Simply Amazing!!

Loved every second of it. What an amazing piece of non fiction writing! Neil is honestly one of my favourite people on this planet.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson does it again!

Thoroughly enjoyed this book as much as NDT's other books, if not more. This was my 3rd book of Neil deGrasse Tyson (your personal astrophysicist) after "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" and "Letters from an Astrophysicist". Is it the best one I've read out of these? Read along to find out. see the universe not as a collection of objects, theories, and phenomena, but as a vast stage of actors driven by intricate twists of story line and plot." This book is divided into 7 sections with multiple chapters in them dealing with a particular set of concepts and facts. From already debunked myths about astronomy due to the limitation of human eyes to the solar system, galaxy, supernovae, nebulae, he covers it all. And it is explained in a simple, yet comprehensively so that you get both a bird's eye view as well as a focused view. What science experiments can you do with just a stick and a field of mud? A whole chapter is devoted to this and you will be astounded to know what concepts of the universe materialise with this cheap and simple device. Neil takes us on a journey not just around the solar system, he goes beyond it towards the asteroid belts, collision course of Milky Way and Andromeda, birth of the universe, inevitable death of the universe, and so on. There are no complicated theories or over the top explanation of any complex phenomenon. He brings the whole universe in your hands. Universe does not have any obligation tO make sense. Human understanding of the universe is so little that the potential to learn is huge. This is what took away from some of the chapters where he talks about the bafflement of astrophysicists about the Big Bang, Dark Matter, Black Holes and other elusive theories. As always with NDT, He makes his thoughts about Science and the place of God in Science crystal clear. God has no place in the science classroom. You cannot attribute anything that is beyond your understanding to "God" and get away with it. As he himself identifies as "agnostic" he explains why he does not believe God is the answer to everything. There are also chapters dealing with aliens, probability of extra-terrestrial life and super intelligent life forms. And surely, NDT loves trashing scientifically inaccurate movies/shows from "Contact" to "Star Trek', which was actually a funny chapter. PS: Dion Graham's narration was so good and his voice was almost same as NDT that for most of the audiobook believed it was narrated by NDT himself.

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More than the name suggests

Great content inspite of the name suggesting a narrow stretched cessation of existence. Narration reminds you of the author's rendition

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Classic Neil deGrasse Tyson

Didn’t expect to learn so much about the universe in a book titled Death by Black Hole. Definitely recommended for fans and regular folks.

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astrophysics for the casual reader!

a humourous take on the complex astrophysics. walks a tight rope explaining the complexity of the cosmos while keeping you entertained.

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As interesting as the catchy title suggests!

Neil deGrasse Tyson is famous for his highly enthusiastic interviews on issues related to astrophysics. I owe my appreciation of him entirely to his excellent and engaging explanations of complex scientific matters on YouTube.

His book is no different at all. As the catchy title of the book suggests, Neil discusses a wide range of interesting phenomena in this book. And it is not just limited to astrophysics! He discusses science with respect to culture, science with respect to God, the evolution of life on earth etc. There is also a hilarious rant about scientific inaccuracy of common innocent statements like the Sun rises in the East and another one about Hollywood sci-fi blunders.

Neil's ability to lucidity explain scientific ideas while not losing the human aspect at all is impressive to say the least.

He also can be very straightforward while talking about needless controversies. One excellent quote from the book goes as follows : When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Neil quotes Richard Feynman while discussing the routine baffled state of scientists working on frontiers of science.
“…a fun analogy in trying to get some idea of what we’re doing in trying to understand nature, is to imagine that the gods are playing some great game like chess… and you don’t know the rules of the game, but you’re allowed to look at the board, at least from time to time… and from these observations you try to figure out what the rules of the game are, what the rules of the pieces moving are."

Neil also discusses why any society shouldn't take for granted any scientific culture among its people. His hold on history of science is also impressive! He refers to prolific work by Arabic scholars in the field of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry etc from 8th to 11th century. Baghdad became an important centre of scientific inquiry. During the same time, European leadership was quashing any challenge to religious texts. But things changed rapidly over next centuries.

