Download or read book The Black Hole Bar written by Dave Weaver and published by Elsewhen Press. This book was released on 2014-06-22 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon, a traveller with time to kill before continuing his journey, enters an inn on the outskirts of London. Inside he meets a motley crew competing to tell tales for their own amusement. So starts Dave Weaver’s new novel, The Black Hole Bar, which has already been compared to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decameron. But these raconteurs are not pilgrims, nor are they hiding from a plague – Simon is on his way by rocket to Titan, rather than on horseback to Canterbury; the tavern is the Black Hole Bar, although being high up on Level Five of Docklands Spaceport it isn’t too far from Southwark; the tales are not told by a knight, squire, nun, merchant, clerk, parson, franklin or manciple, but by a programmer, advertising copywriter, dancer, financier, customs officer, marine biologist, sports star, and port worker. Simon works in the public relations department of Me-Grade Incorporated, an international Methane gas conglomerate. He’s an industrial journalist, on his way to yet another off-world assignment, this time a three month trip to Saturn’s moon to write a promotional piece about the harvesting of the Methane lakes on that forbidding world. But Simon is a troubled man. He’s sure his wife is having an affair during his prolonged absences; he’s bored with his job; and unsure where his life is going. Simon has stumbled into what was supposed to be a closed session for the Black Hole Bar Writers’ Group, who meet once a month to take part in a short story competition; the winner’s trophy is a small chunk of meteorite simply termed ‘The Rock’. As an interesting way to spend his last Earth night and forget his troubles for a few hours, this is perfect. Simon writes stories too and he’s been looking for a set-up like this for some time. Begrudgingly they let him participate. The stories begin, and Simon starts taking the competition far more seriously than he intended. Each of the bar’s denizens tells two stories, stories that are variously strange, amusing and occasionally downright scary. The writers all have their own histories to impart, lives crossed by tragedy and drama come tumbling out one by one into the cramped little room and as they do so, we, the invisible uninvited presence at Simon’s side, learn more about the background of this future world: its wars, its governments, its strange new customs and social groupings. A world which is at the same time recognisable as our possible future but also chilling in its recent past. Not far from the spaceport the old capital of London lies deserted, abandoned first but not least in the wave of dirty bomb outrages committed by the growing fundamentalist armies who have sworn to topple the Corporate States of the Euro-zone and New America. As the night progresses personalities clash, secrets are disclosed, and friendships made. And Simon finds himself slowly but surely falling in love. But he still has a date with Titan to keep. It’s getting late, very late, and he should leave... but the competition has yet to conclude. Simon’s heart tells him to stay but his head says go, now, before it’s too late and you lose everything. How will his own tale end...?
Download or read book The Black Hole Bar written by Dave Weaver and published by Elsewhen Press. This book was released on 2014-09-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon is on his way to a three month trip to Saturn's moon Titan. He has stumbled into a closed session of the Black Hole Bar Writers' Group, who meet monthly for a short story competition. Simon writes too and they begrudgingly let him participate. Each tells two stories, but their own histories come tumbling out one by one into the cramped room and as they do so, we learn more about the background of this future world - a world which is at the same time recognisable as our possible future but also chilling in its recent past.
Download or read book Black Hole Survival Guide written by Janna Levin and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space—an authoritative and accessible guide to the most alluring and challenging phenomena of contemporary science. "[Levin will] take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair’s event horizon.” —Boston Globe Through her writing, astrophysicist Janna Levin has focused on making the science she studies not just comprehensible but also, and perhaps more important, intriguing to the nonscientist. In this book, she helps us to understand and find delight in the black hole—perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists—illustrated with original artwork by American painter and photographer Lia Halloran. Levin takes us on an evocative exploration of black holes, provoking us to imagine the visceral experience of a black hole encounter. She reveals the influence of black holes as they populate the universe, sculpt galaxies, and even infuse the whole expanse of reality that we inhabit. Lively, engaging, and utterly unique, Black Hole Survival Guide is not just informative—it is, as well, a wonderful read from first to last.
Download or read book Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space written by Janna Levin and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative story of Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne’s Nobel Prize–winning discovery of gravitational waves—by an eminent theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer. With A New Preface In 1916, Einstein predicted the presence of gravitational waves. One century later, we are recording the first sounds from space, evidence of the waves’ existence caused by the collision of two black holes. An authoritative account of the headline-making discovery by theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer Janna Levin, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space recounts the fascinating story of the obsessions, aspirations, and trials of the scientists who embarked on an arduous fifty-year endeavor to capture these elusive waves Five decades after the experiment was dreamed up, the team races to intercept a wisp of sound with two colossal machines, hoping to succeed in time for the centenary of Einstein’s most radical idea. With unprecendented access to the surprises, disappointments, achievements, and risks in this remarkable story, Janna Levin’s absorbing account offers a portrait of modern science that is unlike anything we've seen before.
