Black holes, once just fascinating theoretical predictions of how gravity warps space-time according to Einstein's theory, are now generally accepted as astrophysical realities, formed by post-supernova collapse, or as supermassive black holes mysteriously found at the cores of most galaxies, powering active galactic nuclei, the most powerful objects in the universe. Theoretical understanding has progressed in recent decades with a wider realization that local concepts should characterize black holes, rather than the global concepts found in textbooks. In particular, notions such as trapping horizon allow physically meaningful quantities and equations, describing how a black hole evolves. This has led to discoveries in fields as diverse as classical and numerical general relativity, differential geometry, thermodynamics, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. There is heretofore no one volume which covers all the main aspects, so this volume collects together summaries and recent research, each chapter written by an expert or experts in a given field. This is intended for readers at a graduate level upwards, who wish to learn about the wide range of research concerning black holes.

Discusses how we know about black holes, how they affect matter around them, and what would happen if you got inside one.

Black holes, once just fascinating theoretical predictions of how gravity warps space-time according to Einstein's theory, are now generally accepted as astrophysical realities, formed by post-supernova collapse, or as supermassive black holes mysteriously found at the cores of most galaxies, powering active galactic nuclei, the most powerful objects in the universe. Theoretical understanding has progressed in recent decades with a wider realization that local concepts should characterize black holes, rather than the global concepts found in textbooks. In particular, notions such as trapping horizon allow physically meaningful quantities and equations, describing how a black hole evolves. This has led to discoveries in fields as diverse as classical and numerical general relativity, differential geometry, thermodynamics, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. There is heretofore no one volume which covers all the main aspects, so this volume collects together summaries and recent research, each chapter written by an expert or experts in a given field. This is intended for readers at a graduate level upwards, who wish to learn about the wide range of research concerning black holes.

What would happen if you fell into a Black Hole? Black holes are found throughout the universe. They can be microscopic. They can be billions of times larger than our Sun. They are dark on the outside but not on the inside. Anything that enters them can never escape, and yet they contain nothing at all. In Black Hole Survival Guide physicist and novelist Janna Levin takes you on a journey into a black hole, explaining what would happen to you and why. In the process you'll come to see how their mysteries contain answers to some of the most profound questions ever asked about the nature of our universe. 'Astrophysics at its sexiest...hugely enjoyable' Sunday Times

Called "spellbinding" (Scientific American) and "thrilling...a future classic of popular science" (PW), the up close, inside story of the greatest space exploration project of our time, New Horizons’ mission to Pluto, as shared with David Grinspoon by mission leader Alan Stern and other key players. On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond. Nothing like this has occurred in a generation—a raw exploration of new worlds unparalleled since NASA’s Voyager missions to Uranus and Neptune—and nothing quite like it is planned to happen ever again. The photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA’s website for the mission received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At a time when so many think that our most historic achievements are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only succeeded in 2015 but made history and captured the world’s imagination. How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind this amazing mission: of their decades-long commitment and persistence; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission; and of the plans for New Horizons’ next encounter, 1 billion miles past Pluto in 2019. Told from the insider’s perspective of mission leader Dr. Alan Stern and others on New Horizons, and including two stunning 16-page full-color inserts of images, Chasing New Horizons is a riveting account of scientific discovery, and of how much we humans can achieve when people focused on a dream work together toward their incredible goal.

Black holes have turned out to be the cornerstone of both physics and popular belief. But what if we were to realize that exact black holes cannot exist, even though their existence is apparently suggested by exact general relativistic solutions, and Roger Penrose won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity’? While it might seem far-fetched to claim so, it will be worth remembering that the finest theoretical physicists like Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac did not believe in black holes, and Stephen Hawking finally thought that there are no exact black holes. While the black hole paradigm has become commonplace in popular consciousness, in the last decade, noise has consistently grown about the many physical effects which can inhibit the formation of exact mathematical black holes. In The Rise and Fall of the Black Hole Paradigm, Abhas Mitra shows us how, much before these developments, he had proven why the so-called black holes must only be black hole pretenders. He identified these black hole candidates to be Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Objects (MECOs) and, along with Darryl J. Leiter and Stanley L. Robertson, generalized them. Recent evidence for the existence of strong magnetic fields around so-called black holes may provide confirmations of his claim.

In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work, Dr. Rhorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, leads readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of interlocking themes, answering the great question: what principles control our universe and why do physicists think they know what they know? Features an introduction by Stephen Hawking.

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.

Every 10 years the National Research Council releases a survey of astronomy and astrophysics outlining priorities for the coming decade. The most recent survey, titled New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, provides overall priorities and recommendations for the field as a whole based on a broad and comprehensive examination of scientific opportunities, infrastructure, and organization in a national and international context. Panel Reportsâ€"New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics is a collection of reports, each of which addresses a key sub-area of the field, prepared by specialists in that subarea, and each of which played an important role in setting overall priorities for the field. The collection, published in a single volume, includes the reports of the following panels: Cosmology and Fundamental Physics Galaxies Across Cosmic Time The Galactic Neighborhood Stars and Stellar Evolution Planetary Systems and Star Formation Electromagnetic Observations from Space Optical and Infrared Astronomy from the Ground Particle Astrophysics and Gravitation Radio, Millimeter, and Submillimeter Astronomy from the Ground The Committee for a Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics synthesized these reports in the preparation of its prioritized recommendations for the field as a whole. These reports provide additional depth and detail in each of their respective areas. Taken together, they form an essential companion volume to New Worlds, New Horizons: A Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The book of panel reports will be useful to managers of programs of research in the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the Congressional committees with jurisdiction over the agencies supporting this research, the scientific community, and the public.

Driven by discoveries, and enabled by leaps in technology and imagination, our understanding of the universe has changed dramatically during the course of the last few decades. The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are making new connections to physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Based on a broad and comprehensive survey of scientific opportunities, infrastructure, and organization in a national and international context, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics outlines a plan for ground- and space- based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010's. Realizing these scientific opportunities is contingent upon maintaining and strengthening the foundations of the research enterprise including technological development, theory, computation and data handling, laboratory experiments, and human resources. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics proposes enhancing innovative but moderate-cost programs in space and on the ground that will enable the community to respond rapidly and flexibly to new scientific discoveries. The book recommends beginning construction on survey telescopes in space and on the ground to investigate the nature of dark energy, as well as the next generation of large ground-based giant optical telescopes and a new class of space-based gravitational observatory to observe the merging of distant black holes and precisely test theories of gravity. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics recommends a balanced and executable program that will support research surrounding the most profound questions about the cosmos. The discoveries ahead will facilitate the search for habitable planets, shed light on dark energy and dark matter, and aid our understanding of the history of the universe and how the earliest stars and galaxies formed. The book is a useful resource for agencies supporting the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the Congressional committees with jurisdiction over those agencies, the scientific community, and the public.