Einstein’s Shadow: A Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest to See the Unseeable

Fletcher (Bottled Lightning), Scientific American’s chief features editor, falls short in his attempt to engage readers in the story of a group of astronomers, led by astrophysicist Shep Doeleman, “on a quest to take the first picture of a black hole” that began in 2012. Noting that “no one has ever gotten a direct look” at one, Fletcher makes plain the effort’s value, citing how important it could be to reconciling Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. He starts intriguingly, by grounding the project in human vanity, recounting a discussion among astronomers working on the Event Horizon Telescope—an array of radio telescopes spread over several continents—that he realized was actually about “who gets their name on Nobel Prize.” Unfortunately, despite the author’s best efforts, making the phenomenon of black holes comprehensible proves an uphill battle. Unlike the best popular science books, this narrative doesn’t make the scientific concepts sufficiently clear to the lay reader. (Oct.)