A Crack in Everything - by Marcus Chown (Hardcover)

About the Book

The fascinating story of how we discovered black holes, the scientific enigma that could unlock the answers to mankind's most profound questions about the universe.

Book Synopsis

What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind's most enduring questions may lie in science's greatest enigma: black holes.

A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life. Unable to generate enough heat to maintain its outer layers, it shrinks catastrophically down to an infinitely dense point.

When this phenomenon was first proposed in 1916, it defied scientific understanding so much that Albert Einstein dismissed it as too ridiculous to be true. But scientists have since proven otherwise. In 1971, Paul Murdin and Louise Webster discovered the first black hole: Cygnus X-1. Later, in the 1990s, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found that not only do black holes exist, supermassive black holes lie at the heart of almost every galaxy, including our own. It would take another three decades to confirm this phenomenon. On 10 April 2019, a team of astronomers made history by producing the first image of a black hole.

A Crack in Everything is the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage. As a journalist, Marcus Chown interviews many of the scientists who made the key discoveries, and, as a former physicist, he translates the most esoteric of science into everyday language. The result is a uniquely engaging page-turner that tells one of the great untold stories in modern science.

Review Quotes

"[An] engaging, briskly paced account of how scientists came - relatively recently, and sometimes reluctantly - to concede that [black holes] exist." --The Times

"[FIVE STARS] A gripping read" --BBC Sky at Night magazine

"PRAISE FOR MARCUS CHOWN:

'Marcus Chown rocks!' - Brian May, Queen
'Finest cosmology writer of our day' - Matt Ridley
'Chown writes as if he were addressing his fellow human beings.' - New Scientist
'Of all the top-rank science writers, he has the most friendly style, making complex science as simple and approachable as possible.'" --Brian Clegg

"Chown's writing is downright poetic... Chown brings the heroes of physics past alive...By the time you finish "A Crack in Everything" you will see black holes for what they really are: vibrant, spinning hearts around which star matter whirls, coaxing the growth of galaxies and forming a path for the emergence of planets, even life itself." --New York Times

About the Author

Marcus Chown is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, his non-fiction books include Breakthrough, What a Wonderful World, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and The Ascent of Gravity, which was The Sunday Times Book of the Year. His fiction includes Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil. Chown also launched the Solar System for iPad app, which won The Bookseller Digital Innovation of the Year.