A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage

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.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Space, Astronomy, Audiobook, Popular Science

294 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 6, 2024

About the author

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is currently cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. He is the author of the bestselling Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, The Never Ending Days of Being Dead and The Magic Furnace. He also wrote The Solar System, the bestselling app for iPad, which won the Future Book Award 2011. Marcus Chown has also written a work for children, Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil.

Reviews

[Cheenu · Rating 2 out of 5]

The theme of the book (or at least appears to be) is to try to document the evolution of "black holes" as an esoteric concept that was initially thought to be only theoretical to the current consensus that they are ubiquitous throughout the universe.

Honestly, I found this book poorly written.

The author chooses not to dive into nitty-gritty details of black holes. The focus is on the people but it just feels underwhelming. "In year X after doing Y experiment, Z was discovered or proved".

It seems that the author just did a bunch of interviews and summarized them.

I want black holes to be the star of the book.

Probably should have read Hawkings or Kip Thorne's books on black holes instead. Hoping they come up in the next batch of randomly selected books from my book list.

Notes

So what is exactly a black hole?

Let us start with gravity.

Stars are denser in their center than their peripheries and so gravity should pull everything inwards and ultimately it should be, as inconceivable as it sounds, infinitely dense.

So much so that "light cannot escape".

So what prevents this from happening?

Well the first thing is heat. Something happens to all the hydrogen in the center of the star, two of them hydrogen atoms convert to a single helium atom and some mass is lost.

Einstein's E=mc2 thing does it magic and massive heat is generated and that pushes stuff outwards.

For something like the Sun which neither expands nor contracts, this is perfectly balanced.

But wait, stars don't have an infinite amount of hydrogen. So black hole then?

Here the electrons (and neutrons) come to the rescue. They repel each other a lot (school flashbacks - weak and strong force).

These prevent infinitely dense scenario occurring and instead lead to dwarf stars (which our Sun will eventually be) and neutron stars.

But there's a catch - this stuff works only when the star is under a certain mass. For dwarf star pathway, 1.4 times the sun. For neutron star pathway, speculated to be between 2 to 3 times the sun.

For all the rest? Black hole. And big problem for physics.

But there might be a saviour. Stars are not stationary but they spin. And spin also generates some sort of force (school flashback again - centrifugal force).

But no, that has also been mathed out and it doesn't prevent infinitely dense scenario.

The reason is funky - apparently not only mass has gravity but everything has gravity.

And when stars contract, they spin faster and this leads to more rotational force. Which has its own gravity working inwards.

So black holes are inevitable.

Some other cool stuff

* A supermassive black hole is most likely at the center of every galaxy. (Interpretations of data from the Hubble telescope)

* The sizes of the supermassive black hole at the center and the "bulge" of galaxies is correlated. (Interpretation - as most "bulge" objects are too far for gravity of black hole, black holes most likely play some role in the formation of galaxies).

* Black holes are most likely merging all the time (frequency of observed mergers of black holes in the LIGO project) and many of the bigger black holes are second (or higher) generation mergers because there are too big to be formed by a supernova (implosion) event

* And the first ever image of a black hole, released in 2019 - https://science.nasa.gov/resource/fir...

[CJ | clarajunereads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's fair to say I don't have the brain of a scientist, but I've always been fascinated by physics. It's very frustrating when you want to understand things and you just can't get your head around them - which is why this book is so brilliant. It approaches black holes by telling the story of the discoveries made about them, which is much more in keeping with how my mind works. I'll admit, I did still have to pause and reread some of the more complex science paragraphs, but Chown does an amazing job explaining complicated science in the simplest way possible. Not a quick or an easy read by any means, but one that has helped me understand concepts I've been intimidated by in the past and that kept me enthralled throughout.

Read this if you want to learn more about astrophysics, even if you've been scared off before

Release date January 2025, but I couldn't hold off because I was so excited about it. Many thanks to Head of Zeus for the ARC

[Philippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the history of black holes through a series of stories in 9 chapters and a summary. It starts with predictions, concepts and theories developed early in the 20th century (including by A. Einstein) that black hole exist, all the way to the identification, detection (gravitational waves), and actual proof and pictures in recent years. Black holes were initially seen as an oddity, an exception, something not to care too much about. Today black holes are seen as the essential building blocks of galaxies, its stars and down the road also life on earth. I did not know that each galaxy including ours (Milky Way) has a supermassive black hole at its center, and ours is particularly small compared to other galaxies which contributed to our current life on earth.

