Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines

Black Holes, Wormholes, and Time Machines by Jim Al-Khalili is a book popularizing some of the results of Einstein’s Relativity Equations. If you read about this sort of thing a lot as I do, this might not be anything new to you. This might especially be the case since the book was printed in 1999 so most of the work is current to 1998.

The book itself describes the phenomena in question with skill and grace, remembering that this book is meant for laypeople and others unfamiliar with the subject. It describes the bending of spacetime being the cause of gravity, the experiments that proved Einstein to be correct and made him a household name and so on. The book talks about Olber’s Paradox, the Cosmic Background Radiation and other show more things related to the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.

As I mentioned, this book is meant for the common man or woman as the case may be. In that sense, the author avoids using too much scientific jargon and describes things in a manner that is easy to understand. With the “fabric” of reality and how it is warped by gravity, they use the rubber sheet analogy taking care to note that this is occurring in more dimensions than those occupied by a rubber sheet.

It is somewhat amusing to me to read about people that don’t believe that the Speed of Light is as fast as anything can possibly go, but I suppose if you were never exposed to the equations I can’t really expect one to get it from everyday life. I mean, Special Relativity is only applicable when an object is going at an appreciable fraction of the Speed of Light. The fastest man-made vehicle is probably a rocket, but I doubt that many people will have the opportunity to even ride such a thing. Even in the case of a rocket, we are only talking about something barely capable of escaping Earth’s Gravity. Now 40,000 km/h or 25,000 mph might seem fast and it is. However, that is nothing to the Speed of Light. At an appreciable fraction of the speed of light time itself slows down. Due to the Mass-Energy Equivalence equation that Einstein is known for, you will begin to gain mass as you get closer to light-speed.

In any case, this book was very good. It was a bit reminiscent of Paul Davies’ About Time which I think I still own somewhere. It covers a great deal of material in a thin package and has a bibliography if you are curious about any of the subjects and ideas covered. show less

Second only to "A Brief History of Time", Dr. Al-Kahili does an impressive job of explaining some of the most profound topics in modern Physics. The book begins its explanatory journey through physics with an explanation of Einstein's 'special relativity'. Although this is a trite concept for those of us used to reading such books, he offers a very refreshing and original perspective with which to understand the difficult concept. He then moves on to "general relativity", and the concept of space.

I would do well to claim that this concept has not been explained better by any physicist to date.

The book finally moves on to discuss the concept of time travel. This is a very controversial subject, but I am gald to say that Dr. Al-kahili show more does a very mature job of approaching the subject. This was an enjoyable read for me because he explains the difficult concepts so that any interested reader can understand, without "dumbing down" the material too much. show less

Black Holes, Wormholes & Time Machines is an extremely informative book on several of the most interesting subjects that physics provides. Jim Al-Khalili presents the material in a simplistic way that even non-science oriented people may understand. Using numerous analogies and clear explanations Al-Khalili provides a book that can will ignite the scientific interest of amateur students or provide a stimulating read for more adcanced students.

Al-Khalili's simplistic style and clear descriptions prove that even today's most cutting edge knowledge of the cosmos may be shared with the layman!

I am in no way scientifically inclined, but found this very interesting and relatively easy to read (compared with Hawking).

Very informative and entertaining at the same time. I enjoyed reading it very much.

It's still about how his wife doesn't understand anything about physics