White Dwarfs, Supernovas, Neutron stars and Black holes…

Just finished reading Isaac Asimov’s “Collapsing Universe- the story of black holes” . I believe that if there’s anything that can bring one closer to Astronomy, then it is Asimov’s writing. From his Foundation series to his three volumes of Understanding Physics- Asimov is the king of exposition through effective storytelling.

Collapsing universe is a layman introduction to Astronomy buzzwords such as White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars and Black holes. The book starts with explaining the four forces (Nuclear, Electromagnetic, Weak and Gravitation), atoms, density and gravitation. With these basics covered he starts building a structured story where he moves on to explaining the birth cycle of stars, white dwarfs, Neutron stars and finally black holes. The most interesting chapter was “The Exploding Matter” in which he gives an easy to understand review of Big Bang and the oscillating universe model. There are no equations and the book is strewn with comparisons of density, mass etc. which does two things:

a). It gives the reader a good understanding of the astronomical nature of the forces and structures involved in the subject.

b). Explains how physicists and scientists use these simple properties (density, momentum, mass, luminosity etc.) to answer questions regarding the mass of celestial bodies like stars, galaxies and universe itself.

The books ends with a bunch of speculations- some popular scientific conclusions and others Asimov’s own such as tapping black holes for enormous amounts of energies. A brief discussion of “Tunguska explosion” and it’s relation to black holes particularly interested me since I am a big X-files fan(lol).

Reading this book is like reading one of Asimov’s novels. It is full of science, ideas and of course, drama which keeps the reader intrigued till the end of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Astronomy …or in Asimov’s writing in general.