Einstein's Shadow
The Inside Story of Astronomers' Decades-Long Quest to Take the First Picture of a Black Hole
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Narrated by:
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Sean Pratt
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By:
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Seth Fletcher
About this listen
Einstein’s Shadow follows a team of elite scientists on a historic mission to take the first picture of a black hole, putting Einstein’s theory of relativity to its ultimate test and helping to answer our deepest questions about space, time, the origins of the universe, and the nature of reality.
Photographing a black hole sounds impossible, a contradiction in terms. But Shep Doeleman and a global coalition of scientists are on the cusp of doing just that.
With exclusive access to the team, journalist Seth Fletcher spent five years following Shep and an extraordinary cast of characters as they assembled the Event Horizon Telescope, a virtual radio observatory the size of the Earth. He witnessed their struggles, setbacks, and breakthroughs, and along the way, he explored the latest thinking on the most profound questions about black holes. Do they represent a limit to our ability to understand reality? Or will they reveal the clues that lead to the long-sought theory of everything?
Fletcher transforms astrophysics into something exciting, accessible, and immediate, taking us on an incredible adventure to better understand the complexity of our galaxy, the boundaries of human perception and knowledge, and how the messy human endeavor of science really works.
Weaving a compelling narrative account of human ingenuity with excursions into cutting-edge science, Einstein’s Shadow is a tale of great minds on a mission to change the way we understand our universe - and our place in it.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the supplemental enhancement PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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By: Nathalia Holt
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Sync
- How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
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Engaging, but maybe better suited for non-audio
- By Ryan on 05-26-12
By: Steven Strogatz
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The Unknown Universe
- A New Exploration of Time, Space and Cosmology
- By: Stuart Clark
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency released a map of the afterglow of the big bang. Taking in 440 sextillion kilometers of space and 13.8 billion years of time, it is physically impossible to make a better map: We will never see the early universe in more detail. On the one hand, such a view is the apotheosis of modern cosmology; on the other, it threatens to undermine almost everything we hold cosmologically sacrosanct.
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Everything, Absolutely Everything!
- By Gillian on 03-09-17
By: Stuart Clark
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Einstein's Cosmos
- How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time: Great Discoveries
- By: Michio Kaku
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A dazzling tour of the universe as Einstein saw it. How did Albert Einstein come up with the theories that changed the way we look at the world? By thinking in pictures. Michio Kaku, leading theoretical physicist (a cofounder of string theory) and best-selling science storyteller, shows how Einstein used seemingly simple images to lead a revolution in science. With originality and expertise, Kaku uncovers the surprising beauty that lies at the heart of Einstein's cosmos
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Mix of science and the man
- By B. Ruple on 11-03-13
By: Michio Kaku
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The Age of Entanglement
- When Quantum Physics was Reborn
- By: Louisa Gilder
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliantly original and richly illuminating exploration of entanglement, the seemingly telepathic communication between two separated particles - one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics.
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Quite nice
- By Michael on 02-14-10
By: Louisa Gilder
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In the Shadow of the Moon
- A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969
- By: Francis French, Colin Burgess
- Narrated by: Gary L. Willprecht
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure.
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Interesting book for space afficionados
- By Leslie F. on 04-21-16
By: Francis French, and others
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About Time
- Cosmology, Time and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang
- By: Adam Frank
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Big Bang is all but dead, and we do not yet know what will replace it. Our universe's "beginning" is at an end. What does this have to do with us here on Earth? Our lives are about to be dramatically shaken again - as altered as they were with the invention of the clock, the steam engine, the railroad, the radio and the Internet.
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More fluff than science
- By Ivan the Reviewer on 04-15-13
By: Adam Frank
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The Idea Factory
- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
- By: Jon Gertner
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell Labs scientists introduced concepts that still propel many of today’s most exciting technologies.
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Great story -- horrible pauses
- By Rodney on 01-29-13
By: Jon Gertner
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How to Speak Science
- Gravity, Relativity, and Other Ideas That Were Crazy Until Proven Brilliant
- By: Bruce Benamran, Stephanie Delozier Strobel
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.
