Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide
by Clifford A. Pickover
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Book Summary Information
Author: Clifford A. PickoverEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-06-15
ISBN: 0471197041
Number of pages: 232
Publisher: Wiley
Book Reviews of Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide
Book Review: A lot of blank spots and lack of accuracy!
Summary: 1 Stars
This book at first glance was wonderful. After the first few chapters I noticed something very peculiar. The formulas they give have MAJOR flaws. Usually Pickover forgets to include the units of measurements (see the embedding diagram formula, he says r is the radial vector..well what exactly is the radial vector expressed as..Kilometers? lightyears? inches? Who knows! One can assume that Z(r) is the amount that is depressed from normal sea-level space-time. (assuming that you imagine some 4th dimension *Minkowski's space time I suppose*)) Another problem was Pickover's tendencies to stray from the topic. He often went on a tangent about electronics and video games? (give me a break!). Explanations and proofs of the equations found throughout the chapter are brief and lack the needed elaboration. Pickover didn't explain light tunnels well enough nor did he elaborate on WHY light is trapped in a black hole. Light has no mass so gravity can't tug on it, is light trapped due to the nature of space in the hole? Is it trapped because space forever expands in a parabolic curve? Is light red-shifted because of the space-time bend or is it more of a gravitational effect? (Although both are essentially the same). I found this book rather frustrating, I loved the equations but Mr. Pickover really needs to explain his equations.Oh yes, one last example...the formula on page 11 C(sub h)=(4*pi*G*M(sub h))/c^2. He lists G as newtonian's gravitational constant, and CLAIMS it is 1.327*10^11 km^3/s^2*M^2 where M= solar mass. He should NOT have done this, Newton's gravity constant is REALLY 6.672 59 x 10^-11 m^3/kg*s^2. Pickover converted the mass and radius of the sun into the needed values and did all the math without informing you he did this. This can be very misleading as I am very confident that the guide to universal physical constants is correct. A note to Pickover, if you plan on writing about Physiks please show your work!
(I am also trying very hard to link all his equations together and have a difficult time. I computed the event horizon for a 1 solar mass and found the circumference? I took the formula for curvature of space found the derivative and found that for a one solar mass the radial vector (radius?) would have to be 2...I thought Pickover stated that the true radius couldn't be found? The book would've been much better if he linked the equations together or put more equations in there to make all of it fit! From my personal standpoint if you want a quick introduction to Black holes this may be your book (Just ignore the equations) but if you want a complete and wonderful explanation of black holes and such buy Kip. S. Thorne's Black holes and Time Warps: Einstein's outrageous legacy. (He is , from what I know, the guru of Black holes)
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