Levin - Black Hole Blues

 

Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin is pretty awesome.

There, that’s it, book report done!

No, but really: this book is about the study of gravitational waves, and the century’s worth of experiments, controversies, and collaborations between when Einstein predicted their presence and our first recording of the these waves. I fully admit that I don’t understand all of the science involved, but I learned a lot. The language used is beautiful; poetic, even, and as the title implies it uses the idea of recording sounds from space as a way of explaining our universe in musical terms.

There are a lot of very interesting people interviewed; some with definite clashes of personality and outlook, and Levin does a balanced job IMO of trying to get their own words through interviews and recordings, as well as off the record comments from their colleagues and contemporaries.

It’s a short book; just a little over 200 pages, not including the acknowledgments or bibliography, but I had to chew some of the concepts discussed a little more (plus some surreptitious Googling) in order to understand them. I’d consider the intended audience reading level to be ‘educated layman,’ and while I’m educated, alas, most of my physics ended with things dealing with physical matter.