A spellbinding cosmic exploration that resists collapsing under the weight of jargon.
A new look at one of the universe’s most intriguing marvels.
Did gravitational waves, spilling from a black hole collision discovered in 2015, signal the opening of a wormhole through space and time? This is just one of many profound questions previously asked only in science-fiction movies and now studied in scientific circles as technology progresses. In their latest collaboration (Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos, The Quantum Universe, etc.), particle physicists Cox and Forshaw ask and answer many such questions. (Their answer to the above is a tantalizing “maybe.”) Black holes are the remains of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity. Until recently, they glowed “gently like faint coals in the cold sky,” so distant they existed only “at the edge of our current understanding.” In 1915, Einstein predicted their existence with the Theory of General Relativity, and the concept of “Hawking radiation” resolved an inaccurate view of them (that information disappears into them permanently, a belief challenged when physicist Stephen Hawking described black-hole radiation leaks). Are we close to an understanding? The authors think so. Inside black holes, principles of general relativity and quantum physics collide in such a way it is becoming clear we live in a “quantum universe.” Cox and Forshaw believe that quantum computers will help us solve the last mysteries of black holes in what will be “the ultimate vindication of research for research’s sake: two of the biggest problems in science and technology” turning out to be “intimately related. The challenge of building a quantum computer is very similar to the challenge of writing down the correct theory of quantum gravity.” One way or another, they write, black holes are helping us see the exhilarating extent to which we are “constantly discovering techniques that Nature has already exploited.”
A spellbinding cosmic exploration that resists collapsing under the weight of jargon.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780062936691
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A rich trove of science and contemporary culture.
An expert popular science account of human speech.
In his latest, New Yorker staff writer Colapinto provides an intensely researched, tightly focused, lucidly written story that is long but not too long. As the author points out, to call human speech a “miraculous feat” understates the case. All other animals “use their voices to make in-the-now proclamations about immediate survival and reproductive concerns, including expressions of fear, anger, hunger and mating urges.” Evolved perhaps 200,000 years ago, human language allows us to refer to events in the past or future and to make plans that we share with others, “to build the villages, towns, cities and nations that have given us primacy over the Planet and everything on it.” Even before birth, infants listen, their brains absorbing a dazzling array of tone, phonetics, syntax, patterns, and rules. Despite what early experts taught, language is not pre-installed in the brain at birth; babies learn it, usually accumulating a “mental dictionary” of 60,000 words by age 18. They achieve this because words are not random assemblages of digits. They carry meaning, and we are a species that craves meaning. Midway through the book, Colapinto moves from the mechanism of speech to its purpose. Darwin compared the changes languages undergo to natural selection, but the author disagrees. Over time, he maintains, changes in articulation, accent, and vocabulary have not increased but hobbled their efficiency, creating a Babel of incomprehensible tongues that pushes us apart. Observers claimed that the spread of media, from radio to the internet, would homogenize American speech, but the opposite occurred. Instant communication has combined with bitter ideological, economic, and cultural clashes to accelerate the creation of new American speech patterns. In the final chapter, Colapinto discusses political oratory, which has united Americans in the past. He gives high marks to the rhetoric of presidents such as Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan; however, like the majority of Americans, he considers Trump a divisive force.
A rich trove of science and contemporary culture.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982128-74-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
An enthusiastic appreciation of a spectacular astrophysical entity.
A short, lively account of one of the oddest and most intriguing topics in astrophysics.
Levin, a Guggenheim fellow and professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, knows her subject well, but her goal is appreciation as much as education, and there is much to admire in a black hole. Before Einstein, writes the author, scientists believed that the force of gravity influenced the speed of moving objects. They also knew that light always travels at exactly the speed of light. This combination made no sense until 1915, when Einstein explained that gravity is not a force but a curving of space (really, space-time) near a body of matter. The more massive the matter, the greater it curves the space in its vicinity; other bodies that approach appear to bend or change speed when they are merely moving forward through distorted space-time. Einstein’s equations indicated that, above a certain mass, space-time would curve enough to double back on itself and disappear, but this was considered a mathematical curiosity until the 1960s, when objects that did just that began turning up: black holes. Light cannot emerge from a black hole, but it is not invisible. Large holes attract crowds of orbiting stars whose density produces frictional heating and intense radiation. No writer, Levin included, can contain their fascination with the event horizon, the boundary of the black hole where space-time doubles back. Nothing inside the event horizon, matter or radiation, can leave, and anything that enters is lost forever. Time slows near the horizon and then stops. The author’s discussions of the science behind her subject will enlighten those who have read similar books, perhaps the best being Marcia Bartusiak’s Black Hole (2015). Readers coming to black holes for the first time will share Levin’s wonder but may struggle with some of her explanations.
An enthusiastic appreciation of a spectacular astrophysical entity.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-65822-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
