Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program) |  | Author: Kip S. Thorne
Creator: Stephen Hawking
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
List Price: $18.95
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Rating:  89 reviews
Sales Rank: 49579
Media: Paperback
Pages: 624
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0393312763
Dewey Decimal Number: 523
EAN: 9780393312768
ASIN: 0393312763
Publication Date: January 17, 1995
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Product Description
In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work, Dr. Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, leads readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of interlocking themes, answering the great question: what principles control our universe and why do physicists think they know what they know? Features an introduction by Stephen Hawking.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 89
Beautifully Written, Carefully Researched and Articulated June 28, 2009
Herbert L Calhoun (Falls Church, VA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the same vein as Stephen Hawkins' "A Brief History of Time," (and with even more care) here Professor Kip Thorne takes us on an eventful behind the scenes ride through the arcane theories composing the post-Einstein revolution, and inside the minds of its key revolutionaries. Clearly, the afterglow of Einstein's theories is just beginning to be fully felt and appreciated.
Concepts such as black holes, wormholes, singularities, and time machines, ideas some of which Einstein himself had difficulty embracing, and which were once thought to be the province only of science fiction, here are carefully explained in non-mathematical terms and shown to be fully a part of the emerging implications of Einstein's deep and profound theories.
In short, this book tells superbly the story of Einstein's revolution and how its effects have changed our view of space and time, and the remarkable consequences of these effects and changes, most of which are still being unraveled. This is an altogether fascinating account, written by the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology, someone closely involved with the ensuing post-Einsteinian developments. Professor Thorne keeps us spell-bound as he tells the story in simple non-technical language of the struggles and eventual success in our search for a clearer understanding of what are possibly the most mysterious and difficult objects and concepts in the Universe.
Few books have been as successful in reducing the deeply complex concepts of advance Physics to commonplace understanding as Professor Thorne has done here. My hat is off to him for a fine effort, which even fifteen years later is still fresh: Touché, and five stars.
A deeply human and riveting account of how physics predicted and described one of the universe's deepest secrets. May 2, 2009
Joshua G. Feldman (New York)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I thought I was pretty much done with the theory of black holes. I have read dozens of articles and books on the subject - so I wasn't expecting much extra from Kip Thorne's "Black Holes & Time Warps". But this book blew me away with its deep theoretical detail; human insight; and rich historical content. Thorne doesn't just want to tell you about the weird mindblowing theories of what black holes are (although he does a fabulous job of doing that); he wants to tell you the full evolution of thought on the subject. It's a killer detective story full of fascinating characters with egos clashing and conjectures crashing up against the shoals of theory - and ultimately a deeply, almost religiously mysterious emerging fusion Einstein's field theory and Quantum mechanics called Quantum Gravity.
Kip Thorne is an experienced educator (and a parent) as well as a master of theory of relativity of the highest order. He is also fluent in Russian and has functioned as a liaison between Soviet physicists and the West for decades. He has worked personally with the giants in the field through the golden age of black hole research. His experience as an educator and deep experience and insight into the theories allows him to ably sketch them out for the layman. His depth of personal experience with the physicists who have led the assault allows him to populate the narrative with real flesh and blood people who struggle with ultimate truths in a human and deeply comprehensible way. Personal touches abound, such as facsimiles of signed bets between Thorne and Stephen Hawking, that convey the spirit and playfulness that goes on. He gives wonderful accounts of the process of physics work, describing the isolation, the moments of "eureka" where long considered problems emerge from the subconscious miraculously solved. This insight into inspiration is powerful stuff and you get it again and again from Einstein's central paradigm shift that shattered the Newtonian view of absolute space and time to Chandrasekhar's ship-board calculations that revealed the limit to the size of white dwarfs - and implied the inevitability of black holes to his mentor's dismay, through Hawking's bedtime realization about black hole growth and evaporation and much more. Thorne puts you there and really lets you feel it. These thrills and chills combine the exultation of someone cracking a hard puzzle with the child-like wonder of standing small beside the ocean or the vast dome of stars.
The physics in this book aren't lightweight. Thorne spares you the deep math (a taste of it is found in the footnotes), but the diagrams and concepts require some concentration. He presents these concepts with lucidity and tons of graphic visual aids. It's hard for me to gauge the accessibility of the science here since I've covered this ground before, but my sense is, anyone who has got through high-school physics can handle it.
The story doesn't end with the theory. Thorne takes us through the discovery of pulsars and x-ray and radio sources that provide physical evidence of black holes. "Black Holes & Time Warps" was published in 1993, so it's a bit dated. There's no mention of quark stars (a bit of quantum mechanical refinement to the notion of neutron stars). The hardest part to take was Kip Thorne's chapter on LIGO - the huge multinational attempt to detect gravitational waves. Thorne really gave birth to the LIGO project and in "Black Holes & Time Warps" he allows himself in the last two pages of the LIGO chapter to lovingly describe a potential scenario where in 2007 an observation of black hole coalescence is made. It's heartbreaking given that as of 2009 LIGO still hasn't make any confirmed observations of gravitational waves after almost 2 decades. I have little doubt that Thorne's beautiful vision will eventually come to pass, but the long desert and struggle conveyed by his underestimation of the time is certainly a sad moment.
There's so much in here that transcends the physics - particularly in the depiction of the cold war, the impact of the nuclear bomb effort on the science of physics and astrophysics, and the horrible toll that Stalin's purges took on the people at the forefront of Soviet scientific research. All in all, this is one of the best works of science popularization and history of science I have ever read. Highest recommendation.
Kip S. Thorne became my favorite author April 1, 2009
D. Meltesen II (Green Bay, WI)
I'd like to start off by stating that I find this book to be so amazing that this is the first review I've ever written for anything I've bought (and I purchase many things online, mostly computer parts).
I've always had a fascination with quantum physics, general relativity and the ever-illustrious black hole, but this book perpetuated that interest so much further.
Thorne, a professor at Caltech, puts nearly every possible aspect of general relativity, exploding/imploding supernovae, black holes, and space in general into a very easy to follow, yet in depth format.
His analogies are excellent and he draws a very clear picture of the greatest minds in theoretical physics' history without getting too complex. He throws in mathematical equations and a few diagrams I didn't follow at first, but after I read it through I was able to go back and comprehend much of what he had written.
All in all, this is a wonderful book to get a REAL first grasp on theoretical physics and general relativity.
Just nice! December 20, 2008
Michael G. Sewchok
Really makes difficult concepts understandable in addition it is a
joy to read. Not like a boring or overwhelming text book.
Interested in black hole physics? Look no further... December 7, 2008
J. Koelman (Houston, TX)
... you have found the book.
The whole history on the subject, a clear account on how Einstein's work and the subsequent decades of study on black holes have changed mankind's view on time and space. A very accessible book, written in an engaging style by a true authority on the subject.
No surprise this book rates in the absolute top in the category science here on Amazon (average review rating of 4.77 stars).
What else is there to say? Oh yes, the price: simply a steal at about 2 cents/page.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 89
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