Book Review: Breif history of black holes

[heinerv]

Author: Becky Smethurst. Available in Hennepin County Library.

Fun book recounting how science developed both the theory and the tools to prove the existence of black holes. One point she likes to make is that black holes are neither black or a hole. Since accretion disks around them radiate energy, they aren't black. And there is a lot of mass in them, so they aren't a hole.

The book is written in an easy style so it's not too cumbersome to read and follow. Also, she includes her own experiences getting her PHD.

Check it out, I'm sure you will enjoy it.

[SEmert]

By the way if you haven't ever run across her on YouTube, she has a YouTube channel called Dr. Becky where she provides scientific news updates and other videos. She is an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford in the UK.

One of the latest ones is a sort of a mea culpa, saying she never knew the beautiful blue image of Neptune that we all know from the Voyager flyby is actually a false color image to highlight the surface storms, and the actual color is much more of a muted light blue. Her excuse is that the picture was the only published picture just because of press limitations, and the picture was released before she was born, making her about 34 now. Feel old yet?

[FF2Rydia]

Her excuse is that the picture was the only published picture just because of press limitations, and the picture was released before she was born, making her about 34 now. Feel old yet?

Yeah, it does. I was in elementary school for the Uranus and Neptune flybys (and SN 1987A).