The Black Hole War
My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum MechanicsFull Description
What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did-and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space. ... more
Critical Praise
"Susskind takes readers on a tour — not skipping the stories of how scientists really joust over ideas — of the brawl besides whether black holes truly destroy matter, violating one of the fundamental rules of physics. The tale begins at a wacky guru’s home in 1983 and concludes at Stephen Hawking’s 60th birthday party decades later, with his concession of matter’s invincibility."
-Technology.go2blogging.com
"It is one the most entertaining popular science books which is also brilliant and mind opening on the subjects like quantum mechanics, black holes, string theory, general relativity. Recommended for brain fun!”
-Sciencetrack.blogspot.com
"Finally we get to the heart of the story, and it turns out to be a mind-bender. To make sense of Hawking’s paradox one must consider how much information, measured in bits, the 1s and 0s of binary code, can fit inside a black hole. The amount, it turns out, does not depend on the black hole’s volume, as one might expect, but on the area of its "horizon" — the flat, funnel-like mouth of the cosmic rabbit hole. Susskind explains this dizzying notion about as clearly as is probably possible."
– Latesworldnews.biz
- Category:
- SCIENCE
- Format:
- HARDCOVER BOOK
- Publish Date:
- 7/7/2008
- Price:
- $27.99
- ISBN:
- 9780316016407
- Pages:
- 480
- Size:
- 6" x 9-1/4"
