Black Holes - Hardcover

Grade 4-6?Welcome to the cosmos of black holes, white holes and wormholes; quasars, blazars, machos, and radio galaxies. Swerving and spiraling through shoals of white-on-black captions, Corbella's painted stars and singularities shrink, expand, schematically warp space and time, emit rays of elementary particles, and open gateways to other universes. It's nearly all speculative, of course, but Couper and Henbest, both eminent and prolific science writers, summarize the astrophysical principles and observations that make these mind- and space-bending events at least feasible: the theories of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Kip Thorne; the life cycle of stars; the effects of gravity on matter and space. They "follow" an astronaut and conclude with the idea that our universe may itself be a black hole. The level of detail is cursory to the point of confusion. Readers are left to wonder whether the orbits of all the planets precess like Mercury's, and to interpret for themselves the announcement that "all black holes evaporate"?and it's nearly impossible to find order in the barrage of infobite captions. However, young scientists who want to know more than what the same authors had to say on the topic in Space Atlas (Harcourt, 1992) will be sucked in by the dramatic illustrations.?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The subtitle--``A journey to the heart of a black hole--and into one of the greatest mysteries of the universe''--pulls readers into an exciting book on astrophysics, replete with spectacular full-color diagrams and sweeping illustrations. Among the numerous topics: the life cycles of stars; the formation and structure of black holes; detecting black holes from the outside and imagining them from the inside; Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity; Hawking's theories about exploding black holes; the idea that the universe itself is a black hole. No introduction to black holes would be complete without some science-fiction scenarios, and this book has its share of them: What if an astronaut falls into a black hole? Is there another universe on the other side? Is time travel possible? Accompanied by sharp illustrations that are at once technical and entertaining, the information is presented in fragments- -isolated paragraphs explicate the different parts of the diagrams- -that encourage readers to choose their own paths. With rigorous writing and a good sense of humor, this book will be enjoyed by a wide range of readers. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8+) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.