Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe

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The author starts from a simple theoretical eternal non-spinning black hole, Schwarzschild's solution of Einstein's General Relativity. In short, I didn't get swathes of it but apparently, I am a sucker for the particular kind of inspiration that uniquely comes from being made to feel dumb by a book.

Generally Cox is really good at simplifying complex ideas but here, except for the odd paragraph or two, he failed. Rather than spacetime-as-a-quantum-computer-code pointing to a programmer, we might instead take the view that earth-bound computer scientists have discovered tricks that Nature has already exploited.Black Holes doesn't do this – not even close – and my eyes began to glaze over every time a new equation was introduced and then explained in a dense and academic series of paragraphs without much in the way of respite. Authors Brian Cox and Jeffrey Forshaw do an excellent job at simplifying complex theoretical physics concepts into something digestible for an amateur audience. It doesn't appear to have any moving parts at all, so immediately back in the 1970s, there was a sign that there may be something deeper to black holes.

As a side note, I do recommend reading this one in parallel or subsequent to reading Carrol’s above mentioned book which will give you a great basis in special and general relativity. I think Brian and Jeff struck a perfect balance between the technical and narrative explanations for a lay person interested in this subject. 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). His work on black hole thermodynamics and the concept of Hawking radiation revolutionized our understanding of these cosmic entities.

And yet I enjoyed it even if a lot of it sailed right over my head, probably at the speed of light, quantumly.

If Hawking was right, black holes would render the Universe fundamentally unpredictable and the foundations of physics would crumble. Prachtig boek dat beschrijft hoe de natuurkunde van zwarte gaten verweven is met de wiskunde van quantum computing. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Now the two team up once again with Horizons, an exploration of these amazing objects--and why they continue to confirm that Einstein's theory of general relativity is such a brilliant explanation of the universe around us. Inspirational' Buzz Aldrin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. So if I finish the book and I still don't understand the universe, they're going to tell me it's my fault.

If you're not a physicist (or not yet a physicist) and you want to understand what Einstein and relativity theory are all about, you would do well to read this book. It's a great shame, because the cutting-edge ideas delivered, however imperfectly, in the book are fascinating and profound. I request just about every book on NetGalley that covers topics in astrophysics, even though the field doesn't chagne that fast and many titles strike me as oversimplified.Instead, they are synthesised out of entangled quantum bits of information in a way that resembles a cleverly constructed computer code. If you don't see a follow up to this review it means I've found the wormhole to another universe or travelled to another time or dimension. When you say bits of information, I usually think of bits that are used in terms of computer science to describe a zero or a one that encodes information. But, by the end of this book, you will understand, why black holes are indeed the key to understanding the Universe. Black Holes" by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw is a comprehensive and engaging read for anyone curious about the mysterious phenomenon of black holes.