
$31.50
I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right
Kaplan, Matt
Hardcover
$28.50
Long Range Shooting Handbook: Complete Beginner's Guide to Precision Rifle Shooting
Cleckner, Ryan M.
Paperback
$23.70
Pardon My Book: Ten Years of the Best (and Worst) in Sports from Pardon My Take
Big Cat
Commenter, Pft
Hardcover
$33.25
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
Gallwey, W. Timothy
Paperback
$19.95
The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses
Baird, Addy
Hardcover
$26.10
The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts
Schaerlaeckens, Leander
Hardcover
$31.35
This Is about Running. This Is Not about Running.: Lessons for Between and Beyond the Start and Finish Line
Bennett, Chris
Hardcover
$28.50
The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy
Bauer, Susan Wise
Hardcover
$27.00
A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines
Levenson, Thomas
Hardcover
$25.20
The Ultimate Survival Medicine Guide: Emergency Preparedness for Any Disaster
Alton, Joseph
Alton, Amy
Paperback
$18.99
The Diet-Proof Body: 5 Simple Habits to Lose Fat, Keep It Off and Escape Diet Prison for Good
Harrison, Trent
Paperback
$18.99
The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, an Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water
Ballard, Chris
Hardcover
$27.00
The Playbook: The Hidden Forces Shaping Winners and Losers in the Modern NFL
Robinson, Joshua
Clegg, Jonathan
Hardcover
$28.49
The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Riskin, Jessica
Hardcover
$28.80
Compete: Developing a Mental Playbook for Performance Under Pressure in Sport
Abrahams, Dan
Paperback
$28.74
Relegated: One American's Pints-And-Pies Journey from the Top to the Bottom of English Football
Smith, Todd
Hardcover
$26.10
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
Sobel, Dava
Paperback
$18.00
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection (Large Print Edition)
Green, John
Paperback
$28.50
Gun Trader's Guide, Forty-Fifth Edition: A Comprehensive, Fully Illustrated Guide to Modern Collectible Firearms with Market Values
Sadowski, Robert A.
Paperback
$28.49
The Ultimate Soccer Jersey Collection: Iconic Kits from the World's Greatest Game
Football Shirts, Classic
Hardcover
$33.25
Pheasant Tail Simplicity: Recipes and Techniques for Successful Fly Fishing
Mathews, Craig
Chouinard, Yvon
Mazzo, Mauro
Paperback
$23.75
Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf
Penick, Harvey
Hardcover
$25.65
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
Boyle, Rebecca
Paperback
$20.90
Your Health: A Corrective System of Exercising That Revolutionizes the Entire Field of Physical Education
Pilates, Joseph H.
Paperback
$18.95
Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter (Large Print Edition)
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse
Hardcover
$56.55
Alchemy: An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science
Ball, Philip
Hardcover
$38.00
Friday Night Lights (25th Anniversary Edition): A Town, a Team, and a Dream
Bissinger, H. G.
Paperback
From $10.99
The Powerful Primate: How Controlling Energy Enabled Us to Build Civilization
Ennos, Roland
Hardcover
$27.00
2084 and the AI Revolution, Updated and Expanded Edition: How Artificial Intelligence Informs Our Future
Lennox, John C.
Paperback
$26.59
Your Guide to the 2026 World Cup: Everything You Need to Know about the Players and Teams
Stay, Shane
Paperback
$18.95
String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis: A Library of America Special Publication
Wallace, David Foster
Hardcover
$21.80
The Great Math War: How Three Brilliant Minds Fought for the Foundations of Mathematics
Bardi, Jason Socrates
Hardcover
From $19.99
The Inner Game of Tennis (50th Anniversary Edition): The Classic Guide to Peak Performance
Gallwey, W. Timothy
Hardcover
$26.60
Coaching with Heart: Taoist Wisdom to Inspire, Empower, and Lead
Lynch, Jerry
Huang, Chungliang Al
Paperback
$18.99
Knicker Bonkers: The New York Knicks' Wild NBA Championship Run to End a 53-Year Title Drought
New York Post
Paperback
$18.95
Bioinspired: How Nature Made Us Modern, Drives Today's Technological Innovation, and Inspires a Future Worth Inventing
Stier, Samuel Cord
Hardcover
$33.25
Science of Cycling: Transform Your Ride, Gain Strength, Revolutionize Your Training
Bailey, David
Paperback
$28.50
How to Read Nature: Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You've Never Noticed
Gooley, Tristan
Paperback
$16.10
The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 Into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport
Robinson, Joshua
Clegg, Jonathan
Hardcover
$28.49
Inside the Owner's Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports
Rubenstein, David M.
Hardcover
$28.50
Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being
Theise, Neil
Paperback
$18.00
Todo Es Tuberculosis. La Historia de la Infección Más Mortal de la Humanidad / Everything Is Tuberculosis
Green, John
Paperback
$14.20
Interregnum: Inside the Grueling and Glamorous Battle to Become the Next King of Chess
Himelfarb, Jordan
Hardcover
$28.45
Surviving the Trail: Five Essential Skills to Prepare Every Hiker for Adventure's Most Common Perils
Scanlon, Rob
Paperback
$18.95
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
Feynman, Richard P.
Paperback
$18.04
A Year of Forest School: Outdoor Play and Skill-Building Fun for Every Season
Worroll, Jane
Houghton, Peter
Paperback
$18.95
Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess (Large Print Edition)
Mezrich, Ben
Paperback
$32.00
Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete
House, Steve
Johnston, Scott
Paperback
$33.25
The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science
Chapman, Kit
Hardcover
$28.45
Miscalculated Risks: Attacked, Crippled, Paralyzed, Drowning, Unconscious and Freezing in The Wild (Just Not All at Once)
Cooper, Michael
Paperback
$18.04
Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History
Burgess, Anika
Hardcover
$33.25
Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
Ashton, Anthony
Sutton, Daud
Lundy, Miranda
Hardcover
$24.70
The Surgeon, the Midwife, the Quack: How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England
Skuse, Alanna
Hardcover
$27.50
Horse Country: Inside the World of Equestrian Style and Sport, from British Dressage to Western Riding
O'Shea-Evans, Kathryn
Hardcover
$57.00