Tyson, Neil deGrasse: Death by Black Hole: and Other Cosmic Quandaries

I’d heard people speak highly of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s science writing previously, but it wasn’t until his Daily Show appearance (and sequel) that I made reading something by him a priority. Death By Black Hole: and Other Cosmic Quandaries seemed like the best place to start.

This is a collection of esays first published in the magazine Natural History, slightly edited for continuity and changes in scientific knowledge, and organized into seven sections:

1. The Nature of Knowledge: The challenges of knowing what is knowable in the universe
2. The Knowledge of Nature: The challenges of discovering the contents of the cosmos
3. Ways and Means of Nature: How Nature presents herself to the inquriing mind
4. The Meaning of Life: The challenges and triumphs of knowing how we got here
5. When the Universe Turns Bad: All the ways the cosmos wants to kill us
6. Science and Culture: The ruffled interface between cosmic discovery and the public’s reaction to it
7. Science and God: When ways of knowing collide

As this suggests, the book is at least as much about ways of knowing and approaching the world as about scientific theories and discoveries. I think this adds to its appeal and scope. For instance, I really liked the chapter “Stick-in-the-Mud Science,” about what you could learn about the universe with a straight stick hammered in the ground somewhere with a clear view of the horizon—not only is it fascinating in its own right, but Tyson also points out that this demonstrates that ancient stone monuments like Stonehenge are not so extraordinary as to require extraterrestial intervention. See also the chapter “Things People Say”:

The North Star is the brightest star in the nighttime sky. The Sun is a yellow star. What goes up must come down. On a dark night you can see millions of stars with the unaided eye. In space there is no gravity. A compass points north. Days get shorter in the winter and longer in the summer. Total solar eclipses are rare.

Every statement in the above paragraph is false.

Many people (perhaps most people) believe one or more of thse statements and spread them to others even when a firsthand demonstration of falsehood is trivial to deduce or obtain.

Tyson also describes straight-out science clearly and entertainingly, such as this discussion of orbits:

The most extreme example of an elongated orbit is the famous case of the hole dug all the way to China. . . . [Except that to] avoid emerging under two miles of water, we need to learn some geography and dig from Shelby, Montana, through Earth’s center, to the isolated Kerguelen Islands.

Now comes the fun part. Jump in. You now accelerate continuously in a weightless, free-fall state until you reach the Earth’s core—where you vaporize in the fierce heat of the iron core. But let’s ignore that complication. You zoom past the center, where the force of gravity is zero, and steadily decelerate until you just reach the other side, at which time you have slowed to zero. But unless a Kerguelian grabs you, you will fall back down the hole and repeat the journey indefinitely. Besides making bungee jumpers jealous, you have executed a genuine orbit, taking about an hour and a half—just like that of the space shuttle.

I am also fond of the offhand statement that ultraviolet light (UV) is bad for you because “it’s always best to avoid things that decompose the molecules of your flesh.”

There are a few repetitive bits by the book’s nature as a collection of columns, and even the paperback has some unfortunate copyediting goofs (e.g., mixing up “its” and “it’s”), but on the whole I enjoyed this enormously and highly recommend it.

Crossposted to 50books_poc.