Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled On by Hawking Became Loved

Bartusiak (Archives of the Universe), professor in the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT, reveals the story and science of black holes in all their “stark and alien weirdness.” Black holes begin, and end, with gravity. The first person to propose this idea was 18th-century English polymath John Michell, who imagined a star so massive that “all light... would be made to return towards it, by its own proper gravity.” As Bartusiak relates, the idea remained a curiosity until Einstein proffered his theory of special relativity (1905) and the idea that gravity could bend light and motion. German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild envisioned an “event horizon,” the point of no return beyond which nothing could escape a massive star’s extreme gravity, but no one believed it could happen. Then Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed how a massive white dwarf star could shrivel to nothing under its own gravity. Bartusiak notes that Einstein and many others rejected the idea, but by the 1960s, observational evidence and computer advances that allowed astronomers to model stellar collapse showed that black holes were real. Bartusiak’s lively, accessible writing and insight into the personalities behind the science make her book an entertaining and informative read. (May)