Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin

Physics, Book Review

After the previous book ‘The vital question’, this book took me to a ride at a whole different level from cells - several orders heavier - the black holes and such (as the title may have given away).

A black hole is very heavy, it is so heavy that even electromagnetic radiation (commonly referred to as ‘light’) cannot escape it. Basically, that kind of limits the experimental validation of them. You just cannot directly see them in any possible way. However, when heavy objects (read ‘very very heavy’) collide - they change the spacetime around them very briefly, like a fly landing on the water, to emit, what a brilliant man in his 30s called, gravitational waves. The disturbance in space is on the orders of thickness of a human hair compared to the distance you cover by travelling 100 billion times around the earth. In other words, it is unnoticeable. Imagine that these waves pass right through us, through the planets, through the galaxies without registering any actual disturbance that we can perceive.

Some brilliant minds in late-1960s started thinking that it would be very cool to actually see if that theory is true - in essence they wanted to feel a gravitational wave. In the book, the author describes in detail the key people involved in the LIGO project along with various challenges and solutions that came by during the several decade journey to completion and the recent detection of the gravitation wave. The book does not discuss a lot about the technical details, hence it can be considered a good read even for layman.

Being a person in academia, Janna knows how things work and I like the fact that she did emphasize the negative tones instead of suppressing them as most science reporters do. One thing that she did manage very well is to create a normal human environment even when talking about some of the world renowned geniuses. It could have been very easy to over-dramatize in order to captivate audience, but she did not and I appreciate that very much. It is a very easy book to read, making it a seem like a short journal rather than an actual book.