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Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program) Reprint Edition

by Kip S. Thorne (Author), Stephen Hawking (Foreword)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 786 ratings
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Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics

Ever since Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity burst upon the world in 1915 some of the most brilliant minds of our century have sought to decipher the mysteries bequeathed by that theory, a legacy so unthinkable in some respects that even Einstein himself rejected them.

Which of these bizarre phenomena, if any, can really exist in our universe? Black holes, down which anything can fall but from which nothing can return; wormholes, short spacewarps connecting regions of the cosmos; singularities, where space and time are so violently warped that time ceases to exist and space becomes a kind of foam; gravitational waves, which carry symphonic accounts of collisions of black holes billions of years ago; and time machines, for traveling backward and forward in time.

Kip Thorne, along with fellow theorists Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, a cadre of Russians, and earlier scientists such as Oppenheimer, Wheeler and Chandrasekhar, has been in the thick of the quest to secure answers. In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work of scientific history and explanation, Dr. Thorne, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, leads his readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of interlocking themes, coming finally to a uniquely informed answer to the great question: what principles control our universe and why do physicists think they know the things they think they know? Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time has been one of the greatest best-sellers in publishing history. Anyone who struggled with that book will find here a more slowly paced but equally mind-stretching experience, with the added fascination of a rich historical and human component.

Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0393312763
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393312768
  3. Edition
    Reprint
  4. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  5. Publication date
    January 17, 1995
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.1 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  8. Print length
    624 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Deeply satisfying.... [An] engrossing blend of theory, history, and anecdote."
― Wall Street Journal

"Among the best of [its] genre to appear in recent years."
― Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times Book Review

"Readers seeking to go beyond today's headlines will not find a higher authority (or a better storyteller) to discuss the cosmo's most bizarre features…Masterful and intriguing."
― Marcia Bartusiak, Washington Post

"Superb. It is what many other books about their subject ought to have been and were not.... I think the book itself will be a strong force."
― Carl Sagan

"Black Holes & Time Warps reveals the scientific enterprise as very few books do; it richly overflows with history, modern physics, the excitement of discovery, and rare, firsthand scientific styles and temperaments."
― Alan Lightman

About the Author

Kip Thorne, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, is the author of the bestselling books Black Holes and Time Warps and The Science of Interstellar. Thorne was an executive producer for the 2014 film Interstellar. For “bridging the worlds of science and the humanities,” Thorne received Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Stephen W. Hawking is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (January 17, 1995)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393312763
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393312768
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.33 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 786 ratings

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  1. Kip S. Thorne

    Kip S. Thorne

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    Kip Thorne is the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, an executive producer for Interstellar, and the author of books including the bestselling Black Holes and Time Warps. He lives in Pasadena, California.

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
786 global ratings
A great book, not a great seller
1 Star
A great book, not a great seller
Book was sold as new, but loosely packaged in a box without wrapping or padding. Dust jacket has several tears now and looks terrible. (See pictures) I’ll be returning it and buying elsewhere.
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Top reviews from the United States

ARRELL
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read.
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024
Verified Purchase
We all had a copy of A Brief History of Time, Thumbed half-way and abandoned and left on the coffee table.
This one is epic, easy to read, and leads chronologically the great discoveries in astrophysics.
Dr. Thorne has a gift for communication, after the first few pages, I knew I’d finish it.
Would highly recommend to anyone curious to get a comprehensive overview of the marvels of our universe.
If you have no physics at all, start here.
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PembrokeSorbonne
5.0 out of 5 stars Readable astrophysics history on black holes, white dwarfs, neutron stars, quasars and worm holes
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2023
Verified Purchase
This book is a tour de force of astrophysics history since Einstein introduced General Relativity. It covers the history and conceptual development of astro physical bodies developed from implosion of stars of any size and the gravitational effects resulted due to General Relativity. It should be a reference book for any students of General Relatvity and astrophysics. It covers black holes, white dwarfs, pulsars, neutron stars, quasars, super novas and binary system involving them, and worm holes.

Thorne began with the introduction of General Relativity from Einstein and the introduction of black holes as Schwarzchild's singularities which Einstein rejected due to his reluctance of accepting gravitational singularity. The book continues to show how Chandrasekhar develops the Chandrasekhar Limit of white dwarf as a collapsing star under 1.4 solar mass. Next the book shows how implosion is a normal process of a dying star burning off its fuel; and a neutron star is resulted from an imploding star under 2 solar mass with 10 % of its mass released as energy as developed by Zwicky.

Then Thorne discusses his own Hoop Conjecture about how black hole is formed by a hoop over a rotating imploding star at critical circumference. Also discussed in detail is the "black hole with no hair" phenomenon of Price Theory according to which a black hole loses its magnetic field into dissipating gravitational energy during implosion.

