Exploring Black Holes, Second Edition

Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler, and Edmund Bertschinger
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Spacetime Physics,
Second Edition

The classic introduction to special relativity, revised and re-imagined.

The first edition of Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity, authored by Oersted Medal winner Edwin Taylor and foremost relativist John Archibald Wheeler, offered a concise, directed examination of general relativity and black holes. Its goal was to provide tools that motivate students to become active participants in carrying out their own investigations about curved spacetime near Earth and black holes. To that end, the book used calculus and algebra, rather than tensors, to make general relativity accessible to second- and third-year students.

In this second edition -- labeled EBH2e -- coauthor Edmund Bertschinger joins Edwin F. Taylor to revise and expand the first edition. The text uses the properties of non-spinning and spinning black holes to introduce Albert Einstein's theory of curved spacetime and applies the resulting general relativity to the Universe around us.

There is no published hard copy textbook of EBH2e. Instead, you may freely download the online version through the links below for personal and class use. For full details, download the README file below.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Also available for full download on the Internet Archive.

"Everything important is,
at bottom, utterly simple."
John Archibald Wheeler

"The second edition of Exploring Black Holes is a remarkable achievement…there is really nothing else like it. Professors and students who would like a first look, or perhaps a different look, at the wonders of general relativity would do well to spend time with this wonderful gift."
American Journal of Physics

http://eftaylor.com/exploringblackholes
    name asc type size date description
download AAAAREADME180423v1.pdf pdf 147.2 KB 23-04-18 READ ME FIRST!
download AAAFrontCover171026.pdf pdf 583.3 KB 26-10-17 Front Cover
download AAFrontMatter170421v6.pdf pdf 181.3 KB 09-05-17 Front Matter
download AContents170511v1.pdf pdf 46.4 KB 11-05-17 Table of Contents
download Ch01Speeding200330v1.pdf pdf 604.4 KB 07-04-20 Chapter 1: Speeding
download Ch02BridgeSRtoGR170511v1.pdf pdf 742.6 KB 16-01-18 Chapter 2: The Bridge: SR to GR
download Ch03Curving170511v1.pdf pdf 1.3 MB 11-05-17 Chapter 3: Curving
download Ch04GlobalPositioningSystem160401v1.pdf pdf 326.1 KB 10-05-17 Chapter 4: The Global Positioning System (GPS)
download Ch05GlobalLocalMetrics200330v1.pdf pdf 518.1 KB 07-04-20 Chapter 5: Global and Local Metrics
download Ch06Diving200330v1.pdf pdf 528.1 KB 07-04-20 Chapter 6: Diving
download Ch07InsideTheBlackHole200331v1.pdf pdf 948.4 KB 07-04-20 Chapter 7: Inside the Black Hole
download Ch08CircularOrbits200331v1.pdf pdf 725.3 KB 07-04-20 Chapter 8: Circular Orbits
download Ch09Orbiting200331v1.pdf pdf 1.5 MB 07-04-20 Chapter 9: Orbiting
download Ch10AdvanceOfMercurysPerihelion200331v1.pdf pdf 420.6 KB 07-04-20 Chapter 10: Advance of Mercury's Perihelion
download Ch11OrbitsOfLight200331v1.pdf pdf 1.3 MB 07-04-20 Chapter 11: Orbits of Light
download Ch12DivingPanoramas190403v1.pdf pdf 1.2 MB 08-04-19 Chapter 12: Diving Panoramas
download Ch13GravitationalMirages160510v1.pdf pdf 941.3 KB 10-05-17 Chapter 13: Gravitational Mirages
download Ch14ExpandUniverse170331v1.pdf pdf 592.7 KB 12-05-17 Chapter 14: Expanding Universe
download Ch15Cosmology170510v1.pdf pdf 1.9 MB 10-05-17 Chapter 15: Cosmology
download Ch16GravWaves171018v1.pdf pdf 494.4 KB 18-10-17 Chapter 16: Gravitational Waves
download Ch17SpinBH200224v1.pdf pdf 944.4 KB 25-02-20 Chapter 17: Spinning Black Hole
download Ch18CircleOrbitsSpin170905v3.pdf pdf 2.2 MB 18-10-17 Chapter 18: Circular Orbits around the Spinning Black Hole
download Ch19OrbitingSpin180113v1.pdf pdf 1.7 MB 13-01-18 Chapter 19: Orbiting the Spinning Black Hole
download Ch20OrbitsOfLightAroundSpinningBH170906v1.pdf pdf 394.1 KB 06-09-17 Chapter 20: Orbits of Light around the Spinning Black Hole
download Ch21TravelThroughTheSpinningBH170831v1.pdf pdf 2.6 MB 29-11-17 Chapter 21: Leaving Our Universe
download VAppendixAWheelersRules170511v1.pdf pdf 332.3 KB 11-05-17 Appendix A: Wheeler's Rules of Writing
download WAppendGlossaryF171006v3.pdf pdf 92.3 KB 06-10-17 Appendix B: Glossary
download XAppendixCAcknowledge180303v1.pdf pdf 66.1 KB 03-03-18 Appendix C: Acknowledgments
download YInsideBackCover170421v4.pdf pdf 142.7 KB 10-05-17 Inside the Back Cover
download ZBackCoverEBH2e170517v1.pdf pdf 43.3 KB 17-05-17 Back Cover
download ZZErrata.pdf pdf 241.5 KB 09-08-23 Errata (updates and corrections)