Empire Of The Stars
Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Descripción editorial
In August 1930, on a boat trip from Bombay to England, the young Indian scientist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated that certain stars could end their lives by collapsing indefinitely to a point - to nowhere. This idea brought Chandra into conflict with Sir Arthur Eddington, the grand old man of British astrophysics, who publicly ridiculed the idea.
EMPIRE OF THE STARS teases out the major implications of this infamous event, setting it against the backdrop of the turbulent growth of astrophysics, and provides a unique window on our unfolding view of the cosmos. In its clash of personalities, epochs and cultures, the story reveals the deep-seated psychological and philosophical prejudices at work in the acceptance and rejection of new scientific ideas.
Beautifully written, artfully constructed, EMPIRE OF THE STARS is a serious book but one which also deals with classic themes -- a lone man struggling against the establishment, intellectual rivalry and the highs and lows of great individuals set against the broader sweep of history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1935, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a young Indian astrophysicist studying at Cambridge, presented to the Royal Astronomical Society a radical new theory of what would later be called black holes. Cambridge's leading astrophysicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, who lorded over British scientific circles at the time, ridiculed Chandra's findings as "stellar buffoonery," and while Chandra later established himself at the University of Chicago and in 1980 received a Nobel Prize, this humiliation at Eddington's hands haunted him until his death in 1995. Miller's story is not only about Chandra's discovery but the end run that physicists made around it to confirm the existence of black holes, with both Eddington and Chandra disappearing for long stretches. Miller, a British historian of science (Einstein, Picasso), doesn't persuasively make his case that the course of 20th-century physics would have been significantly different if Chandra's findings hadn't been ignored, but he does paint vivid portraits of the scientists in this quest, the racism Chandra encountered at Cambridge, the internal battles between Eddington and other astrophysicists into which Chandra inserted himself with his theory and both the excitement and despair a brilliant scientist experienced. Astronomy buffs and readers fascinated by the history of science will find this a compelling read. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
