Black Holes

The Key to Understanding the Universe

Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw

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English

HARPER360
25 October 2022

Mathematics & Sciences; Cosmology & the universe; Astrophysics; Popular astronomy & space

A brilliant exploration of the most exotic objects in the universe by Professor Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw.

At the heart of the Milky Way, there is a distortion in the fabric of the Universe. Caused by something 4 million times bigger than our Sun, it is where space and time are so warped that everything within 12 million kilometres is trapped, even light. This region of no return is called the event horizon, and inside it lies the end of time as we know it. We have named it Sagittarius A
* and it is a supermassive black hole.

Black holes lie where the most massive stars used to shine and at the edge of our current understanding. They are the inevitable creations of gravity, when too much matter collapses into not enough space. And yet, although the laws of nature predict them, they fail to fully describe them. The wonderful thing about the ever-increasing number of black holes we have discovered dotted across the Universe is that each one is an experiment conducted by nature that we cannot explain. This means we are missing something deep.

Black holes are places in space and time where the laws of gravity, quantum physics and thermodynamics collide. Originally thought to be so intellectually troubling that they simply could not exist, it is only in the past few years that we have begun to glimpse a new synthesis; a deep connection between gravity and quantum information theory that describes a holographic universe in which space and time emerge from a network of quantum bits, and wormholes span the void.

In this groundbreaking book, Professor Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw take you to the edge of our understanding of black holes; a scientific journey to the research frontier spanning a century of physics, from Einstein to Hawking and beyond, which ends with the startling conclusion that our world may operate like a giant quantum computer.

By: Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
Imprint: HARPER360
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 389g
ISBN: 9780733340444
ISBN 10: 073334044X
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 25 October 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Professor Brian Cox OBE is a particle physicist, a Royal Society research fellow, a professor at the University of Manchester as well as researcher on the ATLAS experiment on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. He is best known as a science broadcaster and presenter of the popular BBC Wonders trilogy, Human Universe, Forces of Nature and Stargazing Live. Professor Jeff Forshaw is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Manchester, specialising in the physics of elementary particles. He has been awarded the Institute of Physics' Maxwell Medal for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics, and its Kelvin Medal for helping the general public understand complex ideas in physics.