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  • Breakthrough

  • Spectacular Stories of Scientific Discovery from the Higgs Particle to Black Holes
  • By: Marcus Chown
  • Narrated by: Marcus Chown
  • Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (10 ratings)
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Breakthrough cover art

Breakthrough

By: Marcus Chown
Narrated by: Marcus Chown
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Summary

The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal science's astonishing predictive power.

Breakthrough takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the eureka! moments of modern physics. Charting the spellbinding stories of the scientists who predicted and discovered the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles and even antimatter, Marcus Chown reveals science's greatest mystery: its astonishing predictive power.

Breakthrough was previously published in 2020 in hardback under the title The Magicians.
©2021 Marcus Chown (P)2021 Faber Audio
Physics
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Critic reviews

"An excellent popular science book." (Dara Ó Briain)

"A thoroughly informative and entertaining read." (Anna Burns, Booker Prize-winning author of Milkman)

"One of the best-written books about phsyics I have ever come across." (Popular Science) 

What listeners say about Breakthrough

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Profile Image for Sarah Sparrow

Good story but author reading was a mistake

Good solid book but gee wiz the author could have spiced up the narration a little more.

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Profile Image for callum walker

incredible

I have read probably 20 or so popular physics books and this was by far my favourite. The mixture of genius and fortuity in the stories that led to discoveries is really interesting, and the explanation on quantum field theory was for the first time understood by me. I'm still a bit stuck on symmetry and local gauge in variance though...

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