Light in the Darkness
Black Holes, The Universe and Us
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- 25,00 kr
Publisher Description
As featured in THE EDGE OF ALL WE KNOW - the new Netflix documentary about Black Holes
For readers of Stephen Hawking, a fascinating account of the universe from the perspective of world-leading astrophysicist Heino Falcke, who took the first ever picture of a black hole.
10th April 2019: a global sensation. Heino Falcke, a man "working at the boundaries of his discipline and therefore at the limits of the universe" had used a network of telescopes spanning the entire planet to take the first picture of a black hole.
Light in the Darkness examines how mankind has always looked to the skies, mapping the journey from millennia ago when we turned our gaze to the heavens, to modern astrophysics. Heino Falcke and Jorg Romer entertainingly and compellingly chart the breakthrough research of Falcke's team, an unprecedented global community of international colleagues developing a telescope complex enough to look directly into a black hole - a hole where light vanishes, and time stops.
What does this development mean? Is this the beginning of a new physics? What can we learn from this about God, the world, and ourselves? For Falcke, astrophysics and metaphysics, science and faith, do not exclude one another. Black Hole is both a plea for curiosity and humility; it's interested in both what we know, and the mysteries that remain unsolved.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Astronomer Falcke takes a sweeping tour of the "divine cosmos" in his impassioned debut. Space, he writes, has always been tied to "knowledge and myth, faith and superstition," and as he traces the history of astronomy, outlines the life cycle of stars, and describes his research on black holes, he poses such questions as "is there still room for uncertainty... for a god?" Falcke enthusiastically shares his scientific journey ("A black hole at the center of our own Galaxy—this somewhat mysterious idea appealed to me right away") and breaks down the efforts behind the now iconic picture of M87, the first ever image of a black hole—four teams worked to produce, analyze, and publish the photo, and Falcke was "so tense... that it almost unbearable." Readers less familiar with astrophysics may have some trouble along the way (the description of Hawking radiation, the radiation predicted to be emitted by black holes, is particularly knotty), though Falcke's philosophical musings, such as on the hope offered by both religion and science, can pique. Those who have some grounding in the material will get the most out of this enthusiastic blend of science and philosophy.