It was a fascinating read, although I did not get everything, and I got lost quite a few times, the author sometimes getting stuck on numerous details and long enumerations. But I made abstraction of this, and found the read overall very interesting. I appreciated the story telling in most of he chapters, it did not read like a scientific paper or text book at all. It also peaked my curiosity to understand more of (theoretical) cosmology, general relativity and space-time, quantum forces, the history and forming of the universe. I did end watching again the movie Insterstellar, it gave me a new perspective on the plot (except for the wormhole in the movie, which is not covered in the book as it is mostly a science fiction concept).

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do like science, space and things that make no sense to me! I am not a science-brained person and I cannot get my head around so many things that fall into these sorts of categories. So, why on earth would I even bother trying to read books that are beyond me? Well, it is not in the hope that I will have some miraculous bolt of lightning that gives me the ability to understand these things. I read them because they make me know that people, especially me, are just a minute part of something so vast. It also makes me appreciate those people who do have the ability to understand the maths, the science and what makes things work.

This book, yes is about Black Holes, the Universe, Quantum Physics, unfathomable numbers and unimaginable equations, but it is about those special individuals that that do understand them.

This book does have maths and science as you would expect, but the author brings to the forefront the people who make the connections and can do the maths that is required to understand the larger side of our life, planet and our place within the universe.

Einstein is mentioned but I don't understand his famous E=mc² theory, I know it is part of an equation that is his well-known theory of relativity, that it was an evolutionary step forward and it has to do with nuclear fusion. this relates to black holes. While I am reading about the dynamics I can understand the basic concept, but I would not attempt to even explain it.

This book though does make sense while reading and it is interesting to read about those people in the world that can see through the confusion. These people are introduced and referenced over the 10 chapters of the book. I am not an academic, so I am not aware of them or what they have done. I think that is quite sad really.

So this book discusses those behind science and maths that help people to understand science and maths. It was indcrediblyy interesting but also took me quite some time to read through. I did like to sit and read this gradually over the course of a couple of weeks.

This is a readable book, but it does contain things that were beyond my understanding, this did not put me off as I do think it helped me understand a bit more. So in that respect it is a good book. Is it one for the academics, I really don't know you will have to look for their reviews, but the ones I have seen do recommend it and praise it well.

I am happy to recommend this book and would recommend it to anyone who is curious, wants to know more or is a fan of non-fiction, mathematics, space, science and popular science books.

[Mishell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super interesting and great for those who know nothing about the topic (just like me)

[Sajith Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strange thing about the concept of black holes is that even people with hardly any exposure to science writing are well aware of it and its propensity to gobble up anything that ventures near it. Black holes were predicted as a corollary to Einstein’s General Relativity, but they were physically traced only in the 1960s. Sophisticated instruments detected gravitational waves caused by merger of two black holes and new concepts have emerged in the last few decades that revise our understanding of these elusive celestial bodies. Latest research hints that black holes are not exactly ‘black’, but they are some of the most prodigiously luminous objects in the universe. They are not only holes down which matter is sucked in, but sources of immense jets of matter spraying outwards and extending to millions of light years across space. This book envelops the journey of black holes from the periphery of imagination into the very heart of science. Marcus Chown is a science-writer and broadcaster who was a former radio astronomer at California Institute of Technology at Pasadena. He is the author of several books and also launched the Solar System for iPad app, which won ‘The Book Seller’ Digital Innovation of the Year.

