New astronomy and space titles reviewed
A Brief History of Black Holes
Macmillan £20 • HB
What do the terms gravitationally collapsed star, frozen star and dark star have in common? They are all terms that have been used to describe black holes. This nice little titbit is just one of the many that fill A Brief History of Black Holes.
The book takes you for a jaunt through science history, presenting the smallest to the largest black holes, while travelling from the centre of the Milky Way to the edge of the visible Universe. This is all done with Becky Smethurst’s charming wit and many pop-culture references. The chapter titles are cleverly thought out, using song lyrics from the Spice Girls to quotes from The Lord of the Rings. Not something you see every day in a popular astrophysics book! In addition to Smethurst’s uncomplicated writing style, it makes for a book that’s very accessible and an easy read.
The book flows between concepts mostly with ease and is a wide-ranging discussion of all things black holes. There are many footnotes, which could distract a little from the book’s main themes. However, we’re taught how stars shine, how small black holes and neutron stars are created, and what happens when they collide, as well as what we know about supermassive black holes. The author nicely namechecks key figures in discoveries wherever possible, highlighting the contributions of often overlooked groups. One of the book’s strengths is you’re likely to read names you have never heard of before.
There are some inaccuracies, however, which a quick Google search would remedy, such as the future LISA space mission being an ESA mission rather than led by NASA, and also its launch date. Elsewhere the description of the make-up of a gravitational-wave detector and which detectors made the first discovery is wide of the mark. Regrettably this put a bit of a dampener on my reading of the book. Nonetheless, if you want to uncover the dark historical event that gave black holes their name and what an ultramassive black hole is – all from a book that feels familiar and will make you giggle in places – A Brief History of Black Holes is for you.
Interview with the author Becky Smethurst
What is a black hole?
If I could change anything in all of physics, it would probably be the name for a black hole! A black hole is an object so dense that not even light can escape it, because the gravitational pull is so strong. I describe them as more like a ‘dark star’ than a ‘hole’. It’s a star that’s been collapsed down, squished down, until it’s so dense that we no longer get any light from it at all.
Is it even accurate to call them black?
Actually black holes are some of the brightest objects in the Universe. They light up like Christmas trees. When material falls towards them, it gets accelerated to huge speeds and starts to glow in visible light but also ultraviolet, X-rays and radio emission. In the centres of galaxies we see supermassive black holes anywhere from a million up to 10 billion times the mass of the Sun, and these things really do shine. They can outshine hundreds of billions of stars and galaxies. It’s quite incredible.
So you had a lot of ground to cover?
The main guiding force was looking at the history of our understanding of black holes: where the idea comes from, how we figured out they exist in the first place, our first observations, what we know and what we still don’t know. It was easier in that respect because you start at the point when we knew nothing, when the idea of a black hole wasn’t a blink in anybody’s eye. And while the history can illuminate where the idea of black holes comes from, it also reveals what’s left for us to discover.
Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford and host of the popular ‘Dr Becky’ channel on YouTube
The Red Planet
Elliott and Thompson £9.99 • PB
Imagine a world where there was once a vast ocean that almost covered one hemisphere, but which is now cold and arid. Where the atmosphere was once thicker than Earth’s, but is now barely there. Where huge volcanoes erupted and giant faults shifted, but these now seem quiet. That world is Mars.
Through colossal planetary impacts, plumes of magma sweeping beneath the crust, stalled plate tectonics, a lost magnetic field and atmospheric constituents continuously trickling away into space, we discover a planet that has seen drastic changes since it first formed. In The Red Planet, Simon Morden takes us on that journey from formation through the Noachian, Hesperian and Amazonian eras of Martian history, striving to explain how we may have ended up with the Mars we see today, before looking to the future and our exploration and, potentially, exploitation and colonisation of Mars.
With a wonderfully crafted narrative, the book is easy and enjoyable to read. However, what really stands out are the short novelettes interspersed between the more mainstream scientific prose. Through these the reader is transported to the surface of Mars in the guise of an astronaut on a mission to take samples or readings from these past eras. These are wonderfully descriptive and ingeniously immersive, so it’s no wonder that Morden is an acclaimed science fiction writer. Perhaps the only downside to the book is that there could and should be more of these fictional episodes. Fantastic.
★★★★★
Taxi from Another Planet
Charles S Cockell
Harvard University Press £21.95 • HB
It isn’t often a popular science book speaks so directly to the human condition, but this volume achieves something quite extraordinary.
Rather than a terse exposition of modern astronomical science, it explores what it is to be human in possession of such copious, fundamental knowledge. Based on brief encounters with taxi drivers the world over, it addresses some of the questions that occur to the lay person, on all aspects of our existence within a perplexing cosmos. Here you will find no explanations of black holes, the expansion of the Universe or dark matter. Instead the themes tend towards the existence of life – terrestrial and extraterrestrial, the future of space exploration, space tourism and the ultimate fate of humanity.
Refreshingly, it’s as much a cultural study as one of astrobiological science, exploring politics, economics, colonialism, ecology and even xenophobia. Occasionally we digress and discover atomic theory, the ghostly quantum nature of matter and existentialist philosophy. But throughout the journey we have in mind the perennial question on the minds of many taxi drivers (and others): are we alone in this vast inky blackness? There are no answers here, ofcourse, but the discussion is fascinating, moving and deeply personal. Written in amiable and understandable prose, never condescending or judgmental, Taxi from Another Planet will be a delight for anyone who has ever pondered their place in the Universe.
★★★★★
Alastair Gunn is a radio astronomer at Jodrell Bank Observatory
Apollo Remastered
Particular Books £60 • HB
Between 2008 and 2018, NASA worked to digitise the original filmstock from their early crewed programmes, working at a finer resolution than the grain of the original negatives allowed. After reviewing the entire archive of over 35,000 images, the author of this new book has used the latest image processing and stacking techniques to present hundreds of amazing photos, often managing to carefully tease out more details than we’ve seen before.
After a brief introduction and selection of images from pre-Apollo flights, the majority of the book is divided into the individual Apollo missions. Each begins with a two-page outline of the astronauts, their missions and what they were tasked with photographing. This is followed by page after page of images shown at their very best. A final section details the original camera equipment used and explains processing techniques and goals.
The difference between the images then and now is often striking. The famous ‘A Man on the Moon’ photograph of Buzz Aldrin for example, with Armstrong and the Lunar Lander reflected in his visor, now has a warm golden quality from the light reflected by the thermal blankets.
Image captions contain a wealth of information and also mention whether a picture has been included out of chronological order or has been rotated or cropped. For some of the panoramas, the facing page folds out to give an uninterrupted three-page spread.
The result is an authentic and highly engaging look at what it was like to fly such an advanced programme in what is now vintage machinery.
★★★★★