The Warped Side of Our Universe

English language

Published Oct. 30, 2023 by Liveright Publishing Corporation.

ISBN:: 978-1-63149-854-1

(1 review)

Epic verse and pulsating paintings merge to shed light on time travel, black holes, gravitational waves and the birth of the universe.

Nearly two decades in the making, The Warped Side of Our Universe marks the historic collaboration of Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne and award-winning artist Lia Halloran. It brings to vivid life the wonders and wildness of our universe’s “Warped Side”—objects and phenomena made from warped space and time, from colliding black holes and collapsing wormholes to twisting space vortices and down-cascading time. Through poetic verse and otherworldly paintings, the authors explicate Thorne’s and colleagues’ astrophysical discoveries and speculations, with an epic narrative that How did the universe begin? Can anything travel backward in time? And what weird and marvelous phenomena inhabit the Warped Side? Featuring more than 100 paintings, including a soaring Stephen Hawking, this one-of-a-kind volume, with its multiple gatefolds, takes us on an Odyssean voyage into …

Epic verse and pulsating paintings merge to shed light on time travel, black holes, gravitational waves and the birth of the universe.

Nearly two decades in the making, The Warped Side of Our Universe marks the historic collaboration of Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne and award-winning artist Lia Halloran. It brings to vivid life the wonders and wildness of our universe’s “Warped Side”—objects and phenomena made from warped space and time, from colliding black holes and collapsing wormholes to twisting space vortices and down-cascading time. Through poetic verse and otherworldly paintings, the authors explicate Thorne’s and colleagues’ astrophysical discoveries and speculations, with an epic narrative that How did the universe begin? Can anything travel backward in time? And what weird and marvelous phenomena inhabit the Warped Side? Featuring more than 100 paintings, including a soaring Stephen Hawking, this one-of-a-kind volume, with its multiple gatefolds, takes us on an Odyssean voyage into and through the Warped Side of Our Universe.

2 editions

Soh Kam Yung reviewed The Warped Side of Our Universe by Lia Halloran

What we currently know about black holes and warped space, simplified and illustrated.

4 stars

A fascinating layman's level approach to explaining about black holes, time warps and warped space. Kip Thorne summarizes much of what he and other researchers now know (and don't know) about them, while also indulging in some speculative thought experiments about the consequences such objects would have in our universe.

But speculation remains speculation, unless there is a way to gather objective evidence about it. Here, Thorne talks about his work in getting the massive LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) up and running, and detecting the gravity waves generated when black holes and other massive celestial objects collide and merge. He also talks about plans for even more massive gravitational wave detectors and can detect the signatures of supermassive black holes and maybe even the gravitational waves generated during the first moments of the Big Bang.

Along with the text are illustrations by Lia Halloran that help put down in …

A fascinating layman's level approach to explaining about black holes, time warps and warped space. Kip Thorne summarizes much of what he and other researchers now know (and don't know) about them, while also indulging in some speculative thought experiments about the consequences such objects would have in our universe.

But speculation remains speculation, unless there is a way to gather objective evidence about it. Here, Thorne talks about his work in getting the massive LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) up and running, and detecting the gravity waves generated when black holes and other massive celestial objects collide and merge. He also talks about plans for even more massive gravitational wave detectors and can detect the signatures of supermassive black holes and maybe even the gravitational waves generated during the first moments of the Big Bang.

Along with the text are illustrations by Lia Halloran that help put down in images what Thorne is saying.

This is a short but deeply descriptive book about the nature of black holes and warped space that contains up-to-date information about what is currently known about them.