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Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space
Janna Levin
Knopf
April 2016
On Sale: March 29, 2016
256 pages
ISBN: 0307958191
EAN: 9780307958198
Kindle: B017QLQLQW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
The authoritative story of the headline-making discovery of
gravitational waves—by an eminent theoretical astrophysicist
and award-winning writer. From the author of How the Universe Got Its Spots and A
Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, the epic story of the
scientific campaign to record the soundtrack of our universe.
Black holes are dark. That is their essence. When black
holes collide, they will do so unilluminated. Yet the black
hole collision is an event more powerful than any since the
origin of the universe. The profusion of energy will emanate
as waves in the shape of spacetime: gravitational waves. No
telescope will ever record the event; instead, the only
evidence would be the sound of spacetime ringing. In 1916, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational
waves, his top priority after he proposed his theory of
curved spacetime. One century later, we are recording the
first sounds from space, the soundtrack to accompany
astronomy’s silent movie. In Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, Janna
Levin recounts the fascinating story of the obsessions, the
aspirations, and the trials of the scientists who embarked
on an arduous, fifty-year endeavor to capture these elusive
waves. An experimental ambition that began as an amusing
thought experiment, a mad idea, became the object of
fixation for the original architects—Rai Weiss, Kip Thorne,
and Ron Drever. Striving to make the ambition a reality, the original three
gradually accumulated an international team of hundreds. As
this book was written, two massive instruments of remarkably
delicate sensitivity were brought to advanced capability. As
the book draws to a close, five decades after the
experimental ambition began, the team races to intercept a
wisp of a sound with two colossal machines, hoping to
succeed in time for the centenary of Einstein’s most radical
idea. Janna Levin’s absorbing account of the surprises,
disappointments, achievements, and risks in this unfolding
story offers a portrait of modern science that is unlike
anything we’ve seen before.
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