His work on black hole thermodynamics and the concept of Hawking radiation revolutionized our understanding of these cosmic entities. They have blazed a clear trail into forbidding territory, from the mathematical structure of space-time all the way to atom bombs, astrophysics and the origin of mass. It’s a great overview of “black-hole-history”, starting with theoretical black holes, the discovery and properties of real ones, and further speculation, including what it means for our worldview. It’s a nice book, even though it really lacked the explanatory power of “ The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen”, which I loved. When you say bits of information, I usually think of bits that are used in terms of computer science to describe a zero or a one that encodes information.

And, I didn't expect that I would learn the Penrose diagram to understand the infinities of spacetime. Highly recommended for educated readers who can kepe up with a little hard science that hasn't been overly diluted for general consumption. Obviously I know Cox is a great science communicator and his previous books with Forshaw have been really well received. Of all the many scientific marvels occurring in our universe, perhaps none have been more consistently intriguing and mysterious than black holes.At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole 4 million times more massive than our Sun.

Meanwhile a person crossing the black hole event horizon would feel nothing out of ordinary (except for being spaghettified), but the spacetime is stretched out so much that the outside observer would never see the infalling person cross the event horizon, so the information about them would rest on the surface? Whether on stage, television or in a podcast, Brian Cox is one of the most approachable science popularisers alive today. In short, I really liked this book, but wished it had more thorough explanations, and maybe a clearer differentiation of purely theoretical from “verified”, but that might be the noob in me talking.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think that this book is only for the space-ey academics; anyone can enjoy it too.