Death by Black Hole

What comes across with immediacy is how much fun Tyson, director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium, finds in astronomy and how much he wants listeners to enjoy it, too. Narrator Dion Graham captures the astronomer's excited, sometimes ironic, tone to perfection. Tyson's commentary runs the gamut--from pointing out errors in the science of his favorite sci-fi movies to describing the grisly details of what would happen to a person who fell into a black hole. The production is great for the nonscientist who likes to stay up-to-date with what's going on in astronomy. The combination of a passionate scientist who entertains and a narrator who completely captures the author's style and intent is powerfully enjoyable. D.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

October 16, 2006
What would it feel like if your spaceship were to venture too close to the black hole lurking at the center of the Milky Way? According to astrophysicist Tyson, director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium, size does matter when it comes to black holes, although the chances of your surviving the encounter aren't good in any case. Tyson takes readers on an exciting journey from Earth's hot springs, where extremophiles flourish in hellish conditions, to the frozen, desolate stretches of the Oort Cloud and the universe's farthest reaches, in both space and time. Tyson doesn't restrict his musings to astrophysics, but wanders into related fields like relativity and particle physics, which he explains just as clearly as he does Lagrangian points, where we someday may park interplanetary filling stations. He tackles popular myths (is the sun yellow?) and takes movie directors—most notably James Cameron—to task for spectacular goofs. In the last section the author gives his take on the hot subject of intelligent design. Readers of Natural History
magazine will be familiar with many of the 42 essays collected here, while newcomers will profit from Tyson's witty and entertaining description of being pulled apart atom by atom into a black hole, and other, closer-to-earth, and cheerier, topics. 9 illus.