The first two chapters make a solid foundation on the theoretical concepts of black holes without appearing too scientific. The first hint of the possibility for existence of this intriguing phenomenon was made by the mathematical solution of Einstein’s General Relativity carried out by Karl Schwarzchild while fighting on the Western front in World War I. He died just five months later but the spark he lit caught on in scientific circles. Beyond a specified size, matter behaved strangely. Subrahmanian Chandrasekhar developed the theory while on a voyage to Europe by sea. Stars up to 1.4 solar masses ended up as white dwarfs when their nuclear fuel was exhausted. If the mass is around 2 to 3 times that of the sun, it may explode as a supernova but the core will turn into a neutron star. Even bigger stars collapse down to a point of infinite gravity. Space will fold in on itself and the star will vanish from view, turning into a black hole. This was hard to grasp for the conservative establishment and the book records the intellectual rivalry between Chandrasekhar and his superior Arthur Eddington which was also tinged with dark shades of racism. However, the threshold size of the star which becomes a black hole is now called the ‘Chandrasekhar Limit’, vindicating the Indian. Chown narrates some amusing effects expected at the ‘event horizon’, the fictitious surface that masks the point of no-return for matter and light falling in. To a distant observer, time at this surface appears to run slower and slower because the space-time is highly distorted. When in fact the matter had gone inside, the observer still sees that the fallen object is hovering on the event horizon. Stephen Hawking once quipped: “In space, no one can hear you scream; and in a black hole, no one can see you disappear”. If you accidentally fell into a black hole, you can be pretty sure that there will be no eye-witnesses.

Even though the discoveries of Schwarzchild and Chandrasekhar occurred much before World War II, the field lay barren and eventless till 1963. In that year, a New Zealand physicist Roy Kerr theoretically found the exact shape of the warped space-time around a spinning black hole by solving Einstein’s equations. The accepted opinion at that time was that when a crushing big star rotates, its centrifugal forces would balance at some point the push of gravity and prevent it from becoming a black hole. Kerr demonstrated that the centrifugal force of a rapidly spinning star could not prevent the formation of a black hole. He also proved that energy is also a form of gravity and the increased kinetic energy would add to gravity and enhance the formation of black hole instead of preventing it. The behaviour of mass and energy are weird when they are very large. The observational proof came just eight years later, in 1971. Paul Murdin and Louise Webster found a blue supergiant in Cygnus galaxy orbiting a black space every 5.6 days that was emitting X-rays. The first black hole was found – on circumstantial evidence. Many were found thereafter and astronomers estimate an astonishing 100 million to exist. Almost every galaxy has a black hole in its centre. Our own Milky Way certainly has a supermassive black hole at its centre. The few dozen black holes so far discovered are no more than the tip of an enormous iceberg.

Early theories of black holes posited them as truly black, set in a black universe and so impossible to identify. This was logical and shaped the minds of many enthusiasts. However, later investigations exposed the fallacy of this postulate. It failed to realise that black holes are likely to be embedded in an environment of interstellar gas and ripped-apart stars. In consuming the material, black holes would superheat it to such high levels as to emit even X-rays, apart from visible light. This idea suggested that, far from being black, black holes could be the most brilliant beacons in the universe. In 1963, quasars were discovered which emitted radiation hugely in excess of its size. These were found to be powered by spinning, supermassive black holes when matter swirls down into such a black hole like water going down a plug hole. This is also a source of energy in the universe. Nuclear fusion which powers the sun has a conversion rate of only one per cent whereas the new source provided up to 40 per cent. In the 1980s, better radio telescopes observed jets of matter stabbing out of the black hole core of galaxies into adjacent radio lobes. It definitively erased the idea that nothing comes out of a black hole. Another concept that changed along with the new influx of data was that supermassive black holes were a rarity that powered only one per cent of galaxies. Observational data from the Hubble Space Telescope proved the existence of many such entities. In fact, one is found to be present in virtually every galaxy, including our own.

Apart from the theoretical and observational aspects of black holes, the author investigates whether these have any significance for the human race. Supermassive black holes have an essential role in the birth and evolution of a galaxy. Through its huge outflow of energy, it transfers the energy into the surrounding galactic environment, gradually clearing the central regions of gas and throttling back star formation. If this did not happen, galaxies would have used up all their gaseous raw material soon after its birth. There would not have been time to produce higher elements which are very much required to sustain higher forms of life, like ours. In this sense, we owe our very existence to the black hole feedbacks that ensured that star formation continued at a sedate rate after the birth of our galaxy and that there was gas left over to give birth to the sun. Chown updates the readers of the recent revolutionary discoveries in relativistic physics such as the experimental detection of gravitational waves from merger of two black holes in 2015. In 2019, intense light was observed from the accretion disk of the merger of two supermassive black holes. Merger of such heavy-gravity stars churn up interesting material too. When two neutron stars merge, gold is generated in copious quantities. The book follows a diligent timeline of the major events related to black holes and the readers observe a conspicuous gap between 1963 and the launch of the Hubble telescope in the 1990s. The reason for this barren period – if it was not coincidental –is not elaborated. One is tempted to assign it to the manned lunar missions of NASA which riveted America’s attention and resources for the race they ran with the Soviets in a bid to reach the moon first. However, the Soviet Union did not make it to the moon.