One passage from the book sums up my learnings from this book nicely -

Since we find it difficult to make a suitable scientific model of a certain type, (some say) Nature must find it difficult too. This argument neglects the possibility that Nature may be cleverer than we are. It even neglects the possibility that we may be cleverer tomorrow than we are today.
British physicist- Dennis Sciama, quoted by Neil in chapter "Galactic Engines"


I am listing down interesting takeaways from the book for easy reference. Feel free to Google about them or just read the book!

1) Gas clouds can be as large as 100 light years. At the same time, they contain mass of around 1 million suns. The original gas cloud from which starts are formed is literally billions of times wider than the sun.

2) Somehow parts of the gas cloud which are at just 10 degrees Kelvin temp start collapsing and ultimately temperature goes up to 10 million degrees!! Then a star is born! But only 1% of total mass of the gas cloud participates in star formation.

3) The possible range of mass of a star is from 0.1 x sun to 100x sun.

4) High mass stars are brightest and hence have shortest life.. few million years. But ultimately they manufacture many heavy elements all the way till iron. Their death results bright supernova brightly outshining their whole galaxy.

5) According to Neil, the most underappreciated discovery of twentieth century is that supernovas are primary sources of elements heavier than Iron in the universe.

6) The concept of habitable zone has expanded from earlier theory of Goldilocks zone where water remains in liquid form. There are organisms called extremophiles who thrive in extreme temperatures. Thermophiles reside at Ocean floor under extreme pressure and high temperature caused by Earth's crust. They don't care about Goldilocks zone! Hence there is a possibility that habitable zone might include all planets! It's just that it may not be suitable for humans in most of these planets.

7) There is no permanent dark side of the moon. It has 15 days long day-night cycle.

8) 4 most abundant elements in universe are hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon. Helium is inert. Life on earth is mainly made of other 3 elements. So it is highly likely that alien life will be based on these 3 elements. The science of studying life outside earth is called exobiology. The only discipline trying to study something without having actual base data to work on.

9) Considering species on earth as an example, it is expected that 10 billion species have existed on earth from the beginning. Out of them only humans have evolved with intelligence and ability to communicate with other planets if possible. Hence even if there is life out there, it is again going to be the question of their ability to communicate as they may not have evolved with enough intelligence. (Or another interesting reason for non-communication could be the 'dark forest theory', proposed by Chinese author Liu Cixin in his highly acclaimed series 'the three body problem'.)

10) It is also possible that intelligent life tried contacting earth before we discovered radio communication and they thought there is no intelligent life of Earth. Or for them the definition of Goldilocks zone is simply different to ours and hence earth doesn't fit into that category.

11) Our radio bubble means the distance from Earth where our earliest radio wave would have reached by now. And naturally it keeps on expanding. The radius of the bubble is now 100 light years and hence includes around 1000 stars. In case someone is listening out there, they might know about us.

12) Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and first Fossil records date back to 3.8 billion years ago. Hence it is often quoted that it took 800 million years for life to evolve on earth. But actually, earth suffered heavy bombardment and hence was very hot for initial 600 million years. It is probable that water was delivered to earth by icy comets. So one can say it took 200 years for life to evolve on earth after water was available and conditions somewhat stabilised.

13) Panspermia - The theory that Life on earth might have evolved from Mars. An asteroid impact on Mars may have ejected big enough chunk of rock that escaped Mars gravity and landed on earth. As Mars has ample evidence of running liquid water, it may be possible that it had thriving life a billion years ago.

14) Sun will exist for another 5 billion years. Once hydrogen fuel is exhausted, helium starts getting converted to carbon but at the same time, gravity wins and the star collapses. The temperature rises more than million degrees and increases sun's luminosity so much that it starts expanding to engulf planets.

15) Milky way and Andromeda galaxies are getting closer to each other at the rate of 100km per second. Collision expected in 7 billion years.

