Book description
We have long understood black holes to be the points at which the
universe as we know it comes to an end - mysterious chasms so
destructive and unforgiving that not even light can escape their
deadly power. Recent research, however, has led to a cascade of new
discoveries that have revealed an entirely new, and crucially
important, side to black holes. Super-sized versions, often billions
of times more massive than the Sun, lurk in every galaxy in the
universe. And these chasms don't just vacuum up everything around
them; they also spit out huge clouds of matter and energy. In
Gravity's Engines, renowned astrophysicist Caleb Scharf
reveals how these giant black holes profoundly rearrange the cosmos
that surrounds them, controlling the number of stars in the galaxies
and, in turn, the entire universe.
With lucidity and elegance, Scharf traces the two hundred year
history of our attempts to discover the nature of black holes, from an
English academic turned clergyman in the late 1700's who first
identified these 'dark stars' to Einstein and the great revolutions of
relativity and quantum mechanics. Engaging with our deepest questions
about our origins, he takes us on an intimate journey through our
endlessly colourful universe, revealing how the cosmic capacity for
life is ultimately governed by - and perhaps could not exist without -
black holes.
