Black Hole Survival Guide

A very short book for readers of Carlo Rovelli that explains the science of Black Holes by taking the reader on a journey inside one

What would happen if you fell into a black hole?

Black holes are the most extraordinary phenomenon in the universe, but they are a riddle that confounds our intuitions.

Anything that enters them can never escape, and yet they contain nothing at all. They are bigger on the inside than the outside suggests. They are dark on the outside but not on the inside. They invert time into space and space into time.

Black holes are found throughout the universe. They can be microscopic. They can be billions of times larger than our sun. Our solar system is currently orbiting a black hole 26,000 light years away at a speed of 200 km per second.

In Black Hole Survival Guide physicist and novelist Janna Levin takes you on a journey into a black hole, explaining what would happen to you in there and why. In the process you'll come to see how their mysteries contain answers to some of the most profound questions ever asked about the nature of our universe.

About the Author

Janna Levin Janna Levin is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University and Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works, a centre for art and innovation in Brooklyn.

She has contributed to the understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions and gravitational waves. She was the first scientist-in-residence at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing at Oxford University with an award from NESTA, and was a Guggenheim fellow.

Her previous books are How the Universe Got Its Spots, a novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, which won the PEN/Bingham prize, and Black Hole Blues, the first book to describe the detection of gravitational waves in 2016. She has also appeared at TED and contributes to numerous radio and television programmes.