16) At big bang, the temperature of universe was a trillion degrees. Now, after 14 billion years, it has come down to 2.7 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero!! As more and more stars are formed from dust clouds, the supply of gas decreases for forming next generation of stars. Half of the galaxies in the universe have already run out of this supply.

17) Black Holes, neutron stars, pulsars are each at dead end on evolutionary tree of stars. But what they each have in common is the eternal lock on material of cosmic construction.

18) There are around 100 billion galaxies in universe. Each contains hundred of billions of stars. Each galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre. It may be called its Galactic centre. Quasars are the most celebrated of the Galactic centres. Some are thousand times more luminous than Milky way but their energy comes from a small area comparable to our solar system!! It stands for quasi stellar radio sources. The nearest one is at distance of 1.5 billion light years!! Quasars need to eat 10 stars per year to remain extremely luminous. Hence the reason for having no quasars in our neighborhood. All stars that could be fed to the black hole at such high rate were already eaten up.

19) Gamma rays burst are the EM waves with highest energy capable of causing lot of harm, much more than UV rays. A big star's death results in a supernova which spreads UV rays to a range of at least 30 light years. But gamma ray burst are caused from a hypernova. That is when a supermassive star collapses to become a black hole. One in thousand supernova is a hypernova. GRB is a possible explanation for one of the mass extinction event on earth.

20) Death by black hole : Neil described it as the most spectacular way to die! If you are falling feet first towards the event horizon of a black hole, the elongation of body and complete disintegration atom by atom will take place due to the tidal forces of gravity. Even sub components of atoms will be ripped apart. Of course this is more applicable to smaller black holes where tidal forces of gravity are strong due to smaller diameter of event horizon. The supermassive black holes have mass of billion suns and are usually at centre of galaxies. They are as big as our solar system. Hence no effective tidal force if you fall into them and hence no disintegration when you are nearing event horizon.

21) The superstition about number 13 in America is so high that many skyscrapers jump to numbering floor 14 after floor 12 in lifts! There is also great reluctance to use negative numbers and fractions in America in daily life.

22) Let there be dark - Light pollution of night sky is a big issue. Major culprit are inefficient Street lights. If you are able to see glowing streets from an aeroplane, it is because the inefficient lights are using half the energy to light up the sky. They should be used in covered and downward facing direction. The issue on invisible radio waves pollution is also affecting ability of astronomers to detect faint signals from depths of the universe. Some radio bands should be declared electromagnetic wilderness so that they are not auctioned off! The most ideal site for telescope would be the side of moon that is not facing the earth. Free from any light or radio pollution at all.

23) Physics describes the behaviours of matter, energy, space and time & interplay in between them. All physical & chemical & biological activities essentially involve what these 4 characters do to one another.

24) God of the gaps - Latest philosophy attributing all unexplained observations to a supernatural, all knowing entity - Also called 'intelligent design'. It is a philosophy of ignorance. The only people who call hurricanes 'act of God' are the people who write insurance forms!

25) Galileo famously said during his trial, " The Bible tells you how to go to heaven, now how the heavens go". He further noted in 1615 letter, " In my mind, God wrote 2 books. The first is Bible where humans can find answer to their question on values & morals. The second book of God is the book of nature which allows humans to use observation and experiments to answer our own questions about the universe." That would have required so much courage!

26) The story of Greenwich astronomers of 17th century is interesting. The most reliable time keeping device from that time was the rotating earth itself. Hence they built a telescope constrained to track movement of stars along the meridian from North to South pole. They recorded positions of hundreds of stars in this manner and used them for recording time. This knowledge was also used by British ships to find out their longitude on long voyages in eighteenth century. Ultimately, when meeting was held in Washington DC in 1885 to decide the location for prime meridian, they decided on Greenwich meridian and not Washington or newyork. A testament to work of Greenwich royal observatory.

27) The metric system was first adopted by France after the French revolution as existing system had become quite impractical. This is the reason that international bureau of weights and measures is situated at Paris!

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NDT keeps doing it again & again!

Neil's delivery style along with the content is top-class! He covers a wide range of topics and gives the average reader great insights into astrophysics from the past to the present.

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