BLACK HOLES

A new look at one of the universe’s most intriguing marvels.

Did gravitational waves, spilling from a black hole collision discovered in 2015, signal the opening of a wormhole through space and time? This is just one of many profound questions previously asked only in science-fiction movies and now studied in scientific circles as technology progresses. In their latest collaboration (Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos, The Quantum Universe, etc.), particle physicists Cox and Forshaw ask and answer many such questions. (Their answer to the above is a tantalizing “maybe.”) Black holes are the remains of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity. Until recently, they glowed “gently like faint coals in the cold sky,” so distant they existed only “at the edge of our current understanding.” In 1915, Einstein predicted their existence with the Theory of General Relativity, and the concept of “Hawking radiation” resolved an inaccurate view of them (that information disappears into them permanently, a belief challenged when physicist Stephen Hawking described black-hole radiation leaks). Are we close to an understanding? The authors think so. Inside black holes, principles of general relativity and quantum physics collide in such a way it is becoming clear we live in a “quantum universe.” Cox and Forshaw believe that quantum computers will help us solve the last mysteries of black holes in what will be “the ultimate vindication of research for research’s sake: two of the biggest problems in science and technology” turning out to be “intimately related. The challenge of building a quantum computer is very similar to the challenge of writing down the correct theory of quantum gravity.” One way or another, they write, black holes are helping us see the exhilarating extent to which we are “constantly discovering techniques that Nature has already exploited.”

A spellbinding cosmic exploration that resists collapsing under the weight of jargon.