Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes

by Arthur I. Miller

Book Overview

In August 1930, on a voyage from Madras to London, a young Indian looked up at the stars and contemplated their fate. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar--Chandra, as he was called--calculated that certain stars would suffer a strange and violent death, collapsing to virtually nothing. This extraordinary claim, the first mathematical description of black holes, brought Chandra into direct conflict with Sir Arthur Eddington, one of the greatest astrophysicists of the day. Eddington ridiculed the young man's idea at a meeting of the Royal Astronomy Society in 1935, sending Chandra into an intellectual and emotional tailspin--and hindering the progress of astrophysics for nearly forty years.
Empire of the Stars is the dramatic story of this intellectual debate and its implications for twentieth-century science. Arthur I. Miller traces the idea of black holes from early notions of "dark stars" to the modern concepts of wormholes, quantum foam, and baby universes. In the process, he follows the rise of two great theories--relativity and quantum mechanics--that meet head on in black holes. Empire of the Stars provides a unique window into the remarkable quest to understand how stars are born, how they live, and, most portentously (for their fate is ultimately our own), how they die.
It is also the moving tale of one man's struggle against the establishment--an episode that sheds light on what science is, how it works, and where it can go wrong. Miller exposes the deep-seated prejudices that plague even the most rational minds. Indeed, it took the nuclear arms race to persuade scientists to revisit Chandra's work from the 1930s, for the core of a hydrogen bomb resembles nothing so much as an exploding star. Only then did physicists realize the relevance, truth, and importance of Chandra's work, which was finally awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983.
Set against the waning days of the British Empire and taking us right up to the present, this sweeping history examines the quest to understand one of the most forbidding phenomena in the universe, as well as the passions that fueled that quest over the course of a century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 061834151X
• ISBN13: 9780618341511
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent History of Astrophysics

This is really a book on the history of astrophysics - the science of stars. However, in developing this exposition, the author has chosen to focus on two of the main contributors to the field: Eddington and Chandrasekhar. Both were geniuses of the highest order - one (Eddington), feared for his venomous attacks (in scientific fora) on those who disagreed with his theories but who, otherwise, was a truly likeable gentleman; the other (Chandrasekhar), a more complex individual "confident in his own brilliance, yet permanently bitter at never having received the recognition he thought was his due" (p. 297). The writing style is clear, engaging and free of unnecessary technical jargon, thus making the book accessible to a wider audience. Various theories on how it was thought that stars shine and eventually die are presented, culminating with modern day theories. This excellent book will likely be most appreciated by science buffs.

Fabulous work of popular science

This is the story of the scientific feud behind the discovery of black holes. On the one side there was Chandra, a shy young astrophysicist from India. On the other, Eddington, the world's greatest astrophysicist of his day. Chandra's great discovery was that black holes had to exist; but Eddington was determined to ridicule him and make sure his discovery did not see the light of day. Even Einstein refused to believe in black holes. It was not until decades later that Chandra's discovery was proved to be correct. This is a great work of popular science - at the end of it I'd really learnt a huge amount about physics, astrophysics and black holes. But it also reads like a novel. A truly gripping read - I couldn't put it down. > <br />

Required Reading

I was amazed to find several decades ago scientists were talking about the things "quantum" and the first step to understanding black holes. Well written covering many aspects, easy to understand even for the novice. This is the book you don't want to miss !!

A fascinating survey of the rise of two great, major theories reads like fiction with tension and th

A bitter rivalry developed in 1935 between astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Sir Arthur Edduington, fellow astrophysicist, which led to the discovery of black holes but hindered the entire science for nearly forty years. Empire Of The Stars: Obsession, Friendship, And Betrayal In The Quest For Black Holes charts this rivalry and its lasting impact, considering both the quest for black hole proof and the underlying reasons for the struggles. A fascinating survey of the rise of two great, major theories reads like fiction with tension and thrills.

Sleepwalkers

This is a telling history of the discovery of black holes, starting with the work of Eddington and Chandrasekhar, and the conflict between the two, and the human side of the scientific cultural politics of research. Eddington's unexpected rejection of Chandra's paper was responsible in part for the long delay in the acceptance of these at first unacceptable consequences of Einsteinian cosmology.What is strange is that Eddington himself had stumbled on the idea in the twenties, but was unable to stomach the consequences of imploding stars vanishing into a singularity. In part the fact that this finding was inconsistent with his effort to produce a general theory, undermining his life work, was responsible for his opposition, but the result seems to have ended by discrediting him. The course of Chandara's career is a fascinating one, as is the portrait of an Indian scientist of great brilliance. One thinks of Koestler's _Sleepwalkers_, stepping backwards into a new discovery of black holes