Customer Reviews

Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes

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This is a telling history of the discovery of black holes, starting with the work of Eddington and Chandrasekhar, and the conflict between the two, and the human side of the scientific cultural politics of research. Eddington's unexpected rejection of Chandra's paper was responsible in part for the long delay in the acceptance of these at first unacceptable consequences of Einsteinian cosmology.What is strange is that Eddington himself had stumbled on the idea in the twenties, but was unable to stomach the consequences of imploding stars vanishing into a singularity. In part the fact that this finding was inconsistent with his effort to produce a general theory, undermining his life work, was responsible for his opposition, but the result seems to have ended by discrediting him. The course of Chandara's career is a fascinating one, as is the portrait of an Indian scientist of great brilliance.
One thinks of Koestler's _Sleepwalkers_, stepping backwards into a new discovery of black holes

"Empire of the Stars" is a stellar depiction of astrophysics and the astrophysicists who make sense of it all. Miller focuses on the personalities and foibles of the men and women scientists who have contributed to our understanding of stars. The author presents their research through anecdotes and scientific discussions in the context of historical events. This gives added relevancy and significance to their work. In effect, Miller's formula for storytelling delivers new dimensions to astrophysics in "book-spacetime."

The thrust of the book revolves around the scientific battle between Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra) and Sir Arthur Eddington over star collapse. Although it becomes apparent that Chandra's brilliant insight is correct, it is Chandra who becomes disillusioned and professionally detoured by the controversy. Chandra seeks refuge at Chicago where he flourishes in his research endeavors and is recognized as world-renowned scientist.

The book is a colorful exposition on the genesis of black-hole theory. Miller uses historical events and the scientists themselves to reveal the mysteries of the stars. This book is a supernova for those interested in a biography of Chandra and a history of astrophysics.

This is the story of the scientific feud behind the discovery of black holes. On the one side there was Chandra, a shy young astrophysicist from India. On the other, Eddington, the world's greatest astrophysicist of his day. Chandra's great discovery was that black holes had to exist; but Eddington was determined to ridicule him and make sure his discovery did not see the light of day. Even Einstein refused to believe in black holes. It was not until decades later that Chandra's discovery was proved to be correct. This is a great work of popular science - at the end of it I'd really learnt a huge amount about physics, astrophysics and black holes. But it also reads like a novel. A truly gripping read - I couldn't put it down.
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If you liked "A Beautiful Mind" you will like this...this is a riveting personal story about a scientific feud. It has elements of david and goliath, east vs west, a young Chandra (20 years old) hitting the establishment wall (Eddington) with his theory on black holes...great drama, a wonderful look at how sometimes science is slowed by personalities.

I enjoyed this book and recommend it. It is a highly entertaining, informative, and well-researched book. If you've read Wali's bio "Chandra", you should read this book, which gives a somewhat darker view of Chandrasekhar the man. I particularly liked the detailed endnotes, which give many historical insights.

The villain in this story is Eddington, who did excellent work in his early career, but simply lost the power of rational argument in his old age. Like Linus Pauling, Eddington suffered from "great old man disease". (It only strikes males, perhaps because testosterone levels are involved.) The course of this disease is: tremendously successful early career causing self-confidence to morph into hubris, followed by the belief that one's intuition is so powerful that it cannot be wrong. In late stages, the disease causes the victim to attempt to alter experimental evidence to match beliefs.

I think the author exaggerates the importance of the Chandra-Eddington "debate" in 20th century physics, but that does not detract from the book's value.

Unfortunately, this book is marred many technical errors. Clearly, the author is not a scientist and the book was never edited by someone with a technical background. I list a few statements, some of which are wrong, and others are, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, "are not even wrong".

p.45 Referring to Sirius A, the brightest star in the sky: "The fact that it can be observed with a telescope shows how extraordinarily bright it is." Is this a typo? Did the author mean "without a telescope"? Doesn't matter, since the sentence makes no sense either way.
p.48,49. Explaining that Eddington incorrectly assumed that a star has a chemical composition similar to Earth's (rather than the Sun's actual compostion of 3/4 H, 1/4 He which gives it a molecular weight of 2) and so "Eddingtion adopted a mean molecular weight of 2.1." At first I assumed this was a typo, but the mistake is repeated throughout the text.
p.54. "Another mystery that Eddington wanted to crack was how a white dwarf could be so small yet so dense." Throughout, the author makes puzzling statements about density.
p.69. "... the electrical charge of the electron, which is 10^-10 in terms of size (measured in centimeters);...;the Planck constant, as measure of scale in the atomic world and smaller still, 10^-27; ..." Which is bigger: 20 pounds for 400 inches?
p.157 Referring to a teaspoonful of stellar matter: "The same tiny amount of neutron star matter would weigh a billion tons, probably enough to take it plunging through Earth." Yes, probably.
p.160. Kapitza is referred to as "a discoverer of superconductivity" (confusing superfluidity with superconductivity)
p.165 "Another question was whether fusion could be initiated by thermonuclear reactions." fusion is a thermonuclear reaction

