A Crack in Everything

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, its gravity intensifying to the point of collapse.

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. 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.

In A Crack in Everything, award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown - author of the bestselling Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You - reconstructs this extraordinary journey, a triumph of scientific theory and physical observation. Featuring in-depth interviews with key scientists at the forefront of mind-bending research, this is a compelling and brilliant work of popular science, with all of Chown's trademark lightness of touch, wit and enthusiasm.