The Collapsing Universe: The Story of the Black Holes

About this book

In a time of spectacular developments in the new astronomy the concept of black holes captures top honors. As scientific evidence for them mounts black holes loom as an ominous development in the life measured in billions of years of the universe. A black hole is a dense concentration of matter so dense that its enormous gravitational forces suck in everything including light waves within its reach. Isaac Asimov explores the implications of black holes with lucid excursions into related questions: Was the mysterious 30-megaton blast that flattened a Siberian foresxt in 1908 actually a small black hole? Does matter drawn into a black hole reappear out the other side as anti-matter a sort of mirror image of the universe as we know it? Do black holes revive the currently sagging theory of the Creation by a cosmic Big Bang? Does their existence raise the possibilitiy that matter can move faster than the speed of light? As he probes these questions Asimov takes the reader on an engaging tour from the atoms innermost core to the outermost reaches of the universe introducing such remarkable phenomena as photons hyperons gravitons planetesimals magmas red giants white dwarfs neutron stars X-ray stars supernovas pulsars starquakes collapsars black holes and their even more enigmatic relativeswormholes and white holes.