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Black Holes cover art

Black Holes

By: Professor Brian Cox, Professor Jeff Forshaw
Narrated by: Professor Jeff Forshaw
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Summary

A Brief History of Time for the 21st Century

At the heart of our galaxy lies a monster so deadly, not even light can escape its grasp. Its secrets lie waiting to be discovered. It’s time to explore our universe’s most mysterious inhabitants:

Black Holes

At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole 4 million times more massive than our Sun. A place where space and time are so warped that light is trapped if it ventures within 12 million km. According to Einstein, inside lies the end of time. According to 21st-century physics, the reality may be far more bizarre.

Black holes lie where the most massive stars used to shine and at the edge of our current understanding. They are naturally occurring objects, the inevitable creations of gravity when too much matter collapses into not enough space. And yet, although the laws of nature predict them, they fail fully to describe them.

Black holes are places in space and time where the laws of gravity, quantum physics and thermodynamics collide. Originally thought to be so intellectually troubling that they simply could not exist, it is only in the past few years that we have begun to glimpse a new synthesis; a deep connection between gravity and quantum information theory that describes a holographic universe in which space and time emerge from a network of quantum bits, and wormholes span the void.

In this groundbreaking book, Professor Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw take you to the edge of our understanding of black holes; a scientific journey to the research frontier spanning a century of physics, from Einstein to Hawking and beyond, that ends with the startling conclusion that our world may operate like a giant quantum computer.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"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." (The New Scientist)

"Inspirational." (Buzz Aldrin)

What listeners say about Black Holes

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Doesn't work as an audiobook

Doesn't work as an audiobook. Diagrams are used to explain the, often difficult, concepts and they are referenced a lot, so would only work as a text book .

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Doesn’t work if you’re on the move …

If you enjoy your audio books in the car as I do..this title is a complete waste of time and money. With so many references to the diagrams to help explain the concepts in the accompanying PDF. Very disappointing.

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3 people found this helpful

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fascinating but relies heavily on diagrams

I think this may be one of those audiobooks that just doesn't quite work in the format. of course there is a PDF included with the audiobook, containing all the diagrams that are referenced in the body of the text... but I was hoping I could listen without constantly referring to the diagrams.

I think the physical copy of this book would work far, far better

with that out of the way, I should say that the content in this book is fascinating. I felt like I followed most of it until the quantum stuff at the end :-) but it really was very intriguing and felt very up-to-date, with the most recent papers being cited from 2019

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really not suited to audio book

While its well read and quite well structured it does not suit being an audio book at all. There are hours of rambling descriptions of abstract diagrams that you can't see so have no way of understanding. Although it has an attached pdf most people I think are listening on audio because they don't want to or can't look at text. for me this book was a waste of time really in audio, much more suited to text. Also a lot of the examples e.g. cricket balls flying through the air from a tomahawk aeroplane interspersed with complex formulae aren't very helpful.

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3 people found this helpful

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Space is awesome including the non-existent partic

Black Holes by @ProfBrianCox & Jeff Forshaw. A wonderfully and explosively 💥 dynamic book 🔭. It will grab you by the tail and shake the unofficiated members of the scientific community awake. This is a beautiful deep-dive into the world of the ultra unknown📚 5/5🌟#bookreview

Follow me on Twitter for more awesome reviews @Zennyreadsalot

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Mine opened

Baffling Brilliant Beautiful! This book is a masterpiece of modern science and thinking a must for all science fans

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Forgot my physics papers whilst listening in the bath

As others have suggested, you need to have good access to the PDF to stand a chance with this one if you’re a lay man. Of course, this may not be the intended audience but with Prof Brian Cox on the cover you assume it’s going to be pitched at a certain level of understanding like his TV work.

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A fascinating listen

I’ve been reading about the Big Bang, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics for many years. I’m only hampered by my lack of mathematical knowledge. This book, though mentally challenging, is incredibly well written and supported by diagrams that helped me to understand the underlying physics. I’ve been a fan of Brian Cox for many years and having Jeff Foreshaw reading the book made listening easy and very clear. I think this has been my most enjoyed audible book.

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Terrible

Narrated so quickly you need to be on high alert. Also does not work as audiobook as diagrams are continually used to explain concepts.

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Too much time spent discussing pdf

For too much of the narrative the accompanying pdf must be used and therefore this is a terrible audiobook.

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