Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

When you approach Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, the first question you ask is: who is Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's sort of a celebrity among astrophysicists, if there even is such a thing. Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, if that gives you an idea of his clout in the science world. Whenever there is any kind of scientific discovery in space, he's the guy to turn to. I've seen him on PBS numerous times, as well as on various news shows. He is smart, savvy, and thoroughly entertaining.

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries is a collection of Tyson's essays from a monthly column in Natural History magazine, and it could not be a more interesting book. They are very easy to read and understand; Tyson makes astrophysics comprehensible for the average reader. The essays also stand alone. There is no need to even try to read this book in one sitting - it can be devoured in pieces that are easier to sort out. It's nice when a book presents something to think about, something for your mind to stew over. It's even better when those ideas are presented in an entertaining way. Tyson is funny and his sense of humor shines through the pages. His writing is clear, precise, and very easy to digest.

The stories are also very different in tone; some are lighthearted and funny. One in particular that I enjoyed is about mistakes in the movie industry. Others are more serious and somber. The thing that they have in common is that they are all well-written and thoroughly interesting. I can't pick out my favorite essays simply because there were too many that I enjoyed.

Let me be clear, though: Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries is not for everyone. If you have absolutely no interest in outer space, then this book will probably bore you. If you don't like science, this book won't force the issue and make you enjoy something that you really don't. If, however, you are like me and you find it interesting, but have little real understanding of it, this book was pretty much written for you.

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries was an amazing read that I can't recommend highly enough (if you think it sounds interesting!) I absolutely loved it and cannot wait to seek out more of Tyson's work to read. (His latest book, The Pluto Files, is a humorous look at Pluto's fall from planet grace - sounds like fun!)

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the current director of the hayden Planetarium and an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History. His picture shows a portly African-American with a wry smile, wearing a vest with astonomical figures perhaps cut from a wizard's robe discarded by Hogwarts. Most likely half of America knows better what he looks and sounds like than I do, since he appears frequently on TV, on the Daily Show and various Fox blathergrounds. I heard him talking about comets for a few minutes on my car radio, and found him very quick, very amusing.

A comparison with Stephen Jay Gould is almost inevitable. This book, like most of Gould's, is a selection of Tyson's columns for the magazine Natural History. Tyson has a lighter touch and will be easier going for people without much background in science. He is nowhere near as encyclopedic or allusive as Gould, which will come as a relief to many. Gould wrote, increasingly so over the years, as a Harvard Don, which all the rhetorical flourishes of a man who expects his readers to be very erudite. The danger of such writing is pomposity and condescension. Since I almost became a Harvard Don myself, I have a high tolerance for pomposity, but I find Tyson's writing style delightfully relaxed.

Tyson's subject in Death by Black Hole is the astronomical zoo of gravitationally caged objects - stars, planets, comets, asteroids, and Anomalous Flying Objects - in what we still call the Universe, although the name seems less and less appropriate. Tyson back-fills as needed with tidbits of history but his central purpose is to make us acquainted with current observational astronomy. People who "already know all that" will enjoy his witty delivery, while the rest of us will learn quite a lot, quite painlessly.

One of the Identified Flying Objects Tyson describes is the asteroid Apophis, which ought to be of maximum interest for anyone under 40 years old. Tyson writes: "On Friday the 13th of April, 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup, will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites ...If the trajectory of Apophis at close approach passes within a narrow range of altitudes called the Keyhole, the precise influence of Earth's gravity on its orbit will guarantee that seven years later in 2036...the asteroid will hit earth directly, slamming in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii." You knew that, didn't you, and you've already made reservations for the observation grandstand on Mt. Whitney? What a show! But Tyson continues: "The tsunami it creates will wipe out the entire west coast of North America, bury Hawaii, and devastate all the land masses of the Pacific Rim." Oops. I'd better warn my grandchildren to sell my house in SF before it's too late.
Tyson doesn't mention it, but there's an upside to Apophis -- no need to worry about global warming after all.