The book is very agreeably written so as to be interesting to readers having no advanced training in science. Chown has taken care not to include any equations or unnecessary numbers. Hawking had one remarked that had he omitted the lone equation E = mc^2 in his epic book, ‘A Brief History of Time’, it would have doubled its sales. A lot of scientific facts are seamlessly interspersed with interesting biographical accounts of the inventers along with amusing asides. It appears that the nomenclature of ‘potential energy’ which we had studied in school has now changed to ‘gravitational energy’; just as kinetic energy is now referred to as ‘energy of motion’ in this book. A good popular book on physics was the need of the times as the old crop ended in the first decade of this century. This book neatly fits the bill. Latest findings and information till 2023 are updated in the book. However, the last third of the book seems to be full of somewhat uninteresting speculation and unnecessary elaboration of not very important ideas, some of which may never be discovered or disproved. They may remain just intelligent speculation for a long period to come. In spite of this minor hiccup, this book is a must-read for enthusiasts of physics, astronomy and cosmology.

The book is highly recommended.

[Prof. Purple · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essence of scientific progress is not certainty but discomfort—the willingness to stare into the abyss of the unknown and admit, with humility, that our most cherished theories may be inadequate. Marcus Chown, a writer with a knack for translating the esoteric complexities of physics into engaging narratives, embraces this discomfort in A Crack in Everything. Rather than presenting science as a triumphant march toward omniscience, he examines its blind spots, paradoxes, and the persistent mysteries that suggest we are far from understanding reality’s true nature.

Science, for all its remarkable achievements, is an ongoing work in progress. If the 20th century gave us the triumphs of relativity and quantum mechanics, it also exposed the limits of those theories, raising unsettling questions about the fabric of space-time, the nature of consciousness, and whether our understanding of reality is fundamentally flawed. In A Crack in Everything, Chown does not simply catalog these mysteries—he revels in them, demonstrating that it is the cracks in our knowledge, not the smooth surfaces, that lead to the most profound discoveries.
The Narrative: A Guided Tour of the Unknown

Chown structures his book as an exploration of physics’ most persistent riddles, each chapter examining a different "crack" in the theoretical edifice of modern science. These range from the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and general relativity to the eerie implications of quantum entanglement, from the unexplained acceleration of the universe’s expansion to the enigma of dark matter, whose presence can be inferred but whose nature remains elusive.

Unlike science writers who take a cautious, deferential approach to existing theories, Chown is refreshingly willing to ask whether physicists are, in some cases, on the wrong track entirely. He challenges the reader to consider whether we have fundamentally misunderstood concepts as basic as time, causality, and even the nature of physical laws themselves. The effect is not to undermine scientific credibility but to deepen appreciation for how little we truly know.
Chown’s Explanatory Style: Clarity Without Concession

One of Chown’s greatest strengths is his ability to convey complex ideas without diluting their profundity. He does not reduce physics to simple metaphors or rely on tired analogies about billiard balls and rubber sheets. Instead, he explains concepts with precision, trusting the reader’s intelligence while providing just enough scaffolding to make difficult ideas comprehensible.

This balance between accessibility and rigor sets A Crack in Everything apart from more formulaic popular science books. Where some writers succumb to the temptation of oversimplification, Chown respects the reader’s ability to grapple with uncertainty. His prose is crisp, engaging, and—where appropriate—infused with a dry wit that prevents the material from becoming too abstract or daunting.
The Case Studies: Science’s Most Stubborn Mysteries

Chown does not merely revisit well-trodden puzzles; he presents them in a way that forces the reader to reconsider their significance. Among the most fascinating discussions in A Crack in Everything are:

The Nature of Time: Is time an illusion? Why does it seem to flow in one direction when the fundamental laws of physics are time-symmetric? Chown explores the possibility that time is an emergent property rather than a fundamental feature of the universe.
Quantum Weirdness: The phenomenon of entanglement—where two particles appear to influence each other instantaneously across vast distances—continues to defy classical explanations. Chown asks whether our failure to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity is evidence that we are missing a deeper, hidden structure of reality.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy: While these concepts are often presented as established science, Chown reminds the reader that they are, at best, placeholders for phenomena we do not yet understand. Are these truly unseen forms of matter and energy, or are they indications that our understanding of gravity itself is flawed?

