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larry1138's review
challenging
informative
fast-paced
4.75
Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw have written the most challenging book I've ever read, and I loved it.
To be fair, I've always been fascinated with black holes and astronomy in general since I was a little kid. I never thought, with my rather poor grasp of mathematics and statistics that comes with the hard sciences, that I'd ever be able to really understand something as clearly complicated as black holes. Cox and Forshaw have proven that you just need to be a good science communicator to make it happen! This is a trait they share with Paul Davies who wrote "What's Eating the Universe?", which, while challenging, was much easier to digest than this book, and was one of my favorite reads of 2024.
Black holes are incredibly complicated things. We have notions of what they are from grade school science class, tv documentaries, and science fiction. The reality of what they are encompasses so much more than that. They are basically the Rosetta Stone of understanding how the universe works, as displayed in the subtitle of this book: the key to understanding the universe. I didn't realize how true that subtitle would be. It does sound dramatic after all. But it's true, and this book drags you through the last century of physics research to make you understand how.
This book teaches you everything relevant about how the physics of black holes work, without delving in to the math too much (a relief for me and another similarity to Davies' book). But you will learn about Penrose diagrams, Schwarzchild black holes, Kerr black holes, Minkowski diagrams, and a whole bunch of related iconography that goes with the skill (and boy it's a skill that REQUIRES practice) of interpreting spacetime on two-dimensional paper. This is a huge reason why I HIGHLY RECOMMEND if not require that anyone who engages with this book do so with a physical copy, I fear any audiobook listeners will become totally lost unless they keep any accompanying PDF diagrams up constantly.
Along with those graphical representations, you'll be introduced to concepts like the aformentioned spacetime, higher dimensions, lightlike and spacelike infinity, event horizons, general relativity, singularities, wormholes, spinning black holes, Hawking radiation, drama within the theoretical physics community, quantum theory, quantum entanglement, thermodynamics, and a whole host of other things I've already probably forgotten. But it's all there, and somehow, it's all understandable to the layperson due to Cox and Forshaw being excellent writers and interpreters of complicated science. Sure, I got lost a couple of times here and there, but I still understand the gist of what they wanted me to learn, and that's the key.
Now, despite the significant achievement in the translation of highly advanced physics to common-speak, I do think this book will be a challenge to everybody. It kicks your brain in the ass. For some people who aren't used to exercising their minds in a way that breaks your fundamental understanding of how time and space work, I can actually see this as a rather uncomfortable read. But I highly recommend it BECAUSE it kicks your brain in the ass. This book will make you reconsider everything about how the universe works, and that's cool. It might be scary to some, but it's cool. If anything, it fundamentally teaches you how to be okay with saying "I don't know" about the nature of the universe, a skill that I truly believe we need to teach more people about.
A super high recommend to me for mostly everyone, but especially anyone interested in science, and definitely anyone interested in physics or astronomy. This book has inspired me to do more reading on quantum physics, a great next step in which I'll hopefully find an equally approachable book somewhere.
To be fair, I've always been fascinated with black holes and astronomy in general since I was a little kid. I never thought, with my rather poor grasp of mathematics and statistics that comes with the hard sciences, that I'd ever be able to really understand something as clearly complicated as black holes. Cox and Forshaw have proven that you just need to be a good science communicator to make it happen! This is a trait they share with Paul Davies who wrote "What's Eating the Universe?", which, while challenging, was much easier to digest than this book, and was one of my favorite reads of 2024.
Black holes are incredibly complicated things. We have notions of what they are from grade school science class, tv documentaries, and science fiction. The reality of what they are encompasses so much more than that. They are basically the Rosetta Stone of understanding how the universe works, as displayed in the subtitle of this book: the key to understanding the universe. I didn't realize how true that subtitle would be. It does sound dramatic after all. But it's true, and this book drags you through the last century of physics research to make you understand how.
This book teaches you everything relevant about how the physics of black holes work, without delving in to the math too much (a relief for me and another similarity to Davies' book). But you will learn about Penrose diagrams, Schwarzchild black holes, Kerr black holes, Minkowski diagrams, and a whole bunch of related iconography that goes with the skill (and boy it's a skill that REQUIRES practice) of interpreting spacetime on two-dimensional paper. This is a huge reason why I HIGHLY RECOMMEND if not require that anyone who engages with this book do so with a physical copy, I fear any audiobook listeners will become totally lost unless they keep any accompanying PDF diagrams up constantly.
Along with those graphical representations, you'll be introduced to concepts like the aformentioned spacetime, higher dimensions, lightlike and spacelike infinity, event horizons, general relativity, singularities, wormholes, spinning black holes, Hawking radiation, drama within the theoretical physics community, quantum theory, quantum entanglement, thermodynamics, and a whole host of other things I've already probably forgotten. But it's all there, and somehow, it's all understandable to the layperson due to Cox and Forshaw being excellent writers and interpreters of complicated science. Sure, I got lost a couple of times here and there, but I still understand the gist of what they wanted me to learn, and that's the key.
Now, despite the significant achievement in the translation of highly advanced physics to common-speak, I do think this book will be a challenge to everybody. It kicks your brain in the ass. For some people who aren't used to exercising their minds in a way that breaks your fundamental understanding of how time and space work, I can actually see this as a rather uncomfortable read. But I highly recommend it BECAUSE it kicks your brain in the ass. This book will make you reconsider everything about how the universe works, and that's cool. It might be scary to some, but it's cool. If anything, it fundamentally teaches you how to be okay with saying "I don't know" about the nature of the universe, a skill that I truly believe we need to teach more people about.
A super high recommend to me for mostly everyone, but especially anyone interested in science, and definitely anyone interested in physics or astronomy. This book has inspired me to do more reading on quantum physics, a great next step in which I'll hopefully find an equally approachable book somewhere.
aoibheannamy's review against another edition
4.0
So very woman in STEM of me to listen to this while crocheting as a former astrophysicist. I have no idea how anyone who doesn’t have some knowledge of astrophysics and/or maths could ever hope to understand this book, it’s highly technical throughout but there were some witty moments which added some levity
dthomas22's review against another edition
4.0
What does this book and black holes have in common? They're both really, really dense. That doesn't mean I don't love learning about them, regardless of the degree to which I actually understand it. Which is the way this book is meant to be read, right? As Joseph Polchinski said it, "No one has the slightest idea what is going on."
jbelang85's review against another edition
I am going to be honest, I did not finish this book. I really wanted to. The authors are good writers, but they are either including too much math or not enough. I think Katie Mack, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Kip Thorne have done better jobs making black holes and relativity interesting and more easily understood by non-physicists. If the authors want to focus on the mathematic proofs, they need to spend more time building up to it. Again, I think they are great writers, but it felt like this required the reader to remember college level geometry, algebra, and calculus to really get. There were parts of it were that was not done, but not enough to keep me going.
tobwye's review against another edition
5.0
Very interesting books about black holes! The beginning was quite easy to understand but I still didn’t fully grasp the last few chapters about entanglement entropy, probably going to have to research a bit more in depth about the subject before really understanding it.