Throughout, the author uses the word "dim" and it is never clear whether he intends the word to mean intrinsic luminosity, apparent brightness, surface brightness or what. This leads to very odd statements such as p.180 referring to a white dwarf, "It has burned up nearly all of its fuel, making it dim, but has undergone extreme contraction... making it hot." or p.221 "If Cygnus A were closer ... it would have a "luminosity" 10 million times that of the entire Milky Way."
The author reports all stellar distances in miles, never light-years, and he refuses to use scientific notation: p.221 Cygnus A is "4500 million trillion miles away"
p.225. Referring to Chandra's calculations of a supermassive stellar remnant in a quasar "it would have to collapse completely and would therefore cease to exist."
p.227 "its spin is the number of times it rotates per second". Confusing angular momentum and angular velocity.
p.225 Author explains that the Large Hadron Collider will be able to produce photons with a wavelength equal to the Planck length. I wish!
p.269, Referring to neutrinos: "They interact so weakly that they can fly through space for 3 trillion miles unhampered." Through space? Empty space? (As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up.)

This biography of the astrophysicist and mathematical prodigy Subramanyan Chandrasekhar is a very good survey of the twentieth-century flowering of astrophysics. Physics, chemistry, and astronomy were beginning to feed into each other and reach critical mass, which would result in the supernova of celestial discovery that marked the rest of the century. In this telling, Chandra had a brilliant insight which, although it would prove to be the key to most future theorizing about black holes, was at the time unsupported by anything except a seemingly airtight set of mathematical calculations. These were rejected by Sir Arthur Eddington, the foremost astrophysicist of the day, in a most public and humiliating way. As is the way of science at its best, time and the accretion of aggregate research finally proved Chandra correct and Eddington wrong.

The public hiding Eddington gave Chandra rankled the young Indian for the rest of his life. Even winning the Nobel prize didn't make bygones be bygones. Chandra is depicted as being alternately resentful and ostentatiously collegial with Eddington, a sign of his conflicted feelings. Eddington isn't around to stick up for himself, and as the author notes, there is very little in the way of biographical information about him. The author goes on about class, racism, and even closeted homosexuality in an effort to explain Eddington's refusal to accept Chandra's insight. Those qualities were indeed extant in 1930s England, but the author comes very close to unfairly tarring Eddington by implication. There's no proof, so he should have let the mystery stand as is.

That said, the story of Chandra is a great starting point for telling the story of astrophysics over the last 80 years. As such, it is warmly recommended.

Some fair use quotations:

"On next Monday I am 21! I am almost ashamed to confess it. Years run apace, but nothing done! I wish I had been more concentrated, directed and disciplined in my work.
-- Subrahmanyan Chadrasekhar, letter to his father, 1932, in Arthur I. Miller, Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

"Technical journals are filled with elaborate papers on conditions in the interiors of model gaseous spheres, but these discussions have, for the most part, the character of exercises in mathematical physics rather than astronomical investigations, and it is difficult to judge the degree of resemblance between the models and actual stars. Differential equations are like servants in livery: it is honourable to be able to command them, but they are "yes" men, loyally giving support and amplification to the ideas entrusted to them by their master. -- Paul W. Merrill, The Nature of Variable Stars, 1938, quoted in Arthur I. Miller Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

"In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realisation that [New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr's] exact solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity provides the *absolutely exact representation* of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe. This "shuddering before the beautiful," this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound.
-- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 1975, quoted in Arthur I. Miller,
Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest
for Black Holes, 2005"

"You may think I have used a hammer to crack eggs, but I have cracked eggs!
-- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, on his habitual use of zillions of equations in his papers, quoted in Arthur I. Miller Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, 2005"

If you like books described by the title above, you'll enjoy Empire of the Stars. The core of the book is a straightforward biography of Chandrasekhar, but that story is well wrapped in a social history of the international scientific community of the 20th Century. Author Arthur Miller does not convince all readers of his bold thesis that the clash between Chandra and Eddington impeded scientific progress by decades, but the interest of the book does not hinge on that dramatic device.

A bitter rivalry developed in 1935 between astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Sir Arthur Edduington, fellow astrophysicist, which led to the discovery of black holes but hindered the entire science for nearly forty years. Empire Of The Stars: Obsession, Friendship, And Betrayal In The Quest For Black Holes charts this rivalry and its lasting impact, considering both the quest for black hole proof and the underlying reasons for the struggles. A fascinating survey of the rise of two great, major theories reads like fiction with tension and thrills.

This is really a book on the history of astrophysics - the science of stars. However, in developing this exposition, the author has chosen to focus on two of the main contributors to the field: Eddington and Chandrasekhar. Both were geniuses of the highest order - one (Eddington), feared for his venomous attacks (in scientific fora) on those who disagreed with his theories but who, otherwise, was a truly likeable gentleman; the other (Chandrasekhar), a more complex individual "confident in his own brilliance, yet permanently bitter at never having received the recognition he thought was his due" (p. 297). The writing style is clear, engaging and free of unnecessary technical jargon, thus making the book accessible to a wider audience. Various theories on how it was thought that stars shine and eventually die are presented, culminating with modern day theories. This excellent book will likely be most appreciated by science buffs.

I was amazed to find several decades ago scientists were talking about the things "quantum" and the first step to understanding black holes. Well written covering many
aspects, easy to understand even for the novice. This is
the book you don't want to miss !!