Download or read book 2001 a Spacetime Odyssey written by Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics. Inaugural Conference and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two theories revolutionized the 20th century view of space and time: Einstein's general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Their union has given rise to elementary particle theories with extra spacetime dimensions, the inflationary model of big bang cosmology, the hypothesis of dark matter in the universe, the discovery of radiation from quantum black holes, and the fuzzy spacetime geometry of superstrings and M-theory. In this important book, experts present the latest developments in cosmology, theoretical physics and mathematics, as well as share their thoughts on the future of spacetime physics.
Download or read book Mysterious Black Holes written by Elena Ioli and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2020-12-23 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This little book describes the past, present and future of black holes through a funny and engaging story involving Grandpa Louie, his two grandchildren and two of their friends.During a beautiful sunny day on the beach, the children play, swim, enjoy their time, and ask a lot of questions to Grandpa Louie, a retired astronomy professor. Who better than him to tell all the secrets of black holes to a group of curious children? Who discovered them? What do 'black holes' mean? Are There different types of black holes? How does a black hole form? What is his fate? How did scientists manage to 'observe' these celestial bodies which, by definition, cannot be seen? At the end, we also bring up the subject of parallel universes, which could exist beyond the horizon of a black hole.This book is suitable for children from 6 to 12 years old.
Download or read book The Little Book of Black Holes written by Steven S. Gubser and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dive into a mind-bending exploration of the physics of black holes Black holes, predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity more than a century ago, have long intrigued scientists and the public with their bizarre and fantastical properties. Although Einstein understood that black holes were mathematical solutions to his equations, he never accepted their physical reality—a viewpoint many shared. This all changed in the 1960s and 1970s, when a deeper conceptual understanding of black holes developed just as new observations revealed the existence of quasars and X-ray binary star systems, whose mysterious properties could be explained by the presence of black holes. Black holes have since been the subject of intense research—and the physics governing how they behave and affect their surroundings is stranger and more mind-bending than any fiction. After introducing the basics of the special and general theories of relativity, this book describes black holes both as astrophysical objects and theoretical “laboratories” in which physicists can test their understanding of gravitational, quantum, and thermal physics. From Schwarzschild black holes to rotating and colliding black holes, and from gravitational radiation to Hawking radiation and information loss, Steven Gubser and Frans Pretorius use creative thought experiments and analogies to explain their subject accessibly. They also describe the decades-long quest to observe the universe in gravitational waves, which recently resulted in the LIGO observatories’ detection of the distinctive gravitational wave “chirp” of two colliding black holes—the first direct observation of black holes’ existence. The Little Book of Black Holes takes readers deep into the mysterious heart of the subject, offering rare clarity of insight into the physics that makes black holes simple yet destructive manifestations of geometric destiny.
Download or read book Black Hole Astrophysics written by David L. Meier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-07-27 with total page 941 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a result of significant research over the past 20 years, black holes are now linked to some of the most spectacular and exciting phenomena in the Universe, ranging in size from those that have the same mass as stars to the super-massive objects that lie at the heart of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. This book first introduces the properties of simple isolated holes, then adds in complications like rotation, accretion, radiation, and magnetic fields, finally arriving at a basic understanding of how these immense engines work. Black Hole Astrophysics • reviews our current knowledge of cosmic black holes and how they generate the most powerful observed pheonomena in the Universe; • highlights the latest, most up-to-date theories and discoveries in this very active area of astrophysical research; • demonstrates why we believe that black holes are responsible for important phenomena such as quasars, microquasars and gammaray bursts; • explains to the reader the nature of the violent and spectacular outfl ows (winds and jets) generated by black hole accretion.
Download or read book Numerical Relativity written by Masaru Shibata and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is composed of two parts: First part describes basics in numerical relativity, that is, the formulations and methods for a solution of Einstein's equation and general relativistic matter field equations. This part will be helpful for beginners of numerical relativity who would like to understand the content of numerical relativity and its background. The second part focuses on the application of numerical relativity. A wide variety of scientific numerical results are introduced focusing in particular on the merger of binary neutron stars and black holes.
