Skip to main content

A Brief History of Black Holes - Becky Smethurst ***

Black holes are a perennially interesting topic, so anyone writing a book about them needs to provide a new angle - a USP, if you like. For this mostly interesting book, Becky Smethurst has gone for 'why everything you know about them is wrong.' This reflects the several common misconceptions about black holes, even though some of these have been so thoroughly debunked already that it's hard to believe there are too many left who hold them.

We start with an introduction to the nature of stars, bring in gravitational wells and neutron stars and get on to black holes themselves - though we soon discover they are not black, one of those misapprehensions alongside the idea that they are super gravitational vacuum cleaners, inevitably destroying everything nearby. We're told that black holes don't suck, which is sort of true as we explore the warping of space and time - though the distinction between gravitational attraction and sucking is perhaps fairly trivial if you get too close to a black hole.

Overall, then, what we get here is a fairly high level, approachable introduction to the nature of black holes, where they come from, the role of the supermassive variety in galaxies and more.

Smethurst is a little hazy on some aspects of history - for example, she says that it wasn't until the 1920s that some nebulae were considered to be galaxies, even though Herschel, amongst others, had suggested this significantly earlier. Also, and how many times do we have to say this, she repeats the myth that Giordano Bruno was the first to suggest the the stars were suns in their own right - he appears to have got the idea from Nicholas of Cusa.

It is also worrying that Smethurst seems to put those who 'challenge the existence of dark matter' on a par with flat earthers - 'It came about after over three decades worth of observations and research pointed to no other plausible conclusion' - this simply isn't true. The reality is that dark matter particles have never been detected, while modified gravity theories arguably explain more than dark matter does. Both theories have flaws, but at the moment, it's all too common for popular astronomy/astrophysics books like this to give a casual dismissal of anything but those elusive particles. That simply isn't good science.

As is also common with cosmology/astrophysics books in particular (for some reason), there is a degree of perkiness to the presentation that becomes a little wearing. Take, for instance, this opener to a chapter: 'The recipe for making a black hole is theoretically very simple, yet in practice rather difficult. Essentially, throw enough matter into a small enough space, crush it down and voila! A black hole will result.' So far, tolerable. But then Smethurst changes gear and gives us: 'Now I can't speak for everyone, but my puny noodle arms definitely aren't strong enough to crush matter down in this way, and I imagine neither are yours. I'm sure even veterans of the recipe game like Mary Berry would struggle to follow that one.' It's the kids' TV presenter's approach to science writing, which doesn't sit well with an adult audience. 

This is a perfectly likeable book, but in a crowded marketplace, it struggles a little to stand out.

Hardback:   
Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that â€˜Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...