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The Black Hole War

My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

This is the inside account of the battle over the true nature of black holes—with nothing less than our understanding of the entire universe at stake.

What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed that it did—and in doing so, put at risk everything we know about the fundamental laws of the universe. Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft realized the threat and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics.

The Black Hole War is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's theories of black holes with their own sense of reality, an effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong and Susskind and 't Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space. A brilliant book about the deepest mysteries of modern physics, The Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Susskind's book melds memoir, reportage, and cutting-edge science to tell how a disagreement between him and Stephen Hawking, among others, about a seemingly minor topic--the permanent loss of "information" in black holes--revealed a contradiction in theoretical physics that would be resolved only after several breakthroughs. In a remarkably skilled reading, Ray Porter goes beyond Susskind's mostly deft, engaging, and (reasonably) comprehensible writing to add energy and nuance to passages that could have been dry, and to render the sometimes VERY challenging material with admirable clarity. Porter adds proper--even illuminating--emphasis and intonation to passages a layman could hardly be expected to understand, never mind express correctly. This is a resourceful, intelligent reading of a fine book. W.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 19, 2008
      Bets made over a beer between scientists rarely make the headlines, but in 2004 Stephen Hawking conceded that he'd lost a bet and that a view he had held for 30 years was wrong. According to Stanford physicist Susskind (The Cosmic Landscape
      ), one of the leaders of the anti-Hawking camp, the argument was a simple one: if information falls into a black hole, is it lost forever? Hawking's theory that information is destroyed undermined everything scientists thought they knew about quantum physics. Susskind gives readers a course in black holes, quantum physics and string theory as he explains his belief that information cannot be destroyed. Along the way he introduces bizarre theories like the Holographic Principle (which he helped develop), claiming that the third dimension is an illusion and that energy and matter are just forms of information. Susskind also profiles two hot-shot South American physicists who helped deliver the coup de grace to Hawking's argument. Black hole and Hawking fans should go for this book, even if the great physicist was wrong. B&w illus.

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  • English

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