In fact, Tyson is not all levity about Apophis, or about the inevitable fate of civilization. Later in the book, he discusses what "we" should be doing about our self-preservation in a universe that is far from anthropically perfect for human life, or any kind of life at all. Read it and quake - from laughter as well as fear.

☄I'm such a fan of Dr Tyson; love StarTalk and try to catch every appearance he makes as a guest on other shows.

This book is so educational, but with his special brand of "nerdy" wit and humor! I'm so glad that he's on "our" side, explaining how the world and universe actually WERE created. Such a fun read, and though you have to pay attention, it's definitely worth it!

Will now be buying his other books - and absolutely visiting the Hayden Planetarium when I get to NYC, especially if I can manage to get tickets to a filming of StarTalk!

I wholeheartedly recommend this book! Very worth your time! ☄

This is a mostly enjoyable collection of articles by Neil Tyson. It's somewhat marred by what former Natural History Magazine author Stephen Jay Gould called "the bugbear of essay collections, redundancy." Other reviewers have noted this, and it's true -- you will encounter the same examples numerous times, and a few of the same painfully corny jokes. Overall, I prefer Carl Sagan, who presented much more unified and continually intriguing material throughout his books, even when he drew some of that material from works he had published previously (as he does in [[ASIN:0345409469 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]]). This being science, though, understanding of the universe marches on without Carl, and I mostly found Tyson's descriptions of recent advances in astrophysical thought worthy of Sagan.

One slight annoyance was the way Tyson glossed over some amazing facts. In one article, he casually notes that on Mars the atmospheric pressure is such that water could simultaneously boil and freeze. As a man of Earth, this is not particularly intuitive, but no further explanation was offered. At times like these I feel as though Tyson has tipped the balance from explaining science to simply mystifying the reader. I understand the necessity of this in writing popular science, but on a few occasions like the one described he leaves you wanting more, more that could be adequately described in a few sentences.

Lastly, I have one complaint against an irritating bias on Tyson's part. Yes, physics is the most fundamental of all sciences. But if it was the most appropriate apparatus for explaining every phenomenon there wouldn't be any other scientific disciplines. Biology builds on chemistry which builds on physics, and these delineations have been remarkably successful. Tyson references a debate with a biologist concerning the possibility of microbial extraterrestrial life on an meteorite ejected from Mars. He says that the biologist's claim that the possible organism in question could not be life due to the fact that it "was much smaller than the smallest life on Earth," reflected the small-mindedness of biology as a whole. Tyson should be ashamed of this type of generalization -- he's a scientist after all! Why take one example of close-mindedness and apply it to an ENTIRE DISCIPLINE? Biologists reasonably define life as something with a metabolism capable of reproduction. No size requirement in the definition. No doubt many biologists would absolutely agree with Tyson's assertion that life on other planets would probably diverge more from life on Earth than any two Earth organisms do from each other. I find the claim reasonable. As a student of evolutionary and molecular biology I found this attack senseless and arrogant. That was the main reason I took my rating down to 4 stars, but I believe that despite these flaws anyone can find something of interest in this book.

I found this book quite readable. Tyson does a great job of explaining things in a way that laymen can understand many of the complexities of astrophysics. However, I gave this book a rating of three stars for a couple of reasons:

First, as many others have noted, Tyson repeats a lot of things throughout this book. This is largely because it consists of a collection of essays that were published at different times and in different settings. While I don't think this is a crippling problem, since occasional repetition is actually a good teaching tool, I do think that with better editing, this book could have been made even more readable.

Second, I had problems with some of Tyson's remarks concerning the relationship between science and religion. While I think he does rightly point out the problems with the "God in the Gaps" approach to Christian apologetics (this is the approach that says that whenever we come to the edge of human knowledge, the rest is the realm of God's work; this is problematic because as science advances in knowledge, the realm that is covered by the "God of the Gaps" seemingly becomes smaller and smaller). However, I do think there is a germ of truth in the "God of the Gaps" approach and that is that it at least acknowledges our inability to fully understand the universe, which I do think is a good thing, because no matter how much knowledge we accumulate, there is infinitely more in the cosmos that we simply don't understand.

