Black holes and time warps
by Kip S. Thorne · first published 1994
89% recommend11% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible yet detailed account of general relativity, black holes and warped spacetime for non-physicists. Seen as a fuller, better-explained follow-up to Hawking's Brief History of Time, with intuitive physics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy is a 1994 popular science book by physicist Kip Thorne. It provides an illustrated overview of the history and development of black hole theory, from its roots in Newtonian mechanics until the early 1990s.
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I'm not smart enough to explain it properly, but basically if information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light, it makes time travel possible. Read "Black Holes and Time Warps" By Kip S. Thorne for a 624 page explanation of why. More likely, it's experimental error. .0025% is meaningless compared to the scale of the earth, but over hundreds of light years it's huge.
on “Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC” ↗I would recommend (as I've done before) Kip Thorn's book _Black Holes and Time Warps_ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393312763) to learn more about LIGO.
on “The Gravitational-Wave “Revolution” Is Underway” ↗…contains the same mass but over a bigger volume, then the spacetime curvature it will cause will be less extreme than the black hole in the first box. The book I most like on this topic is Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps. IMO Thorne is a better explainer than Hawking.
on “Black Holes as the Source of Dark Energy” ↗I thought Godel, Escher, Bach to be too hard to read. Instead I recommend Kip Thorne's Black Holes & Time Warps, a great book.
on “5 Great Science Books to Expand Your Mind” ↗I really liked Kip Thorne's Black Holes & Time Warps. Some overlap with Brief History of Time in content, but much bigger and detailed but still reasonably accessible (I thought).
on “Stephen Hawking has died” ↗Black Holes and Time Warps, by Kip Thorne himself: https://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/d...
on “Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in the Movie Interstellar (2015)” ↗…productivity and organization both at work and in my personal life: - Getting Things Done by David Allen Books that show that our universe is just as crazy, if not crazier, than science fiction: - Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy - Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels - ..and so on with intersecting topics! Not to mention, I love trying to have as deep an understanding…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite non-fiction books of all time?” ↗…background to keep up with a lot of his writing). Two others that stand out to me are the classic "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking that blew my mind as a kid and the equally good, but lesser known "Black Holes and Time Warps" by Kip Thorne which made an excellent follow up book that gives a good high level appreciation which would likely be helpful for anyone planning to study those subjects in college at a rigorous mathematical…
on “Classic Mathematics Books for Lifelong Learners” ↗I'll recommend Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Holes_and_Time_Warps . It's about gravity, not quantum field theory, but it's still very sound, very intuitive and explains the principles of the LIGO gravity wave…
on “Quantum Leaps, Long Assumed to Be Instantaneous, Take Time” ↗Thorne is also the author of Black Holes and Time Warps, which is a much more approachable book on the weird consequences of general relativity for non-physicists.
on “Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and Interstellar” ↗I don't have answers for you, but you might be interested in the book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip Thorne. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/d...
on “Physicists confirm two cases of “elusive” black hole/neutron star mergers” ↗It's been proven rather thoroughly though. Look at Kip Thorne's body of work. His book: Black Holes and Time Warps is accessible. c0 is the speed of light only incidentally. It is the speed of causality first. You can warp spacetime but you can't change the speed limit. You might think there would be a hypothetical…
on “The horizon problem for faster than light travel” ↗This book is fantastic. I’d also recommend Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne to learn more about Oppenheimer’s scientific accomplishments.
on “Richard Rhodes wrote a classic book about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb” ↗If anyone is interested in the history and an accessible, but deep understanding of black holes I highly recommend Kip Thorne’s book “Black Holes and Time Warps” (1994). The first half of this article follows a summary of that book closely.
on “Black Holes Are Even Weirder Than You Imagined” ↗"Best" is always too hard - here are a handful that I love. Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susannah Clarke The Crow Road - Iain Banks Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson Black Holes & Time Warps - Kip Thorne The Inventions of Daedalus - David E H Jones The Cuckoo's Egg - Cl
on “Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read?” ↗