Black Hole Survival Guide [Paperback]

From the acclaimed author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space—an authoritative and accessible guide to the most alluring and challenging phenomena of contemporary science.

[Levin will] take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair’s event horizon.” —Boston Globe        

Through her writing, astrophysicist Janna Levin has focused on making the science she studies not just comprehensible but also, and perhaps more important, intriguing to the nonscientist. In this book, she helps us to understand and find delight in the black hole—perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists—illustrated with original artwork by American painter and photographer Lia Halloran. Levin takes us on an evocative exploration of black holes, provoking us to imagine the visceral experience of a black hole encounter. She reveals the influence of black holes as they populate the universe, sculpt galaxies, and even infuse the whole expanse of reality that we inhabit. Lively, engaging, and utterly unique, Black Hole Survival Guide is not just informative—it is, as well, a wonderful read from first to last. [Levin’s] writing is clear and so colloquial that it sometimes seems as though she’s right there chatting with you, telling a story in a conversation so compelling that you hardly notice the complexity of the actual physics . . . Not only is Levin a brilliant physicist, she’s a gifted writer, sensitive to language and its nuances . . . [She is] an extravagant storyteller with a vivid imagination and an acute intellect who is willing to take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair&rsqulãy