Download or read book Gravitational Radiation and Gravitational Collapse written by Cécile Dewitt-Morette and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1974-04-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 64, Warsaw, Poland, September 5-8, 1973
Download or read book The Unseen written by Dave Weaver and published by Elsewhen Press. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ex-advertising man John Mason is driving to the small town of Hambleford to view a cottage that is for sale, when he is caught in a sudden hailstorm. It brings back memories of the crash a year before in which he lost his wife Judith; a crash caused by a woman in white standing in the middle of the road – a woman who was nowhere to be found after the accident. As the hailstorm lashes his car he has a vision of her, with empty eyes and a silent screaming mouth. John has been having regular dreams about her ever since the crash, but lately they have been replaced by dreams of an idyllic cottage on a hillside like the one in which Judith had wanted them to live. John is special – he sees things that others can’t. Since childhood he’s had strange experiences but has tried to shut them out; now he thinks Judith is trying to contact him, that she’s been sending his mind images of the house where her spirit will join him again, and that Pine Cottage in Hambleford is literally the cottage of his dreams. But things aren’t all as they appear and John quickly becomes convinced that a spirit other than Judith is trying to manipulate him. The Unseen is a darkly erotic tale of guilt and obsession. Both hallucinatory and horrifying, its finale will shock you.
Download or read book The Shadow of the Black Hole written by John W. Moffat and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black holes entered the world of science fiction and films in the 1960s, and their popularity in our culture remains today. The buzz surrounding black holes was and is due, in large part, to their speculative nature. It is still difficult for the general public to determine fact versus fiction as it pertains to this terrifying idea: something big enough to swallow anything and everything in close proximity, with a gravitational force so strong that nothing, including light, can escape. In the fall of 2015, scientists at the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected the first sounds from black holes, brought to earth by the gravitational waves that emitted from the merging of two black holes 1.4 billion light years away in space. This confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, which Albert Einstein predicted in 1916. In the spring of 2017, physicists and astronomers who were working on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project captured the first image of a black hole. This was the supermassive black hole hosted by the galaxy M87 in the constellation Virgo, 53 million light years away, and the image shows the shadow the black hole casts upon the bright light surrounding it. In this book, John Moffat shares the history of black holes and presents the latest research into these mysterious celestial objects, including the astounding results from gravitational wave detection and the shadow of the black hole.
Download or read book Black Holes in the Era of Gravitational Wave Astronomy written by Manuel Arca Sedda and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Holes in the Era of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy provides a multidisciplinary, up-to-date view of the physics of black holes, along with an exhaustive overview of crucial open questions and recent advancements in the astrophysics of black holes in the wake of incredible advancements made in the last decade. It includes discussions on improvements in theoretical modeling and observational perspectives for black holes of all sizes, along with associated challenges. The book's structure and themes will enable an entwined understanding of black hole physics at all scales, thus avoiding the compartmentalized view that is typical of more specialized manuscripts and reviews.This book is a complete reference for scientists interested in a multidirectional approach to the study of black holes. It provides substantial discussions about the interplay of different types of black holes and gives professionals a heterogeneous and comprehensive overview of the astrophysics of black holes of all masses. - Focuses on recent advances and future perspectives surrounding black holes, providing researchers with a clear view of cutting-edge research - Offers readers a multidisciplinary, fresh view on black holes, discussing and reviewing the most recent advancements in theoretical, numerical and observational techniques put in place to detect black holes - Provides a bridge among different black hole areas, fostering new collaborations among professionals working in different, but intrinsically interconnected fields
Download or read book Dynamics and Interactions of Galaxies written by Roland Wielen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Progress towards an understanding of the dynamics and interactions of galaxies has been spurred on more than ever by a wealth of new observations and numerical experiments. The Heidelberg Conference 1989, the papers of which are collected in this volume, was extremely successful in presenting a synoptic view of the field in all its aspects: galaxy interactions in the early universe and in recent times, interactions of our galaxy and its neighbours, dynamical problems of elliptical and disk galaxies, groups and clusters, starburst and nuclear activity triggered by interactions, merger scenarios, and numerical experiments. Researchers and graduate students, specialists or not, will find here a complete overview of a rapidly growing field of astronomy.
Download or read book The Black Hole in Isaiah written by Frederik Poulsen and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Isaiah is strangely silent on the destruction of Jerusalem and the people's deportation to Babylon in the early sixth century BCE. Frederik Poulsen demonstrates that the exile hides itself as a "black hole" at the center of the composition and thereby has a decisive influence on the literary structure, poetic imagery, and theological message of this prophetic book."
Download or read book Joint Evolution of Black Holes and Galaxies written by M. Colpi and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-01-27 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black holes are among the most mysterious objects that the human mind has been capable of imagining. As pure mathematical constructions, they are tools for exploiting the fundamental laws of physics. As astronomical sources, they are part of our cosmic landscape, warping space-time, coupled to the large-scale properties and life cycle of their host
Download or read book Supermassive Black Holes written by Andrew King and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible introduction to the new and cutting-edge concepts in supermassive black hole research, for graduate students and researchers.
