Books on black holes?

[moonjelly<3]

Does anyone have any recommendations for books or articles on black holes? I'd really love some ideas, thanx guys

[ajb]

Wald, General Relativity comes well recommended.

[DrRocket]

Does anyone have any recommendations for books or articles on black holes? I'd really love some ideas, thanx guys

 

The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes -- S. Chandrasekhar

 

Gravitation -- Misner, Thorne, Wheeler

 

For populatizations, Black Holes and Time Warps, Einstein's Outrageous Legacy -- Kip Thorne

Edited March 9, 2012 by DrRocket

[elfmotat]

Wald, General Relativity comes well recommended.

 

Yes, but it won't be of much use unless you're already somewhat familiar with GR. If you want a good intro without any complicated math, I think Taylor and Wheeler's Exploring Black Holes will probably be what you're looking for. It would help if you were familiar with special relativity, namely the invariant interval.

[DrRocket]

Yes, but it won't be of much use unless you're already somewhat familiar with GR. If you want a good intro without any complicated math, I think Taylor and Wheeler's Exploring Black Holes will probably be what you're looking for. It would help if you were familiar with special relativity, namely the invariant interval.

 

Excellent recommendation.

[Bill Angel]

A recent book (published in 2010) with an excellent discussion of black holes is "once before time: a whole story of the universe" by martin bojowald. The author is a theoretical physicist, but the book is aimed at a broader audience.

[SRHBRU]

Well, begin by reading some of Einstein's work since I believe he was the first to propose black holes.

 

Also, here are some books on black holes that I found on Amazon which got high ratings.

 

1) http://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763

 

2) http://www.amazon.com/Death-Black-Hole-Cosmic-Quandaries/dp/0393330168/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337935307&sr=1-1

[Spyman]

Well, begin by reading some of Einstein's work since I believe he was the first to propose black holes.

No, AFAIK, Albert Einstein developed the theory of general relativity but he himself first thought that black holes could not form.

 

Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius. This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects, and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Formation_and_evolution

(Bolding by me.)

Edited May 25, 2012 by Spyman