Black hole survival guide by Janna Levin

Introduction

Janna Levin’s latest book, black hole survival guide, has an ironic title since you cannot survive a black hole. However, her book is a beautifully illustrated guide on everything you need to know about black holes.
She begins the guide with an introduction to herself, about her childhood and growing up loving science. In it, she talks about scientific stereotypes: how scientists aren’t creative and memorize equations. However, that isn’t how science works. It requires a whole bunch of creativity, and it requires you to know some equations too. Science is a place where you explore new ideas and forge new theories to explain the beautiful world around us. It helps us see who we are and how we fit in the universe’s picture. As she stumbled onto the path of a scientist, she realized all these things. She became an amazing scientist today, discovering the secrets of black holes.

Gravity, space and time

In her following chapters, she talks about the constituents of a black hole: gravity, space, and time. In the book, you’ll discover that gravity is not what it seems and that free fall is a weird twist in nature. You’ll also learn that space is a vast place, where matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move. Meanwhile, time is trickier to comprehend, with its delusions and changes depending on gravity. These things interconnect together like the ingredients of a good soup: without one, it wouldn’t be perfect.

Black holes

After clearing up common misconceptions and altering world views, she discusses black holes, and in turn, nothingness. First, she describes black holes as nothing, which they at their cores are. However, they turn out to be just a little more than nothing. They offer universe-shaking facts and almost ruin all of physics because of one simple value: information.

We have talked about information and black holes before on the blog and channel. In the book, she talks about holography and how the entire universe might be a simulation due to the information paradox. The hologram principle is that the universe might be a simulation if black holes stores information in 2D form on their 3D surfaces. Imagine being a simulation for a second. Everything you ever did, think, thought, or anything humanity or any civilization in the universe has done isn’t real. It is all part of some master beings plan or a videogame their children play.

But, she gives some comfort to the reader: science has come a long way. We will have a way of finding out the truth, and we will solve the information paradox. Just give it time. She was right, with it being partially solved today. You can check out my video or post on how that works.

Endings

Black hole survival guide by Janna Levin was a fantastic small read, being intellectually stimulating and easy to read. Her writing is clear and decisive, with no uncertainty in her knowledge or facts. She shares world-shaking views with a clear and unwavering voice and is very direct with them. I admire this quality. After all, we have to accept direct statements and not soften them because we don’t want to be dramatic. Science is dramatic. And so is nature.

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