Chown does not push a particular agenda or pet theory; rather, he lays out competing perspectives, allowing the reader to appreciate both the ingenuity and the limitations of current scientific thought.
Themes: The Limits of Human Knowledge and the Future of Physics

Beneath its exploration of specific scientific mysteries, A Crack in Everything is ultimately a book about epistemology—how we know what we know, and how we cope with the realization that some questions may remain unanswered. Chown is candid about the possibility that certain aspects of reality may lie permanently beyond human comprehension, either because our cognitive faculties are not equipped to grasp them or because the universe itself may operate according to principles that defy our conceptual frameworks.

At the same time, he maintains an optimism about the future of physics, acknowledging that every era of science has believed itself to be on the brink of ultimate understanding—only to be upended by the next great discovery. The lesson, it seems, is one of intellectual humility: the moment we believe we have reached the limits of knowledge, we are almost certainly wrong.
Final Verdict: A Thoughtful, Provocative Exploration of the Unknown

In a landscape crowded with science books that either rehash known theories or veer into speculative excess, A Crack in Everything stands out as a work of genuine curiosity and intellectual honesty. Chown is not content to celebrate science’s achievements; he wants to probe its uncertainties, to revel in the cracks rather than plaster them over with convenient explanations.

For readers who relish books that challenge their assumptions—those drawn to the works of Brian Greene, Carlo Rovelli, or Richard Feynman—A Crack in Everything will be a deeply rewarding read. For those seeking definitive answers, however, it may prove frustrating. But that, of course, is the point: the search for truth is never-ending, and the most interesting places in science are not the solid ground but the fault lines, where the known world gives way to the abyss of possibility.

Marcus Chown reminds us that the universe is far stranger than we imagine—and, more importantly, that we have only just begun to understand how strange it truly is.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few years ago, probably during lockdown, I watched the excellent Netflix documentary Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know about the Event Horizon Telescope and the effort to photograph the supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy M87. Black holes have always captivated me ever since, as a wee lass, science and science fiction came on my radar. How could they not? So even though Marcus Chown is a new-to-me science writer, I was excited to read A Crack in Everything. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

Chown follows a sensible, largely chronological path in telling the story of black holes. We begin on the front, during the First World War, with Karl Schwarzschild. From there we dance in the footsteps of Einstein, Chandrasekhar, Roy Kerr, and so many others. Chown touches on the theoretical physics and the experimental, on the astronomical and the metaphysical. Each step of the way, he grounds us by reminding us that black holes, mysterious though they may be, are simply one more interesting phenomenon in a cosmos replete with white dwarfs, neutron stars and pulsars, quasars (themselves powered by supermassive black holes), dust clouds, and more. We live in a universe of wonders, and A Crack in Everything showcases and celebrates this.

Each chapter has an evocative title and a tantalizing synopsis. The book’s dazzling narrative presentation is anchored in interviews Chown conducted with as many of the people involved as he could reach. This book is particularly timely in that some of them have since passed or will pass soon, given their age, and it’s so valuable to have that oral history of these discoveries from them.

I was not prepared for how lush and descriptive Chown’s writing would be. If you have been traumatized by physics textbooks, there’s no equations to be found here. More history than pop science, A Crack in Everything focuses less on the physics explanations and more on the human stories behind them. Though by no means a unique approach, it’s one I am coming to find increasingly valuable.

In particular, I appreciate how sensitive Chown is to the need to reverse the erasure of women from STEM history. (If you are curious, Cecilia Payne and Henrietta Leavitt, both important figures in this book, are featured prominently in The Glass Universe .) He introduces us to Louise Webster, one half, along with Paul Murdin, of the duo who linked the X-ray source in Cygnus to a black hole. Feryal Özel and Katie Boumann and others working on the Event Horizon Telescope. And shout-out to Sandra O’Neill, the undergrad student who discovered the second-ever pair of supermassive black holes left over from two galaxies colliding.

