The Black Hole War

Author: Leonard Susskind
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316032697
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did, and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. The Black Hole War is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality -- effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space. A brilliant book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes, Leonard Susskind's account of the Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.

Death By Black Hole

Author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393062243
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
A collection of essays on the cosmos, written by an American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist, includes "Holy Wars," "Ends of the World," and "Hollywood Nights."

An Introduction to Black Holes, Information and the String Theory Revolution

Author: Leonard Susskind
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9789812561312
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
- A unique exposition of the foundations of the quantum theory of black holes including the impact of string theory, the idea of black hole complementarily and the holographic principle bull; Aims to educate the physicist or student of physics who is not an expert on string theory, on the revolution that has grown out of black hole physics and string theory

The Story of Collapsing Stars

Author: Pankaj S. Joshi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199686769
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
This book journeys into one of the most fascinating intellectual adventures of recent decades - understanding and exploring the final fate of massive collapsing stars in the universe. The issue is of great interest in fundamental physics and cosmology today, from both the perspective of gravitation theory and of modern astrophysical observations. This is a revolution in the making and may be intimately connected to our search for a unified understanding of the basic forces of nature, namely gravity that governs the cosmological universe, and the microscopic forces that include quantum phenomena. According to the general theory of relativity, a massive star that collapses catastrophically under its own gravity when it runs out of its internal nuclear fuel must give rise to a space-time singularity. Such singularities are regions in the universe where all physical quantities take their extreme values and become arbitrarily large. The singularities may be covered within a black hole, or visible to faraway observers in the universe. Thus, the final fate of a collapsing massive star is either a black hole or a visible naked singularity. We discuss here recent results and developments on the gravitational collapse of massive stars and possible observational implications when naked singularities happen in the universe. Large collapsing massive stars and the resulting space-time singularities may even provide a laboratory in the cosmos where one could test the unification possibilities of basic forces of nature.

The Theoretical Minimum

Author: Leonard Susskind
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465038921
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
A master teacher presents the ultimate introduction to classical mechanics for people who are serious about learning physics "Beautifully clear explanations of famously 'difficult' things," -- Wall Street Journal If you ever regretted not taking physics in college -- or simply want to know how to think like a physicist -- this is the book for you. In this bestselling introduction to classical mechanics, physicist Leonard Susskind and hacker-scientist George Hrabovsky offer a first course in physics and associated math for the ardent amateur. Challenging, lucid, and concise, The Theoretical Minimum provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.

Hawking on the Big Bang and Black Holes

Author: Stephen W. Hawking
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9789810210786
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has made important theoretical contributions to gravitational theory and has played a major role in the development of cosmology and black hole physics. Hawking's early work, partly in collaboration with Roger Penrose, showed the significance of spacetime singularities for the big bang and black holes. His later work has been concerned with a deeper understanding of these two issues. The work required extensive use of the two great intellectual achievements of the first half of the Twentieth Century: general relativity and quantum mechanics; and these are reflected in the reprinted articles. Hawking's key contributions on black hole radiation and the no-boundary condition on the origin of the universe are included. The present compilation of Stephen Hawking's most important work also includes an introduction by him, which guides the reader though the major highlights of the volume. This volume is thus an essentialitem in any library and will be an important reference source for those interested in theoretical physics and applied mathematics. It is an excellent thing to have so many of Professor Hawking's most important contributions to the theory of black holes and space-time singularities all collected together in one handy volume. I am very glad to have them". Roger Penrose (Oxford) "This was an excellent idea to put the best papers by Stephen Hawking together. Even his papers written many years ago remain extremely useful for those who study classical and quantum gravity. By watching the evolution of his ideas one can get a very clear picture of the development of quantum cosmology during thelast quarter of this century". Andrei Linde (Stanford) "This review could have been quite short: 'The book contains a selection of 21 of Stephen Hawking's most significant papers with an overview written by the author'. This w

Black Hole Survival Guide

Author: Janna Levin
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1984899791
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space—an authoritative and accessible guide to the most alluring and challenging phenomena of contemporary science. "[Levin will] take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair’s event horizon.” —Boston Globe Through her writing, astrophysicist Janna Levin has focused on making the science she studies not just comprehensible but also, and perhaps more important, intriguing to the nonscientist. In this book, she helps us to understand and find delight in the black hole—perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists—illustrated with original artwork by American painter and photographer Lia Halloran. Levin takes us on an evocative exploration of black holes, provoking us to imagine the visceral experience of a black hole encounter. She reveals the influence of black holes as they populate the universe, sculpt galaxies, and even infuse the whole expanse of reality that we inhabit. Lively, engaging, and utterly unique, Black Hole Survival Guide is not just informative—it is, as well, a wonderful read from first to last.

Black Hole of Wauwilermoos

Author: Dan Culler
Publisher: Sky & Sage Books
ISBN: 9781887776011
Category : History
Languages : de
Pages : 383

Book Description

The Cosmic Landscape

Author: Leonard Susskind
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316055581
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
In his first book ever, the father of string theory reinvents the world's concept of the known universe and man's unique place within it. Line drawings.

The Black Hole of Empire

Author: Partha Chatterjee
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691152012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Book Description
When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state.