Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

How could you detect a faint tremor in the very fabric of space-time itself? How could you possibly measure a tiny stretching and compression a mere one ten-thousandth of the diameter of a proton? And why would you want to? That’s what Black Hole Blues is all about.

Just over a century ago, Albert Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity, which interprets gravity as a deformation of space-time caused by the presence of matter. One of the more obscure predictions of the theory was that the acceleration of a large mass should cause ripples in space-time: gravitational ‘waves’. No one at the time could have imagined that such tiny ripples could ever actually be detected. Einstein himself vacillated about whether such waves show more would indeed exist.

Nevertheless, in the mid–1970s the first evidence was gathered that accelerating masses did indeed emit such waves, though it was indirect evidence. A binary system of orbiting neutron stars was shown to be losing energy as the two stars spiralled closer to each other. Where was the energy going? Only gravitational waves seemed to fit the bill.

Knowing that gravitational waves exist is one thing: actually being able to ‘hear’ them is another.

This book, then, is about the decades-long struggle to find a way of detecting such waves. Only the most cataclysmic of astronomical events such as the collision of massive stars or the merging of black holes could be expected to generate ripples we might have a chance of detecting. Even then, the ripples would be almost unimaginably small. Yet a small group of scientists persisted in believing that there were ways it could be done.

Of course, a scientifically-literate reader today knows that it was done. Gravitational waves were first detected in 2015. But the bulk of Black Hole Blues was written before that detection. That doesn’t detract from the interest of the book, which details the individuals

3 involved in trying to build detectors, or at least in the early days, in figuring out what technology they would need to develop in order to build a detector.

The author introduces us to the many talented scientists involved in this drawn-out process, which started in the late 1960s. It is as much a story of the conflicts between genius-level personalities, and about the funding challenges and politics, as it is about the actual science. This is science in the raw, a struggle of human beings striving to understand the universe but also caught up in normal human concerns: about having and keeping a job; about dealing with difficult colleagues and bosses; about finding enough support and money to keep going; about the lure of prestige and honours.

It also demonstrates that science is a self-correcting endeavour, as it discusses the case of Joseph Weber, who convinced himself, and for a while the scientific community, that he was detecting gravitational waves in the harmonic ringing of a massive bar of metal. But others were unable to reproduce his results, and theorists showed that such a detector, even if it worked, would only detect astronomical events of an unlikely magnitude and frequency. This was not scientific fraud; merely an error of technique. But Weber would never accept that he had been wrong, and became a sad footnote to scientific history.

Though this setback tainted the study of gravitational waves for some years, a small group at Caltech and M.I.T. kept pushing on with an effort to achieve detection using laser interferometers. Eventually their efforts, and generous financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation led to the building of two instruments called LIGO, one in Washington State, the other in Louisiana. It was these two instruments which, after achieving a high level of sensitivity, both registered the first gravitational waves in September 2015, as described in an Epilogue to the book.

Black Hole Blues is well worth reading if you are interested in how science is actually done, and particularly if you are interested in this facinating new window on the universe. show less

This is a rather fascinating personality-centric accounting of post-WWII science that lead to the facilities that currently detect Gravity Waves. The science is there at the core, from the postulations to the amazingly hard-fought politics and accounting that made the whole thing happen.

And believe me, it almost didn't happen so many times. Fortunately, it did and a few years ago we had confirmation of real-life Black Holes to celebrate over.

Truly, I couldn't be happier. Science needs these kinds of astronomical wins. It was astronomical in the way they pulled it off, too.

But wow, the rest of the story reads like a great novel full of difficult personalities, boundless hope, disappointment, and heroism. Kinda like most science. But show more then, it is a calling. These men and women are truly devoted to the cause despite not always agreeing on the best direction or means to the goal.

So did this read like a soap opera full of departmental squabbles, politics, money-wrangling, and even a little madness thrown in?

Yep.

But that's what makes it so interesting. They did it despite all that. And the project is very healthy now. :) :) Fun read! show less

The search for gravitational waves has been a very long journey. In 1915, Einstein published hiis general theory of relativity, which implies the existence of gravitational waves. From the 1970's people have been dreaming of discovering gravitational waves and even using toy models of the current LIGO machines even then. There followed setbacks, gargantuan clashes of personality, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and two of the biggest experimental machines in the world, until, in September 2015, LIGO finally found direct evident of gravitational waves, as two black holes 1.3 billion light years away spiralled toward each other incredibly fast before dissolving into a single larger black hole.

Janna Levin has some fine show more writing to describe the poetry of these celestial events, especiallly at the beginning and end of the book. And this is indeed one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century. I was disappointed, though, that the focus of the book wasn't on the science itself, or even the discovery, but the personalities that made it happen. The colourful characters were fun to hear about as well, but I wish that there was a lot more science in there, to cover the background and details of the science. In addition, these LIGO machines are exquisite pieces of engineering, as the author herself admits. Therefore I would have appreciated some geeky details about the machines, maybe a 3rd of the book science, a third engineering and a 3rd the story and characters. Instead, there's perhaps 90% devoted to the story and people, with only 10% of the pages left for the rest. There's not a single figure, for instance. And the actual momentous discovery is only covered, rather briefly, in the epiloque. Given Levin is herself a physicist with a gift for language, this seemed like a terrible waste of an opportunity, with the book often feeling like a journalist enterprise, rather than an insider's view of this incredibly momentous discovery. show less

I guess I am a physics nerd, because I was spellbound by this brief yet detailed history of the development of the LIGO and the search for gravitational waves. Levin knows her physics, and uses striking images and analogies to explain the physics behind the LIGO endeavor and why its results are so important. She also knows her physicists and relates the rivalries, personality conflicts and hurt feelings matter of factly. All of this is fascinating to me,, as are the politics behind funding the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories in Lousiana and a fdw hours drive from me in Hanford, WA. I want to convince my book club to read this one.

An excellent account of the decades long planning and building of the audaciously ambitious and Nobel-prize winning LIGO gravitational wave detector. Lots of interviews with fascinating characters and a look under the hood of an incredibly complex project provide great insight into how Big Science is conducted.

The main issue is that the book was written before it actually found anything, with the famous discovery dealt with almost as an afterthought in an afterward, and prior to the award of the prize. While this helps underscore the speculative and risky nature of the experiment, it also precludes placing the discovery in its proper context.

This account of the decades long project to detect gravity waves, that unexpectedly had its first successful detection in September 2015, fascinated and exasperated me in equal parts. Although the organization of the chapters and even the material within them was sometimes not coherent, what keeps you reading are the personal stories of the people who fought to move this unwieldy project forward. These really are people possessed by the need to find out how the universe works.

The book also often suffers from a confusing writing style at a sentence level, but in the end I would tentatively recommend it on the strength of the individuals' stories, and the explanation of the physics which they were persuing.

At its best in the skilled rendering of the sheer magnitude of both cosmic events and the scientific ingenuity, rigour, and organization necessary to observe them.

At its (admittedly tolerable) worst when waxing rhapsodic about grad student pub nights.