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Title: Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S. Thorne, Frederick Seitz, Stephen Hawking ISBN: 0-393-31276-3 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.79 (73 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A fine personal history of "big science" in the 20th century
Comment: _____________________________________________
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).
Rating: 5
Summary: Only a notch down from genius
Comment: Black holes and time warps: Einstein's outrageous legacy, by Kip S. Thorne. My mother checked out a copy at the downtown library for me when I was 4 years old. I loved it then and I still love it now. It's truly one of my favorite books. It's probably one of the most to-the-point books about such subjects as blackholes and wormholes. It's easy to swallow, and it's not too long! No book on blackholes could ever be too long. Kip Thorne is a genius, and his books show it. Many would-be astrophysics buffs, such as many posting here, like to illuminate their egos by trying to challange the fabric of this book by throwing in such nonsense as "it's kinda flawed" and "it's good for the non-intellectual, but I found it lacking". Trust me, this book isn't all sugar and spice. Still, give it a break. 1) It's pretty old. 2) How many of these losers are professors at CalTech and are close friends with Stephen Hawking himself? Get my drift? Now, get this book!
Rating: 5
Summary: Black Holes Explained as No One Else Can!!!
Comment: 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".
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Title: The Elegant Universe : Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375708111 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension by Michio Kaku ISBN: 0385477058 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Relativity : The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein ISBN: 0517884410 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 06 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Future of Spacetime by Stephen William Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris, Alan Lightman, Richard Price ISBN: 0393020223 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe by Stephen W. Hawking ISBN: 1893224546 Publisher: New Millenium Pr Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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