A Crack in Everything
How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 Months Free
£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Offer ends on 15 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
A Crack in Everything
Narrated by:
Clive Mantle
Buy Now for £14.60
-
Narrated by:
-
Clive Mantle
-
By:
-
Marcus Chown
What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind’s most enduring questions may lie in science’s greatest enigma: black holes.
A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life. Unable to generate enough heat to maintain its outer layers, it shrinks catastrophically down to an infinitely dense point.
When this phenomenon was first proposed in 1916, it defied scientific understanding so much that Albert Einstein dismissed it as too ridiculous to be true. But scientists have since proven otherwise. In 1971, Paul Murdin and Louise Webster discovered the first black hole: Cygnus X-1. Later, in the 1990s, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope found that not only do black holes exist, supermassive black holes lie at the heart of almost every galaxy, including our own. It would take another three decades to confirm this phenomenon. On 10 April 2019, a team of astronomers made history by producing the first image of a black hole.
A Crack in Everything is the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage. As a journalist, Marcus Chown interviews many of the scientists who made the key discoveries, and, as a former physicist, he translates the most esoteric of science into everyday language. The result is a uniquely engaging page-turner that tells one of the great untold stories in modern science.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Critic reviews
[An] engaging, briskly paced account of how scientists came — relatively recently, and sometimes reluctantly — to concede that [black holes] exist.
[FIVE STARS] A gripping read
Downright poetic
PRAISE FOR MARCUS CHOWN:
'Marcus Chown rocks!' – Brian May, Queen
'Finest cosmology writer of our day' – Matt Ridley
'Chown writes as if he were addressing his fellow human beings.' - New Scientist
'Of all the top-rank science writers, he has the most friendly style, making complex science as simple and approachable as possible.'
'Marcus Chown rocks!' – Brian May, Queen
'Finest cosmology writer of our day' – Matt Ridley
'Chown writes as if he were addressing his fellow human beings.' - New Scientist
'Of all the top-rank science writers, he has the most friendly style, making complex science as simple and approachable as possible.'
Black Holes
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
History rather than science
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.