Abstract
Just 3 weeks after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and only steps away from Dealey Plaza, some 300 scientists gathered from around the world to be welcomed by the recuperating Texas Governor, John Connally, to the first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. That is how Marcia Bartusiak dramatically and most effectively introduces the setting for what she calls “the great convergence” (p. 124) when general relativity and astrophysics became indelibly linked. Not only does she follow the progress of the many symposia in the following years but she also helps me understand how they came to be, and in Dallas, of all places. This is but one example among many that makes this book really stand out. Indeed, I had been slightly put off by the title when I first received it, but I soon became a convert. Indeed, she has convinced me that black holes are a concept very hard to swallow. I was reminded more than once of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s insightful remark relating to her discovery of the composition of the solar atmosphere: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Specialist readers of the Journal for the History of Astronomy (JHA) will find in this book, written for a far larger audience, many familiar recountings of the processes through which astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians dealt with the extreme limits of reality, from John Michell’s imagining of the very concept of a black hole to the construction of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). Written and published on the eve of LIGO’s first detections, and without benefit of its many revelations, readers will still find lucid discussions of what an observer at LIGO might “hear” as two black holes collide, and cautionary remarks like searches for polarization in the Big Bang’s remnant radiation might well be confused by dust in our galaxy.
The big question for me, one I imagine shared by readers of the JHA, is how much history is required to get across a point in popular pedagogy. And when is there too much, in terms of complexity? I think Bartusiak has found a good balance. She provides enough detail to convince me that there were, and are, formidable psychological hurdles in the process of alignment and consolidation. In addition, she outlines that process beautifully with copious quotations and insights from a bevvy of historians ranging from Michael Hoskin to David Kaiser to Jean Eisenstaedt, Woody Sullivan, and Barbara Welther. Of course, it is always difficult to know where to draw the line. I was curious not to find Ole Roemer or Albert Michelson included in her otherwise excellent discussion of the speed of light. The finite speed of light certainly bears on the story, as does the question of the existence of an ether. Otherwise, Bartusiak’s vivid depictions of the many instances where, how, and why theory and observation interacted over time to build up the present picture is more than welcomed. My only gripe is the endnote system ubiquitous in popular works. At least the citations are there!