A Brief History of Black Holes: And why nearly everything you know about them is wrong

Description

The Moon goes around the Earth, the Earth goes around the Sun, the Sun goes around the centre of the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole. As you read this you are currently orbiting a black hole. Money might make the world go round, but black holes make the universe go round. Black holes are not just a curiosity; they are some of the most important objects for understanding how our universe works and how it came to be. And yet they are incredibly misunderstood; take everything you think you know about black holes and get rid of it. This book will be a book about black holes like no other; it will journey beyond the event horizon and consider what the 'inside' of a black hole is truly like, and flip it on its head. It will take black holes and turn them from something beyond comprehension for the average person on the street to a level of understanding you never thought possible, through unique analogies and ideas the human brain has a hope of actually picturing. This book will show you why you should be calling them white mountains - and not black holes.

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. She was recently awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Research Fellowship for 2022. 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. Becky presents The Supermassive Podcast in association with the Royal Astronomical Society, receiving thousands of listens every month.

A lot of astrophysics is packed into this neat little book -- Jim Al-Khalili on Space: 10 Things You Should Know Bite-sized, cutting edge science delivered with enormous enthusiasm -- Chris Lintott on Space: 10 Things You Should Know