![]() ![]() Hawking’s book has two chapters devoted to black holes, surely the most enigmatic structures to be found in our universe. The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, by Brian Greene (2003) Today the black-hole information-loss paradox remains unresolved - but if you want to get caught up on the profound havoc that Hawking’s brilliant discovery wrought, this is the book to read. Before inventing string theory, Susskind worked as a plumber in the Bronx, which perhaps explains the rare combination of soaring genius and down-to-earth cool that pervades his prose. “The Black Hole War” chronicles the decadeslong battle between these intellectual giants, in the process explaining some of the deepest ideas in theoretical physics. ![]() Susskind, himself a physicist, put his money on its somehow sticking around. For years, Hawking stubbornly insisted that information had to be lost in black holes. Hawking’s discovery that black holes radiate their mass away, eventually disappearing from the universe, left physicists agonizing over a deceptively innocent question: What happens to the information about everything that fell in? If it vanishes into thin air, that violates quantum mechanics. The rightful heir to “A Brief History of Time,” this book picks up where Hawking’s left off: at the edge of a black hole. ![]()
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