Einstein's Enigma or Black holes in my bubble bath.



A book to inform, enrich and entertain every science educated reader.


This is a fascinating and enjoyable popular science book on gravity and black holes. It offers an absorbing account on the history of research on the universe and gravity from Aristotle via Copernicus and Newton to Einstein. The author possesses high literary qualities and is a celebrated relativist. The physics of black holes constitutes one of the most fascinating chapters in modern science but at  the same time, there is a fanciful quality associated with this strange and beautiful entity. The black hole story is undoubtedly an adventure through physics, philosophy, history, fiction and fantasy. This book is an attempt to blend all these elements together.Along with the prose, one also gets to enjoy poetry and cartoons by the author.

"The author blends fiction, fantasy, physics and philosophy to tell the story of gravitation theory...and the astrophysics of black holes. He not only succeeds at doing this; he entertains readers with delightful digressions and illustrates key concepts with wonderful cartoons, some purportedly scribbled on paper napkins..." (Michelle Press, Scientific American, January 2008).

 Here is a sample of a Poem from the book.......



The Plight of Light           or  Lamentations of Light         or Light's liberty lost

Oh my dear Albert E
Tell me, what have I done to thee?
I wandered fast and I wandered slow,
Much as a meandering river would flow.
But you made me travel with a constant c
Whatever the speed of the observer be.
You tucked me firmly into a curved space
I must now climb hills red in the face.
Straight as an arrow I used to go
How painful it is to bend like a bow.
Oft I get trapped in a gravitational field
Of your astronomer friend Schwarzschild.
Ever since the Big Bang, a long time back,
I have been stretched on the cosmic rack.
Worst of all, I am doomed to a double life,
As both particle and wave in a schizophrenic strife.
Oh, my dear, dear Albert E,
Tell me, why have you done this to me?
       **********************
 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Train Journeys in 50's and 60's

Image
      My childhood was spent in Bareilly in North, far away from Shimoga, in Karnataka  and Parvatipuram in Andhra where my grandparents lived. So travelling southwards during our school vacations in summer was an annual ritual which we keenly looked forward to. Travel was invariably by Indian Railways. Bus or air travel was ruled out due to the distances and the cost factor. Of course, in my case we could avail of free travel by Indian Railways since my father was a medical officer in the Railways.  It used to be rather a long journey. Our schedule of typical journey by Rail from Bareilly (UP) to Shimoga (then Mysore State) used to be like this:- Day 1- Start from Bareilly in the night. Day 2 Reach Delhi the next morning.           Take train to Chennai (then Madras) in the evening called Grand Trunk Express. Day 3- Spent in the train. Meals usually from Railway Catering Day 4 -  Reach Madras in the Evening....
Read more

Bapa's posting to war torn areas near western border during Indo-Pak war in 1965

Image
                                              ( Pencil sketch by Anil Jagalur )  Those were the days in Sept 1965 when we were at Jodhpur....... Indo Pak war was in full swing. Jodhpur, being near to the western border and also being an Air Force base was a target for many air raids. We used to hear, while sitting in trenches dug out by us in front of our house, sounds of Anti Aircraft Guns and also number of bombs, which used to be dropped in Jodhpur (in total 192 bombs were dropped during the seventeen days' war). My father Dr D Ranga Rao, whom we siblings used to address  as Bapa, was a medical officer posted in Railway Hospital at Jodhpur in Mid 60's.We stayed in a railway quarter, which was just diagonally opposite the hospital.His posting was in outpatient and later in Mobile Dispensary ( A full bogie -hospital-on-wheels) which used to get attache...
Read more

HOLI MEMORY- A TALE FROM CHILDHOOD

Image
   ( Above picture is of Flower Fields,San Diego, clicked when we visited it in 2018) Reminiscences of Holi:  I had been planning to write about my Holi experiences since long but kept putting it off. This time I made up my mind to write about it. It was the late fifties when I was in my middle school. Place : Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh We were residing in a Railway colony which was a small world in itself. Our activities for the HOLI used to start with organising for Holika Dahan  ( Holika,  the sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu  , was killed in the fire) .   There was an open place in our colony earmarked for it. A couple of days before Poornima ( Day of Holika Dahan), a Pooja was conducted at the site and initial collection of fuel ( Wood, cow dung cakes and other combustible materials) were collected and placed there. Then the task of gathering more fuel was taken over by the Bachcha Party (we) under the guidance of a few elders. We used t...
Read more