Award-winning University of Oxford researcher Dr Becky Smethurst charts five hundred years of scientific breakthroughs in astronomy and astrophysics.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACK HOLES
by Becky Smethurst
Macmillan UK, September 2022
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Right now, you are orbiting a black hole.

The Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole, the strangest and most misunderstood phenomenon in the galaxy.

In this cosmic tale of discovery, Dr Becky Smethurst takes us from the earliest observations of the universe and the collapse of massive stars, to the iconic first photographs of a black hole and her own published findings.

She explains why black holes aren’t really ‘black’, that you never ever want to be ‘spaghettified’, how black holes are more like sofa cushions than hoovers and why, beyond the event horizon, the future is a direction in space rather than in time.

Told with humour and wisdom, this captivating book describes the secrets behind the most profound questions about our universe – all hidden inside black holes.

Becky Smethurst is based at the University of Oxford, where her specialism is in how galaxies evolve together with their supermassive black holes. In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Research Fellowship. Her YouTube channel, Dr Becky, has over 750,000 subscribers and engages 2 million viewers each month with her videos on weird objects in space, the history of science and monthly recaps of space news. She also has 128k followers on Instagram and 40k on TikTok.