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Wowzers!
- By Ralph Temblador on 02-15-21
By: Bruce Benamran, and others
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Coming of Age in the Milky Way
- By: Timothy Ferris
- Narrated by: Timothy Ferris
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
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Humans have long sought to comprehend the enormities of cosmic space and time. Here, best selling science writer Timothy Ferris tells the story of that quest. He interweaves the majestic themes of astronomy, physics, religion, and philosophy with fresh and lasting portraits of the men and women who created what has been called our society's most precious treasure - its conception of the universe at large.
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Brief survey of discovery from Columbus to now
- By serine on 01-23-16
By: Timothy Ferris
What listeners say about Einstein's Shadow
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Philomath
- 11-12-18
The ever elusive black hole
The race to discover a Black Hole is a long, strenuous, very expensive and anything but assured venture.
This follows a group who are obsessed enough to prod into the unknown and how result oriented, and timeline dependent funding clashes with the trial and error approach of Cosmology, where nothing is assured except sleepless nights.
Finally when everything works, it’s still an ambiguous science where many theories can fit the results. Something is definitely there, but what is it?
A book about perseverance and passion, interesting for those Black Hole chasers but others need convincing. Recommended Cosmology read.
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- Brian Alegria
- 12-09-18
solid and insightful, but unfulfilling conclusion.
a whole book dedicated to a singular task finishes without any conclusions to that task. Went to print prematurely .
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- Gary
- 10-30-18
Science revealed beautifully
There is nothing more exciting than when science’s story is told in a manner such that it really happens with all of its warts, foibles, arcana and a ‘removing of the veil’ that had been obscuring our vision thus allowing us to see the universe in different way for the first time. This book does just that at a very easy to digest level and all readers will profit from reading it.
If only I had an antenna as big as the earth, then I could either see a donut on the moon, or the very big glob of nothing that resides in the center of our galaxy and this book documented how an antenna with the effective aperture the size of the earth came to be. Well, I’ve got news for you Neil and Buzz did not leave a donut on the moon, but the enormous ‘black hole’ that lies at the center of our galaxy about 26000 light years away is real and is well worth getting a picture of. I put ‘black hole’ in quotes only because this book points out that a lot of what we think we know about black holes might not be right and a picture is not only worth a thousand words, but in this case could be worth a Nobel prize.
The information paradox surrounding our understanding of black holes has not really been resolved. The two places where our understanding about the universe as a whole and the very small come together are at a black hole and the big bang. We model the universe as a whole with the General Theory and assume the world is continuous, and we model the sub-atomic with the Standard Model and assume the world is discrete and each Theory is good in their domain of applicability up until they meet at a black hole or the big bang. Mathematical constructs are one thing, but a picture can point us to deeper understanding and maybe the information paradox and whether the universe is continuous or discrete or neither or both can be resolved.
When the picture of the black hole does come (and I suspect it will be fairly soon), for those who have read this book they will be all the wiser for having had read this book and will understand just a little bit better what it means to do science and how science is always more complicated than what it seems, and that picture will be all the more beautiful because of the deeper understanding this book would have brought to the reader.
My only fault with this book is probably a positive for most people. While I thought the author brought together all the physics about black holes in an incredibly coherent way, I wish he had dwelt a little bit more with the mathematics and physics that go into making the effective aperture of the EHT antenna the size of the earth. I’ve seen the math years ago, but I can’t remember what is really going on in the photon collection process and how they are aggregated through the interferometer process.
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- Charles Noren
- 10-18-18
Gripping Story
This was published in 2018 after the initial black hole observation run in April of 2017, but before the results are made public. The Event Horizon Telescope is 7 or 8 specialized radio telescopes around the world organized to take a picture of the black hole in the center of our galaxy. It's a gripping story, years in that making, full of science and science politics. Politics because if successful, up to three people will win the Nobel physics from this. So there is lots of politics and maneuvering. The image was taken in April 2017, but it is taking a lot of time to process and correlate the image data to get a picture.
Loved the Audible book!
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