The Black Hole War My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

by Susskind, Leonard

• ISBN13: 9780316016407
• ISBN10: 0316016403
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780316032698
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-07
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• More Book Details
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Summary

What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did-and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space. A brilliant book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes, Leonard Susskind's account of the Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.

Author Biography

Leonard Susskind has been the Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1978. The author of The Cosmic Landscape, he is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for his Scientific American article on black holes.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
The Gathering Storm
The First Shot	p. 17
The Dark Star	p. 25
Not Your Grandfather's Geometry	p. 50
"Einstein, Don't Tell God What to Do"	p. 76
Planck Invents a Better Yardstick	p. 111
In a Broadway Bar	p. 117
Energy and Entropy	p. 126
Wheeler's Boys, or How Much Information Can You Stuff in a Black Hole?	p. 143
Black Light	p. 157
Surprise Attack
How Stephen Lost His Bits and Didn't Know Where to Find Them	p. 179
The Dutch Resistance	p. 193
Who Cares?	p. 200
Stalemate	p. 211
Skirmish at Aspen	p. 225
Counterattack
The Battle of Santa Barbara	p. 233
Wait! Reverse the Rewiring	p. 265
Ahab in Cambridge	p. 271
The World as a Hologram	p. 290
Closing the Ring
Weapon of Mass Deduction	p. 309
Alice's Airplane, or The Last Visible Propeller	p. 354
Counting Black Holes	p. 366
South America Wins the War	p. 395
Nuclear Physics? You're Kidding!	p. 422
Humility	p. 433
Epilogue	p. 442
Acknowledgments	p. 449
Glossary	p. 451
Index	p. 457
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