Book Review: 'Death by Black Hole' — Why We Should Be Looking at the Universe Right Now (Part 1)
A book by Neil deGrasse Tyson, America's favorite astrophysicist.
America's favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, wrote this book.
In Korea, books about space and astronomy don't tend to generate much excitement. America is different. Many kids there dream of becoming NASA scientists, and the experience of peering through a telescope in the backyard — looking up at the universe from childhood — is commonplace.
Korean children also show early fascination with the sun, earth, moon, and stars, but it tends to fade as they grow older. The few observatories that exist are treated as date spots, not places that nurture children's dreams and imagination.
Maybe it's because I love photography and travel. Every time I've stood somewhere abroad under a vast horizon and a black night sky — really felt, not just understood, that the Milky Way actually flows — I find it impossible to let go of that sense of wonder and awe about the universe.
The universe is both the root of philosophy and religion, and the ultimate destination science is always trying to reach. Recently the cosmos has drawn attention as an industry — Elon Musk's SpaceX being a prominent example — and in Korea there has even been talk of establishing a space agency. Interest is slowly growing.
Of course I recognize the enormous industrial value. But before we get there, I think we need more people who approach the universe with both romantic wonder and rational curiosity.
Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Amazon's Jeff Bezos — all these eccentric billionaires carry a deep romance about space. After unlimited money, they chose 'the universe' as the thing to overcome the void.
A handful of Korean startups are dreaming of space and building their stories. But they're a very small minority, and sometimes their romance gets written off as youthful indulgence or reckless naivety. Yet the universe is worth staring at with open wonder — it expands the horizon of thought.
Below, I share annotated notes on the passages I underlined in Death by Black Hole, along with the fragments of thought they triggered.
Death by Black Hole
Part One: The Way of Science
Chapter 1: The Frontier of Knowledge
The human senses are not always accurate. We tend to perceive stimuli from the outside world not as a linear function but as a logarithmic one. For example, if you increase the energy (volume) of a sound tenfold, our ears do not perceive it as ten times louder but as "a bit louder." The ear underestimates the actual increase in external stimulation.
p.28
Note: The limits of perception are hard to recognize unless you actively watch for them. This is partly a protective mechanism, but what it means is that scientific understanding requires keeping 'doubt' close to heart.
Modern physics is reminding us of the ancient teaching that truths exist beyond the reach of our five senses, and that truths more precious than the most prized treasures of empirical experience are colliding with one another out there, raising every kind of problem. — Max Planck
p.33
Note 1: Max Planck was a German physicist who studied thermodynamics — researching entropy and discovering Planck's constant, which contributed to the foundations of quantum mechanics. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. In his book Where Is Science Going?, he argued that physics is not separate from philosophy but approaches the laws of nature through philosophical thinking.
Note 2: I've always thought the Second Law of Thermodynamics — the entropy law — is remarkably philosophical, and sure enough, there is a connection. The entropy law states that all matter and energy in nature moves in one direction, from order to disorder. The irreversibility of that process, and the human need to slow or prevent it, is arguably what drove us to create institutions like the state and the law. It applies to everyday life too. As I wrote in an earlier post — even love, in the end, follows entropy: from steadfast warmth to cold indifference.
Chapter 2: As Above, So Below
The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft and Voyager 1 and 2, launched in the 1970s, carry gold-anodized plaques engraved with the structure of the solar system, Earth's position in the Milky Way, and the structure of a hydrogen atom. They were the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. (...) The Voyager probes carry a recording of the human heartbeat, the songs of whales, and music ranging from Beethoven to Chuck Berry.
p.39
Note: Humanity in the 1970s was romantic. What a name for a spacecraft — 'Pioneer.' Watching Extraordinary Attorney Woo, I was struck by the deep resonance of whale song. And now I learn it's aboard the Voyager too — there's something vertiginous about that. What would it feel like for some unknown intelligence to first become aware of 'Earth'?
Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This is the most widely known of all physical constants — the result of countless experiments and verified physical laws. What is wonderful about physical laws is that they enforce themselves without any enforcement officer.
p.40
Note: In the past, it was said that only true geniuses went into physics. I used to think it was simply because they could handle complex equations — but looking back, I think the field attracted the most imaginative minds. The fact that physics is predictable and mathematical connects it to things like musical meter or legal principle, and ultimately to beauty itself.
Chapter 3: Let There Be Light
Of all the celestial bodies visible in the sky, only seven have motions observable to the naked eye. Five of these are planets orbiting the sun; the other two are the moon and the sun. The five planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn — and the names of the days of the week are derived from them.
p.49
Note: In both Eastern and Western cultures, the calendar uses Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. The celestial bodies visible to our eyes became the frame through which we carved time into days of the week. This shows up everywhere — in Western mythology and Eastern shamanic traditions alike.
The Milky Way contains vast clouds of gas and large quantities of dust mixed in, which absorb most of the light emitted toward Earth from the celestial bodies behind them. More than 99% of all stars are hidden behind these clouds.
p.52
Note: The Milky Way is made of clouds, not just stars!!
On October 5, 1923, Edwin Hubble observed the Andromeda galaxy and calculated it was approximately 2 million light-years from Earth. He confirmed that Earth is not the center of the universe, and that our galaxy is not the only one.
p.55
Note: That Hubble — of the telescope. Proving that we are not the center of the universe is enormously important. Everyone wants to be the protagonist of their own life, the subject of their own story. If that's denied, it's devastating. The geocentric model held sway for so long, and religion refused to accept heliocentrism, partly because we could not accept that we are not the center of things. Can we accept — and come to peace with — being on the periphery rather than the center?
Chapter 4: Light and Matter
Newton, in his Principia published in 1687, argued that because Earth rotates, centrifugal force makes it slightly wider at the equator than at the poles. The French Academy of Sciences later confirmed this through expeditions. The difference between horizontal and vertical diameters is 0.3% — about 38km wider. The point farthest from Earth's center is the summit of Ecuador's Chimborazo (6,267m), which is about 2km farther from Earth's center than the summit of Everest.
p.64
Note: A slightly flattened Earth. Subtle as it is, centrifugal force produces this difference. Newton proposed it as a hypothesis; France proved it. Something being only a claim or hypothesis today doesn't mean it won't someday be proven.
Within a certain distance of a planet, the planet's tidal forces exceed gravity. Comets or asteroids that approach inside the Roche limit are shredded by gravity and scatter around the planet, forming the wide, flat rings along orbital paths. — Édouard Albert Roche
p.73
Note 1: Édouard Albert Roche was a French astronomer who calculated the Roche limit in 1850. According to his work, a small body approaching a larger planet too closely will be torn apart — and those fragments become rings, like Saturn's.
Note 2: Some people draw others to them — some with an irresistible magnetism, others through an inexplicable pull. But viewed through the Roche limit, even attraction needs an appropriate boundary. Get too close, and you risk being shattered — spending your days as debris orbiting endlessly around someone else.
Chapter 5: The Cosmic Perspective
The reason clock hands turn clockwise is that, in the Northern Hemisphere — where human civilization began — the shadow of a sundial moves in that same direction, following the sun's path.
p.76
Note: Dominance sets the standard. Everyone assumes clock hands turn to the right, but that is only because people, humanity, and civilization first flourished in the Northern Hemisphere and came to dominate. If civilization had risen first in the Southern Hemisphere, clocks might turn the other way.
Death by Black Hole is a substantial book — 42 essays in total, originally published in Natural History magazine at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
At 496 pages, with many passages worth stopping to think about, I'll annotate in installments.
Today's post covers annotations on 5 essays (Chapters 1–5) from Part One: "The Way of Science" — out of 7 parts and 42 chapters total.
I invite readers to write their own annotations as they go. See you in Part 2.