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opened my eyes on physics.
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Black Holes, Wormholes & Time Machines
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Do you
290 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1999
This edition
- Format
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290 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 1999 by Taylor \u0026 Francis
- ISBN
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9780750305600
- ASIN
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0750305606
- Language
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English
About the author
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Dr. Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a regular broadcaster and presenter of science programmes on BBC radio and television, and a frequent commentator about science in other British media.
In 2014, Al-Khalili was named as a RISE (Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers) leader by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He was President of Humanists UK between January 2013 and January 2016.
In 2014, Al-Khalili was named as a RISE (Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers) leader by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He was President of Humanists UK between January 2013 and January 2016.
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Black Holes, Wormholes, and Time Machines by Jim Al-Khalili is a book popularizing some of the results of Einstein’s Relativity Equations. If you read about this sort of thing a lot as I do, this might not be anything new to you. This might especially be the case since the book was printed in 1999 so most of the work is current to 1998.
The book itself describes the phenomena in question with skill and grace, remembering that this book is meant for laypeople and others unfamiliar with the subject. It describes the bending of spacetime being the cause of gravity, the experiments that proved Einstein to be correct and made him a household name and so on. The book talks about Olber’s Paradox, the Cosmic Background Radiation and other things related to the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.
As I mentioned, this book is meant for the common man or woman as the case may be. In that sense, the author avoids using too much scientific jargon and describes things in a manner that is easy to understand. With the “fabric” of reality and how it is warped by gravity, they use the rubber sheet analogy taking care to note that this is occurring in more dimensions than those occupied by a rubber sheet.
It is somewhat amusing to me to read about people that don’t believe that the Speed of Light is as fast as anything can possibly go, but I suppose if you were never exposed to the equations I can’t really expect one to get it from everyday life. I mean, Special Relativity is only applicable when an object is going at an appreciable fraction of the Speed of Light. The fastest man-made vehicle is probably a rocket, but I doubt that many people will have the opportunity to even ride such a thing. Even in the case of a rocket, we are only talking about something barely capable of escaping Earth’s Gravity. Now 40,000 km/h or 25,000 mph might seem fast and it is. However, that is nothing to the Speed of Light. At an appreciable fraction of the speed of light time itself slows down. Due to the Mass-Energy Equivalence equation that Einstein is known for, you will begin to gain mass as you get closer to light-speed.
In any case, this book was very good. It was a bit reminiscent of Paul Davies’ About Time which I think I still own somewhere. It covers a great deal of material in a thin package and has a bibliography if you are curious about any of the subjects and ideas covered.
The book itself describes the phenomena in question with skill and grace, remembering that this book is meant for laypeople and others unfamiliar with the subject. It describes the bending of spacetime being the cause of gravity, the experiments that proved Einstein to be correct and made him a household name and so on. The book talks about Olber’s Paradox, the Cosmic Background Radiation and other things related to the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.
As I mentioned, this book is meant for the common man or woman as the case may be. In that sense, the author avoids using too much scientific jargon and describes things in a manner that is easy to understand. With the “fabric” of reality and how it is warped by gravity, they use the rubber sheet analogy taking care to note that this is occurring in more dimensions than those occupied by a rubber sheet.
It is somewhat amusing to me to read about people that don’t believe that the Speed of Light is as fast as anything can possibly go, but I suppose if you were never exposed to the equations I can’t really expect one to get it from everyday life. I mean, Special Relativity is only applicable when an object is going at an appreciable fraction of the Speed of Light. The fastest man-made vehicle is probably a rocket, but I doubt that many people will have the opportunity to even ride such a thing. Even in the case of a rocket, we are only talking about something barely capable of escaping Earth’s Gravity. Now 40,000 km/h or 25,000 mph might seem fast and it is. However, that is nothing to the Speed of Light. At an appreciable fraction of the speed of light time itself slows down. Due to the Mass-Energy Equivalence equation that Einstein is known for, you will begin to gain mass as you get closer to light-speed.
In any case, this book was very good. It was a bit reminiscent of Paul Davies’ About Time which I think I still own somewhere. It covers a great deal of material in a thin package and has a bibliography if you are curious about any of the subjects and ideas covered.
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I enjoyed this a lot.
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I actually read the digital version of this book while sitting in my College Library (Yay! Big Olive!). Which might tell you how good it is, since I read the whole book in two sittings while in the painful computer lab! Best introduction to Cosmic-Super-Physics you can get. And it's great to get you started down the path of reading more and more complex books on this subject.
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The title's pretty accurate. The book covers the standard popular-physics-book basics of relativity, then goes into more detail about the ways that relativity allows time travel, especially involving wormholes. It developed from a lecture that the author gave to high-schoolers to recruit them to study physics. At one point he says that it "was written with a teenage audience in mind," which could have put me off, but I'm glad it didn't. It is indeed a book that you could start without ever having heard of relativity, and it avoids math completely, but still manages to go into more detail than you might expect. It explains the difference between rotating (Kerr) black holes and non-rotating (Schwarzchild) ones, which I don't remember learning anywhere before. It was also interesting to read how Carl Sagan's request for help with Contact led to the discovery that macroscopic wormholes are theoretically possible.
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Good for beginners. Quite a lot packed in.
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So exciting to read!! I read it in two days bc I was just so hyped about it. It’s an easy read. Even if you don’t understand anything about physics you’ll understand this book. Plus the author has a really funny way of explaining things so I absolutely loved it.
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Explained so well even I understood it. An enjoyable scientific book if you are interested in that area of science.
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