Reality-Bending Black Holes (March 2007)
Special Editions

Cover; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Letter from the Editor; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Mariette DiChristina; 1 Page(s)

Drawn to the Abyss

Table of Contents; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

The Reluctant Father of Black Holes; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Jeremy Bernstein; 8 Page(s)

Albert Einstein's equations of gravity are the foundation of the modern view of black holes; ironically, he used the equations in trying to prove that these objects cannot exist

An Echo of Black Holes; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Theodore A. Jacobson and Renaud Parentani; 8 Page(s)

Sound waves in a fluid behave uncannily like light waves in space. Black holes even have acoustic counterparts. Could spacetime literally be a kind of fluid, like the ether of pre-Einsteinian physics?

Quantum Black Holes; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Bernard J. Carr and Steven B. Giddings; 8 Page(s)

Physicists could soon be creating black holes in the laboratory

How to Build a Time Machine; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Paul Davies; 6 Page(s)

It wouldn't be easy, but it might be possible

The Brightest Explosions in the Universe; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Neil Gehrels, Luigi Piro and Peter J. T. Leonard; 8 Page(s)

Every time a gamma-ray burst goes off, a black hole is born

The Galactic Odd Couple; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Kimberly Weaver; 8 Page(s)

Why do giant black holes and stellar baby booms, two phenomena with little in common, so often go together?

Colossal Galactic Explosions; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Sylvain Veilleux, Gerald Cecil and Joss Bland-Hawthorn; 8 Page(s)

Enormous outpourings of gas from the centers of nearby galaxies may ultimately help explain both star formation and the intergalactic medium

The Midlife Crisis of the Cosmos; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Amy J. Barger; 8 Page(s)

Although it is not as active as it used to be, the universe is still forming stars and building black holes at an impressive pace

Information in the Holographic Universe; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Jacob D. Bekenstein; 8 Page(s)

Theoretical results about black holes suggest that the universe could be like a gigantic hologram

The Illusion of Gravity; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Juan Maldacena; 8 Page(s)

The force of gravity and one of the dimensions of space might be generated out of the peculiar interactions of particles and fields existing in a lower-dimensional realm

Black Hole Computers; Reality-Bending Black Holes; by Seth Lloyd and Y. Jack Ng; 10 Page(s)

In keeping with the spirit of the age, researchers can think of the laws of physics as computer programs and the universe as a computer