Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe

Product Information

At the end of the chapter, you will understand everything, and everything will be pretty clear to you, whatever he wanted to explain. What I love about the book is that the personality of Stephen Hawking comes across, and you enjoy reading it. It’s such a beautiful right to read this book. Also, it shows that he was a very humorous person and funny because many times in this book, he gets into this self-deprecating humor thing. I am awed by the mind bending theorems proposed by Hawking and Bekenstein. some concepts explained below Stephen Hawking discusses a grand unified theory in a brief history of time. The idea behind a grand unified theory is that laws can connect general relativity and quantum mechanics. It is also sometimes called the theory of everything. Gubser and Pretorius offer clarity on a difficult topic, with a healthy dose of wonder to boot."— Publishers Weekly Also, as a reader who is not using these texts for any academic purposes, I think Cox’s writing is so much easier to ‘digest’ (and much more enjoyable in general) than Hawking’s (only comparing this to a few of Hawking’s books that I’ve previously read). I think it might be important to clarify that – I’m not comparing them based on ‘who’s the better (astro)physicist’ or whose ‘work’ was more ‘important’; but only of whose writing/books I had found more ‘enjoyable’. Hope that helps?

From the publisher “These seven short lessons guide us, with simplicity and clarity, through the scientific revolution that shook physics in the twentieth century and still continues to shake us today…” Despite the book’s brevity, Rovelli doesn’t flinch from discussing the tougher concepts. He warns you that you might find some of them a little confusing. I must confess that I’m still a little hazy on whether or not my inability to remember the future is just a perceptual illusion, or if it’s a fundamental consequence of the underlying physics. But Rovelli reassures you that none of that really matters and that what’s important here is the experience of being transported. If that’s true then the book more than does its job.There’s an old saying I think by Stephen Hawking that every equation you include in a popular level science book will half the effective book sales. Well, Cox and Forshaw deserve credit for taking a brave plunge (and by my estimate forgoing 99.999999% of their book sales based on Hawking’s formula) because one of the highlights of this book is the scattering of equations that are accompanied by careful explanation and insight. The best discovery in this whole matter, I guess, is; "During most of the life of a normal star, over many billions of years, it will support itself against its own gravity by thermal pressure, caused by nuclear processes which convert hydrogen into helium." This is definitely a hard read. I had to read some chapters again and again to understand ( not fully though). So if you are going to read this book, and understand it thoroughly, you should spend some time on it. While saying this, I think the authors try their best to convey these complex ideas to the layman. I have read considerable amount of books about the universe and this is the hardest so far. But even though this it's hard to read, I think we can see through these theories from a mathematical point of view. Because at the end of the day it's all about maths.

All of this disregards entirely that I am already sort of tied up with a pseudo-career in a different scientific discipline and do not relish the thought of attending university again. Nor am I particularly skilled at focussing on multiple things, fond of starting over, or withholding anything of value from the theoretical physicists that they haven't already got covered. For rest all the topics discussed with relevant theories is par excellence. language is good to read and understand but very simple for a book. Neil Tyson is one of the greatest scientific educators we have ever had. He is probably unmatched when writing popular science books, where he covers topics that can be very counterintuitive. But he explains astrophysics very smoothly that anybody can understand without scientific knowledge.All these questions are exciting, and we all want to know their answers. But the point is, are these questions answered in this book? Stephen Hawking takes you on this virtual tour where he talks about different topics, combines philosophies and scientific explanations, and does everything. But he doesn’t answer all these questions directly. So you won’t get a ready-made answer to all these questions.

Hawking lets us into his thoughts a bit, like a tiny window, not too much. But he talks about this special connection he feels with Sir Isaac Newton. Also, he seems to see himself standing on the shoulders of Albert Einstein and building off of the legacy that Einstein’s life work left behind. The authors try to describe the spacetime by something called Penrose diagrams. I think I did a good job understanding it to some extent. But when it came to quantum entanglement in the last chapters, I kind of gave up. Because the equations involved with those chapters were more complex than the rest.It’s always tempting to bask in the self-congratulatory delusion that if I just really concentrate on something hard enough I’d be able to understand it. But this book proved me wrong from the very first spacetime Penrose diagram that slowly sent my protesting brain over the event horizon and to the singularity while being simultaneously vaporized and spaghettified. A lyrical science communicator’: Carlo Rovelli. Photograph: Roberto Serra/Iguana Press/Getty Images A jaunt through space history . . . with charming wit and many pop-culture references' – BBC Sky At Night Magazine

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carolo Rovelli; translators Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (UK : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2015). Call number: PSE Library QC24.5 C38 2015 But this is a book for the layperson and Rovelli understands this limitation, glossing over finer detail in pursuit of an impression of the wonder that lies at the heart of the cosmos and his theorising. And in his hands it’s an effective technique. At the same time, it takes several days to get enough data to get a clear picture over a long period. So it’s an enormous task that takes place over years and years. Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton. The issue with today's small pop science books is that they don't intend to provide coherent information about something but for commodifying the simplified works of complex minds to the public under the pretext of preaching that knowing the name of something is intelligent rather knowing about something and being able to clearly understand it.

Telescopes can get a clearer, more tense image of something in outer space. If multiple telescopes worldwide work in unison, looking at the same thing, they can compare the data and get a much-sharpened image. That’s what researchers are attempting to do. It’s a massive task as weather patterns are different in different parts of the world that meet ideal conditions at these different telescopes. The Ascent of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Force that Explains Everything by Marcus Chown (London Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017). Call Number: PSE Library QC178 .C295 2017 The more accurately you know the positions of particles, the less accurately you can know their speeds, and vice versa" i.e.) the very boundary of the observable universe is also 2D surface encoded with info about real 2D object. The author not only provides very accessible summaries of seven key theories and foundational principles within physics, but he explains what it’s like to be a scientist. He writes this in a very narrative, easy-to-follow way, but it allows you to look up a word without breaking that pace and flow within each of the seven chapters.