Brief History of Black Holes

In A Brief History of Black Holes, award-winning University of Oxford researcher Dr Becky Smethurst charts five hundred years of scientific breakthroughs in astronomy and astrophysics. Right now, you are orbiting a black hole.The Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole, the strangest and most misunderstood phenomenon in the galaxy.In this cosmic tale of discovery, Dr Becky Smethurst takes us from the earliest observations of the universe and the collapse of massive stars, to the iconic first photographs of a black hole and her own published findings.She explains why black holes aren’t really ‘black’, that you never ever want to be ‘spaghettified’, how black holes are more like sofa cushions than hoovers and why, beyond the event horizon, the future is a direction in space rather than in time.Told with humour and wisdom, this captivating book describes the secrets behind the most profound questions about our universe – all hidden inside black holes.'A jaunt through space history . . . with charming wit and many pop-culture references' – BBC Sky At Night Magazine

A jaunt through space history . . . with charming wit and many pop culture references, A lot of astrophysics is packed into this neat little book, Bite-sized, cutting edge science delivered with enormous enthusiasm, A fantastic read . . . there's certainly a lot to suck you in (unlike black holes, of course)

Dr Becky Smethurst is an award-winning astrophysicist and science communicator at the University of Oxford, specialising in how galaxies co-evolve with their supermassive black holes. In 2022 she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Research Fellowship. Her YouTube channel, ‘Dr Becky’, has over 400,000 subscribers who engage with her videos on weird objects in space, the history of science and monthly recaps of space news. A Brief History of Black Holes is her second book; her first, Space: 10 Things You Should Know was named one of BBC Sky at Night Magazine’s books of the year, and translated all around the world.

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