However, I really did not appreciate Tyson's attitude towards Intelligent Design, which is basically that ID is somehow unscientific and has no place in the classroom. I think that's quite close-minded, because he's categorically ruling out the possibility that the Universe was created by a Higher Intelligence, and that the complexity of nature is evidence of that Higher Intelligence.

I found this book quite readable. Tyson does a great job of explaining things in a way that laymen can understand many of the complexities of astrophysics. However, I gave this book a rating of three stars for a couple of reasons:

First, as many others have noted, Tyson repeats a lot of things throughout this book. This is largely because it consists of a collection of essays that were published at different times and in different settings. While I don't think this is a crippling problem, since occasional repetition is actually a good teaching tool, I do think that with better editing, this book could have been made even more readable.

Second, I had problems with some of Tyson's remarks concerning the relationship between science and religion. While I think he does rightly point out the problems with the "God in the Gaps" approach to Christian apologetics (this is the approach that says that whenever we come to the edge of human knowledge, the rest is the realm of God's work; this is problematic because as science advances in knowledge, the realm that is covered by the "God of the Gaps" seemingly becomes smaller and smaller). However, I do think there is a germ of truth in the "God of the Gaps" approach and that is that it at least acknowledges our inability to fully understand the universe, which I do think is a good thing, because no matter how much knowledge we accumulate, there is infinitely more in the cosmos that we simply don't understand.

However, I really did not appreciate Tyson's attitude towards Intelligent Design, which is basically that ID is somehow unscientific and has no place in the classroom. I think that's quite close-minded, because he's categorically ruling out the possibility that the Universe was created by a Higher Intelligence, and that the complexity of nature is evidence of that Higher Intelligence.

I was disappointed by this book. I expected more from somebody of Tyson's stature. This book is a collection of short essays and there is a lot of repetition since the essays were written at different times. There is no flow in the book whatsoever. There is no logical sequence or relation among chapters. Not to mention the content is watered down - more suitable for a middle or high school kid than an adult. Lastly, the title of the book is clearly geared to get in sales. There are no more than 5-7 pages about the title in the book. The only good thing about this book is that it is highly accessible to even somebody with no knowledge of cosmos. For me it was a complete waste of time.

A fun read about the science of the universe. Sometimes repetitious. Clever analogies are given to aid in understanding discussion points. Plenty of good research. Some humor, some polite rants. Very little math and equations, more philosophy. Not designed to make you smart, just less dumber...er.

This book is a collection of magazine articles concerning astronomy and astrophysics, but the association with science should not put one off as the book is written in plane language, without any recourse to mathematics. While it is made from a collection of science articles, it has a coherent framework that makes it read as a consistent hole, as opposed to a collection of parts. Dr. Tyson writes with the same engaging style as he manifests in his numerous appearances on educational cable channels such as the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel. When reading this book I could easily imagine his witty narration. The book is humorous and very informative. The nature of the solar system, black holes, quasars and much more are presented in a very clear manner. While I was familiar with much of what was covered, I found new and fascinating tidbits in every chapter. For instance, owing to the fact that the earth bulges at the equator, Mount Everest is not the tallest mountain on earth, at least in terms of the distance of the summit from the center of the earth, as opposed to the distance above sea level (see P.52). Did you know that the Universe is a light shade of beige (see P.167) or that the electronic attraction of the electrons from a thimble full of lunar dust is greater than the gravitational attraction between the earth and the moon (see P.169). Chapter 32 describes many of the multitudes of ways in which life (at least that of complicated organisms, such as humans) could be destroyed by cosmic events. Chapter 33 describes the "Death by a Black Hole" and why a small black hole would shred you faster than a larger one. Chapter 34 debunks many misconceptions, such as "the North Star is the brightest star", or that the "Sun is yellow".

This is a fascinating and informative book, which I heartily recommend to anyone interested in the earth, our solar system and the surrounding universe. The treatment is light and focuses on the what, but not the why. I would recommend Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos" if you want a general treatment of the why.

-_-