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These videos chronicle the collision of a neutron star collision captured by LIGO after this book was already completed. It is worth watching when reading this book.






Tonight I was reading chapter 11 of this book at Panera while eating my salad. Govert Schilling was discussing the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015. I remember hearing the rumors and then watching the feed as they announced they had indeed found gravitational waves-- thus proving the existence of black holes and confirming Einstein's predictions 100 years before. I cried back then from the sheer of awe of it and spent the next two days making up stupid nerdy memes about LIGO. I couldn't help it. I was obsessed. I could not help tearing up again in Panera while I ate my salad and sipped my tea. Any passerby would have thought I was engrossed in a tragic novel, but I was engrossed in the most amazing story imaginable: It was the story of how humans being found a way to communicate with black holes! Freaking black holes! That is AMAZING. I marvel at it each time I think about it. Schilling went into detail about what it took for the many, many humans to achieve this seemingly impossible goal. He was slightly long winded when doing so, but do yourself a favor and read every word of it. Imagine what it took to make the waves of a black hole (or neutron star) shoot into a thin beam that then had to crash into another wave that had also been converted into a thin beam. I mean, wow! Human beings figured this out. And for their efforts, the reward was colossal. I am in a state of complete awe and took as long as I possibly could to finish this book, savoring it, reading pages over and over, imagining myself floating in space, imagining the inner workings of a universe that is vast, mysterious, complicated, and honestly the most incredible thing I can think of to learn about.

It would be hard to put into words how happy I am this book came along. I was so desperate for a book about LIGO ever since the first discoveries, I even read Janna Levin Black Hole Blues, despite the fact that reading her first book made me never want to read another book of hers again. It was a huge disappointment. But then this came along. I cannot say that every page was filled with magic. There were times I felt Schillings explanations could have been a bit shorter and more to the point, but when he excelled, he really excelled. The format was beautiful. Schilling led the reader through LIGO's discoveries while taking time, at each step, to teach the reader about the basics of how the universe works. He infused awe into each and every explanation of star formation, fusion, planet formation, black hole dynamics, star death, the economy of stars in relation to their size, what different waves mean depending on the size of the star or black hole, etc. It was a symphony of epic proportion, weaving in an out of the larger story of LIGO's detection of gravitational waves (what he calls Einstein Waves).

After explaining how the universe works and what we know so far from the efforts made by those at LIGO and other centers, Shcilling looked at what is next? His discussion about the future of studying gravitational waves was not as exciting as the first part of the book, but it was still extremely informative. He discussed LISA, which will measure gravitational waves in space, as well as the different types of astronomy that have allowed and continue to allow us to see and map the universe.

He ended by reminding the reader that the only way black holes can communicate with us, based on the tools we have available, is through their gravitational waves. This author hopes they communicate a lot in the future, including letting us detect the actual gravitational waves that occurred at the Big Bang, and so do I!