Einstein's Monsters by Chris Impey -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Contents Foreword Part A. Evidence For Black Holes, Large And Small

1. The Heart of Darkness

An English Clergyman Imagines Dark Stars A Great French Mathematician Weighs In Understanding the Fabric of Space-Time A Singularity and a Life Cut Short The Master of Implosions and Explosions Coining the Perfect Term for the Inscrutable A Genius Struggles with Gravity and Disease Betting on Black Holes The Golden Age of Black Hole Theory

2. Black Holes from Star Death

The Forces of Light and Darkness Gravity and Darkness Are the Final Victors Finding the First Black Swan Weighing the Invisible Dance Partner Black Holes with Gold-Plated Credentials Using Gravitational Optics Physics at the Edge of the Maelstrom A Tour of the Binary Star Bestiary

3. Supermassive Black Holes

The Only Radio Astronomer in the World Galaxies with Bright Nuclei Radio Astronomy Comes of Age A Dutch Astronomer Discovers Quasars Astronomers Harvest Distant Points of Light Hypothesizing Massive Black Holes Mapping Radio Jets and Lobes The Zoo of Active Galaxies A Matter of Perspective

4. Gravitational Engines

The Big Black Hole Next Door Stars at the Edge of the Abyss The Dark Core in Every Galaxy Baron Rees of Ludlow Tames the Beast Using Quasars to Probe the Universe Weighing Black Holes by the Thousand Accretion Power in the Cosmos Massive Black Holes Are Not Scary

Part B. Black Holes, Past, Present, And Future

5. The Lives of Black Holes

Seeds of the Universe First Light and First Darkness Black Hole Birth by Stellar Cataclysm Finding the Missing Links Simulating Extreme Gravity in a Computer How Black Holes and Galaxies Grow The Universe as a Black Hole Making Black Holes in the Lab

6. Black Holes as Tests of Gravity

Gravity from Newton to Einstein and Beyond What Black Holes Do to Space-Time How Black Holes Affect Radiation Inside the Iron Curtain X-Rays Flickering Near the Abyss When a Black Hole Eats a Star Taking a Black Hole for a Spin The Event Horizon Telescope

7. Seeing with Gravity Eyes

A New Way of Seeing the Universe Ripples in Space-Time An Eccentric Millionaire and a Solitary Engineer When Black Holes Collide The Most Precise Machine Ever Built Meet the Maestro of Gravity Viewing the Universe with Gravity Eyes Collisions and Mergers of Massive Black Holes Gravity and the Big Bang

8. The Fate of Black Holes

The New Age of Gravity Quasar on Our Doorstep Merging with Andromeda The Biggest Black Holes in the Universe The Era of Stellar Corpses A Future of Evaporation and Decay Living with Black Holes

Notes Acknowledgments Index Also by Chris Impey Copyright