Death by Black Hole - Neil deGrasse Tyson

   2007; 362 pages.  Full Title: Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Science; Essays; Non-Fiction; Astrophysics.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Consider the following declarations.  The North Star is the brightest star in the nighttime sky.  The Sun is a yellow star.  What goes up must come down.  On a dark night you can see millions of stars with the unaided eye.  In space there is no gravity.  A compass points north.  Days get shorter in the winter and longer in the summer.  Total solar eclipses are rare.

    Every statement in the above paragraph is false.

    (from “Death by Black Hole”, pg. 293)

 

    Are you curious as to why the above statements are untrue?  Do you ask questions like: What would happen if you (or a star) fell into a black hole?  How can 100+ different elements get created from a single "Big Bang"?  What the heck is a supernova?  A quasar?  What’s the likelihood of a killer asteroid wiping us out like one did to the dinosaurs?  Can God and Science coexist?

 

    The answers to the above questions, why those first statements are all inaccurate, plus many more, can be found in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book Death by Black Hole.

 

    And you don’t have to be an astrophysicist to understand what he’s saying.

 

What’s To Like...

    Death by Black Hole is a series of 42 essays, plus a Prologue, by the eminent author/astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He divides them up into seven sections, and 362 pages, meaning the essays are relatively short: just 8+ pages on average, which my brain appreciated.

 

    The essays cover a wide variety of science-related topics.  Some of my favorites were:

    05 : Stick-in-the-Mud Science

        The amazing experiments you can do with just a stick, a string, and an hourglass.

    12 : Speed Limits

        Measuring the speed of light.

    25 : Living Space

        How likely is life to develop elsewhere in the Cosmos.

    26 : Life in the Universe

        How likely is intelligent life to develop elsewhere in the Cosmos.

    30 : Ends of the World

        Three possible ways it might happen.

    32 : Knock ‘em Dead

        Mass extinctions: what caused them?

 

    This is my second Neil deGrasse Tyson book (the other one is reviewed here), and once again I was in awe of his ability to simplify complex scientific concepts to where even readers with non-technical backgrounds can comprehend and enjoy them.  Tyson has a knack for blending science with modern-day culture.  Deep subjects such as Lagrange points and quasars are mentioned alongside things like Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, naturally), Star Trek “redshirts”, and astrophysical bloopers Tyson noticed while watching several blockbuster science fiction movies.

 

    The book is a trivia nerd’s delight.  I was surprised to learn that an unopened can of Pepsi will float in water, while an unopened can of Diet Pepsi will sink.  I learned the etymology of the words algorithm, solstice, and quasar; laughed at the use of the terms spaghettification and astro-illiteracy; and smiled when the author revealed he’s had an asteroid named after him (”13123 Tyson”).  The world’s record low temperature (-129°F, in Antarctica) gave me shivers, while the world’s record high temperature (+136°F, in Libya) made me break out in a sweat.

 

    The science-oriented trivia was equally enlightening.  I enjoyed learning about Foucault’s pendulum, why the astronomer Percival Lowell honestly believed he observed canals on Venus, and how a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes calculated the Earth’s circumference (to within 15% of the precise value) in the third century BCE.  The odds of life developing somewhere else in the Universe were much higher than I would have guessed, and I was fascinated that the element Technetium doesn’t occur naturally on Earth but has been found in the atmosphere of a couple of red giant stars in our galaxy.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 2,047 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.07*/5, based on 29,573 ratings and 1,367 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Syzygy (n.) : a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun.

Others: Noctilucent (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    One night a couple decades ago, while I was on winter break from graduate school and was staying at my parents’ house north of New York City, I turned on the radio to listen to classical music.  A frigid Canadian air mass was advancing on the Northeast, and the announcer, between movements of George Frideric Handel’s Water Music, continually tracked the descending outdoor temperature: “Five degrees Fahrenheit.”  “Four degrees.”  “Three degrees.”  Finally, sounding distressed, he announced, “If this keeps up, pretty soon there’ll be no temperature left!”  (pg. 180)

 

    When people believe a tale that conflicts with self-checkable evidence it tells me that people undervalue the role of evidence in formulating an internal belief system.  Why this is so is not so clear, but it enables many people to hold fast to ideas and notions based purely on supposition.  But all hope is not lost.  Occasionally, people say things that are simply true no matter what.  One of my favorites is, “Wherever you go, there you are” and its Zen corollary, “If we are all here, then we must not be all there.”  (pg. 297)

 

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort ‘em as much as you please.” (Mark Twain)  (pg. 329)

    I can’t think of anything to quibble about in Death by Black Hole, other than a single typo on page 132 referring the reader to “Section 9” for more information about the possibility of God stepping in “every now and then to set things right”.  There is no section 9.  That’s probably a printing error, since correct would be “Section 7”.

 

    A number of Amazon and Goodreads reviewers felt otherwise.  Some of their complaints:

 

    Neil deGrasse Tyson’s writing is too cute.  The book had no pictures of black holes.  The book’s cover was torn and the pages wrinkled.  Fake print.  Too hard.  Too simple (“cute beginner astronomy book”).  Too pessimistic.  Too anti-creation.  Too scary.  Not enough about black holes.

 

    Sigh.  For me, this was a great read that thoroughly met my expectations.  The essays are deep, yet not incomprehensible, unlike some other astrophysics books I’ve struggled through.  I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a greater understanding about how the Cosmos got here, where it’s going, what we know about the objects and forces that make up the Universe, and how we obtained that knowledge.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last teaser for the book.  Chapter 12 presents the history of scientists trying to determine the speed of light, starting with Galileo in the 1600s and continuing to the present day.  It thoroughly fascinated me.  The teaser is: if you wanted to do your own testing, how would you go about trying to measure the speed of light?