Sky and Telescope - August 2016 - 72

Book Review
S. N. Johnson-Roehr

Big Science, Small Science
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

Janna Levin
Alfred A. Knopf
256 pages, ISBN 9780307958198,
$26.95, hardcover

Black hole blues, Janna Levin's new book on
LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and the search for gravitational waves, builds on
a deep literature analyzing "big science" - big-facility
projects that employ large numbers of scientists and
staﬀ from various institutions, all supported by massive budgets. In its current state, LIGO epitomizes big
science: the detection of gravitational waves required
multiple teams at multiple institutions to develop
multiple instruments at multiple sites over multiple
decades. But as Levin shows, the early work in the ﬁeld
of gravitational waves resembled more closely "small science," with research conducted by individuals or small
teams bound to a single university or institution. In a
small science setting, the scientists functioned semiautonomously and so were able to respond to data and
ideas with as much or as little ﬂexibility as they saw ﬁt.
In Black Hole Blues, Levin documents LIGO's transformation from small to big, chronicling particularly
well the growing pains during its development from a
few ideas at individual labs to one of the largest projects
ever funded by the National Science Foundation. She
tells LIGO's story through biography and anecdotes,
many of which were related to her during interviews
with several of the primary actors from the project's
early years. These include Rainier Weiss and Kip
Thorne, two of the three physicists referred to as LIGO's
troika (as explained late in the book, out of necessity
Levin relies on an oral history recorded in 1997 for most
of her discussion of the third physicist in the troika, Ron
Drever). Personality as much as practicality shaped the
founding years of LIGO, and as the search for gravitational waves stretched over years and even decades,
succeeding generations of scientists and administrators
inherited a project formed by the competing approaches
of these three physicists.
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August 2016 sky & telescope

While descriptions of
the work at and the
facilities of LIGO are
scattered throughout
the book, most of the
chapters in Black Hole
Blues are framed around
individual voices -
those of Weiss, Thorne,
and Drever, but also of
physicist Joe Weber and
astronomer Jocelyn Bell
Burnell, as well as LIGO
administrator Rochus
"Robbie" Vogt. Levin
is at her best when she
comes closest to ethnography. The ideas and motivations
of the troika and collaborators ring through distinctly,
despite her mediating prose. In fact, as I read, I found
myself becoming more invested in the lives of the
individual actors than in the project itself. Admittedly, I
knew going in that Advanced LIGO (a series of upgrades
moved LIGO's instruments from "initial" to "advanced"
via an "enhanced" state) had successfully detected gravitational waves on September 14, 2015. I was much less
sure about the outcome for the people who started the
project, however. As it turns out, I had good cause to be
worried about a few of the book's protagonists.
Black Hole Blues should appeal to anyone interested
in the workings of big science, whatever the ﬁeld -
physics, astronomy, molecular biology. The workings
of these massive research projects, the balancing of
demands made by the various stakeholders, from scientists to adminstrators, are not often seen by the public,
simply because it's hard to get a bird's-eye view of such
large endeavors. While there are better and deeper explanations of gravitational waves already written, Levin
gives her readers a satisfying look at how big science
starts, develops, and - in the end - succeeds. ✦
Observing Editor S. N. Johnson-Roehr divides her time
between staring at the sky and staring at the pages of a book.

Sky and Telescope - August 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - August 2016