The search for black hole in the sky began with looking for a possible binary star system one of which is a black hole or neutron star using both optical and x ray telescopes. X ray astronomy is developed as a result of searching for black holes. In such a binary star system, the star would exhibit orbital perturbation due to gravity from the black hole as well as alternating blue and red shift from rotation. Black holes would be emitting x ray in such a binary system. Another area of astronomy that is developed due to black holes research is radio astronomy. Large black holes rotations which are the radio wave source of quasars and large distant galaxies are searched by radio telescope.  In order to develop better way to measure gravitational waves, the ambitious LIGO Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory was developed by Thorne. He discussed how his Caltech/MIT team detect gravitational waves based on the length difference of two 4km length L shape beams in Washington and Louisiana measured by laser. This project resulted in Thorne and his team to receive the Nobel prize in 2017. LIGO is designed to detect gravitational waves emitted from ripples of curvature from two rotating black holes.   Thorne also discussed how Penrose used topology in mathematics to explain connection between objects and Hawking black hole evaporation from vacuum fluctuation.  Thorne ends his book with his paper on the initial research of worm hole as time machine and the need of exotic material, material with negative energy density to keep the worm hole staying open. He also presented his effort to deal with Polchinski's colliding Particle paradox if a particle is to exit in the past in a worm hole.

This book, though is overwhelming in length and details, but written in lucid, smooth, and direct prose making it easy to follow.  There are boxes with further technical details throughout the entire book for anyone who wants to explore conceptual or experimental details in further depth.
2 people found this helpful
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Kenneth Florek
5.0 out of 5 stars books this ambitious are a rare treat
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2010
Verified Purchase
What sealed the deal for me on this book was that it was written by a famous name in general relativity. His name shows up everywhere in books along these lines. One imagines that persons like that, perhaps, are not inclined to BS their explanations, so you can sort out the nonsense that might appear in breezy science books and articles. Obviously this is not always the case. Scientists, being people too, will take the opportunity of their book to hype their personal agenda on subjects extraneous to their expertise.

Let's be frank. Steven Hawkings books are basically vague, almost giving you an idea of what he is talking about, but not quite. You get some kind of amazed feeling. That feeling, with the man's impeding disability, is what made the Hawking phenomenon what it was. This Kip Thorne book is a masterpiece in what it attempts and succeeds at. Steven Hawking is a punk.

Kip Thorne only gets into one or two personal agendas that I noticed, and he is so up-front and brief about it that it easy to handle.

For some reason, the sponsors of this book let him do it the way he wanted, and include all the detail he thought was warranted, and let him take all the time he cared to take doing it. He must have had a fabulous editor. Either that or he is one of the most accomplished expositors that has every lived.

The careful, extended explanations of special and general relativity start off the book rather slowly if you have seen these before. Actually Kip Thorne includes more than usual in his explanation of general relativity. They just serve to give you a solid perspective before going into what has happened since Einstein kicked physics in the rear. Kip Thorne emphasizes that Einstein himself was totally against physically cut-off regions (black holes) and singularities actually existing, despite their mathematical inevitability from the very equations he originated. (Not that surprisingly if you know something of Einstein's single-minded belief in extending "normal" physics, not discarding it.)

There is possibly as much material that is not physics, but about the people and their political environment, in this book than physics. That material is if anything more interesting than the physics. I don't think a shorter book without that material would be good. Pedagogically, the hard science parts strain the brain, and the personality material serves to let the brain recharge. This happens to make it a better science presentation too. If Kip Thorne wanted to expand this material, and leave out the physics, I'd buy that book too, it is so perceptive.

I am giving the book a 5 not because I love it, but because this is one of the most valuable books, by my own personal values, that I have ever encountered. Large portions of the book were a strain; hard work to focus my brain on to the degree necessary to understand. That's why I say I did not love it, in the sense that one might love a thriller adventure. In that sense though it was maybe a 4.
8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Otavio
5.0 out of 5 stars Ótimo
Reviewed in Brazil on February 7, 2022
Verified Purchase
Ótimo livro, apesar de ter sido escrito antes das últimas descobertas- que o livro previu .
Gostei tanto que vou comprar a versão em papel para poder ver melhor as figuras e fórmulas…
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Eduardo Gonzalez Ramirez
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente libro con precisiones que valen la pena
Reviewed in Mexico on December 30, 2021
Verified Purchase
Soy Físico, recomiendo este libro para quien desee saber de este tema de forma agradable sin matemáticas pero con rigor y con una gran didáctica, lo estoy disfrutando mucho. Kip Thorne es un gran divulgador sin ser trivial y manteniendo respeto por su ciencia.
One person found this helpful
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Guillermo
5.0 out of 5 stars Muy interesante
Reviewed in Spain on September 19, 2022
Verified Purchase
Interesante y entretenido
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DV
5.0 out of 5 stars Readable and informative too
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2022
Verified Purchase
A quite chatty style and an admittedly personal view, on some more controversial events, but it's one of these books that you could open anywhere and read on. From one of the most prominent figures in relativistic cosmology as well as a central figure in gravitational wave detection. . Most informative
2 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Un testo eccellente
Reviewed in Italy on February 28, 2021
Verified Purchase
Spiegare le teorie della relatività non è facile, e ancora più difficile è far capire cosa significano, ma devo dire che Kip Thorne ci riesce alla grande.
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