Over the summer, I had the incredible privilege of meeting Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. I, along with my fellow Fellows of the Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship program, had a private seminar at the planetarium in his conference room. Before this meeting, I bought his book Death By Black Hole and took the opportunity to get it signed.

I began reading it during this winter break and have just completed it. It was a fun and enlightening read overall. The format of the book is mostly a collection of previous essays that Dr. Tyson has written and it is divided into chapters accordingly. Therefore, I found the transitions between each chapter a bit rough and sudden. I felt better bridges could have been built between the chapters, illustrating how the ideas/concepts discussed in one lead or relate to the next.

The other major question I had throughout was why he titled the book Death By Black Hole, as only one chapter covers this morbid, yet incredibly fascinating phenomenon. The book is primarily a discussion of astrophysics and the important events in history that lead to the development of the field, along with mentions of other scientific fields as well. My first impression by looking at the title was that the book would be an in-depth qualitative discussion of black holes.

Aside from those two concerns, I found the rest of his book informative and fun to read. Dr. Tyson certainly covers a wide range of important developments in science as well as cosmic phenomenons. A passage I enjoyed concerned Tyson’s thoughts on America’s declining role as a major leader in scientific research. He discusses the project that was canceled by Congress, known as the Super Conducting Super Collider (I would call it (SC)^2). The SC^2 was to be the most powerful particle accelerator ever created that would enable scientists to replicate the early conditions of the Big Bang, and perhaps understand how and why the universe came to be what it is, and not assume some other configuration. Tyson writes:

But in 1993, when cost overruns looked intractable, a fiscally frustrated Congress permanently withdrew funds for the $11 billion project. It probably never occurred to our elected representatives that by canceling the Super Collider they surrendered America’s primacy in experimental particle physics.

If you want to see the next frontier, hop a plane to Europe, which seized the opportunity to build the world’s largest particle accelerator and stake a claim of its own on the landscape of cosmic knowledge. Known as the Large Hadron Collider, the accelerator will be run by the European Center for Particle Physics. Although some U.S. physicists are collaborators, America as a nation will watch the effort from afar, just as so many nations have done before.

With the exception of the rather bleak but realistic outlook of this passage, Tyson’s enthusiasm and love of the cosmos is evident throughout the book. His pedagogical nature and at times humorous writing style will provide readers a basic understanding of the universe in a laymen fashion.