When it comes to what little actual science is here, I won’t pretend to understand all or even most of it. But I love learning how science is done, and Chown makes that incredibly accessible. This is a beautiful companion to the EHT documentary on Netflix, but the book is so much more than that. From Shwarzschild’s letters from the front to simultaneous discoveries around the world, science is often a story of communication and collaboration. Even as wars rage, scientists collaborate. Even as people are displaced, funding hard to find, scientists collaborate. A Crack in Everything is a great reminder that what we know comes down to the collective efforts of humanity, not just a couple of geniuses who eventually become household names.

Black holes are some of the most massive objects in the universe. Some of the biggest objects. And even some of the smallest, I guess, if they are microscopic. Whatever they are, whatever additional secrets these singularities hold … there is no questioning the effect they have on our imagination. For as long as we have been human, and perhaps a good deal longer, our species has looked up at the stars and wondered. That hasn’t changed—just the tools we use to do it. A Crack in Everything is a detailed and beautifully written book telling the story of one of the most enigmatic features of our universe. If you like science and science history, read this book.

Originally posted on Kara.Reviews.

[Venky · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a mesmerizing passage in his book, award winning science writer and former radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, Marcus Chown, painstakingly describes the seismic event of the sighting of the first ever black hole. In April 2017, a team of intrepid and maniacally enthusiastic groups of scientists set up eight Event Horizon Telescopes (EHTs), at eight sites across the world. The team strove to capture an image of a black hole by enhancing a technique permitting the imaging of far-away objects, known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI.

While the technical details of the stupendous accomplishment of the team is putting it mildly, dense, the paragraph encapsulating the moment of reckoning leaves the reader in a state of absolute catharsis. The hairs stand at the nape, eyes involuntarily begin to well as the infinitesimal finitude and position of humanity in the grand and transcendental scheme of the Cosmos hits home like a sledgehammer. The experience is humbling in its grandest sweep and sobering in its deepest wake.

An endearing take on Leonard Cohen’s evocative anthem, A Crack in Everything, begins on an unexpectedly poignant note. Karl Schwarzschild, a German physicist and astronomer, lay dying in a field hospital from the auto immune disease pemphigus, while serving in the first World War. Even while staring adversity in its face, Schwarzschild produced the first precise solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for the limited case of a single spherical non-rotating mass. Today, Asteroid 837 Schwarzschilda is named in his honour, as is the large crater Schwarzschild, on the far side of the Moon.

The path pioneered by Schwarzschild was taken up in earnest by a reticent genius from India, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. The Astrophysicist and nephew of Sir Chandrasekhara Venkataraman, who won the Physics, Nobel in 1930, Chandrasekhar, dazzled the world by producing the spell binding concept now popularly attributed the moniker Chandrasekhar limit. This postulates that a star possessing a mass more than 1.44 times that of the Sun instead of forming a white dwarf, continues to collapse, blows off its gaseous envelope in a supernova explosion, and becomes a neutron star. However, instead of being revered for his singularly stunning achievement, this docile Astrophysicist was remorselessly and undeservingly snubbed in public by his own mentor, Arthur Eddington. This public humiliation and rebuke stalled further development in Chandrasekhar’s research for decades.

As Chown informs his readers, professional jealousies and sexism have always haunted the progress of science, and astronomy is no exception to the norm. Cecilia Payne, an intellect par excellence was not only denied a degree in Cambridge University, solely due to her sex, but was also completely discredited from her finding, while completing her PhD at the Harvard College Observatory, which discovered the sun to be composed of Hydrogen and Helium. This finding was completely contrary to the compositions as taken for granted by the male bastion and its entrenched dogma. A proficient astronomer, Henry Norris, not only proclaimed Payne’s findings to be ‘clearly impossible,’ without providing a shred of evidence in his defense, but also forced her to reject her findings. This despite Norris himself acknowledging that Payne’s doctoral research was the best he had ever read!

Black holes may pave the way for a comprehension of a deeper understanding of contemporaneous Physics according to Chown. In fact, Chown argues that the study of galaxies is rendered incomplete without accumulating a fundamental knowledge of supermassive black holes.

Marcus Chown’s compelling and fast paced book is more about the relentless contributions of personalities and characters whose selflessness and sacrifices contributed to the opening of an incredibly complicated and complex branch of Astronomy, which has made a phenomenal leap from the peripheral to the mainstream. This inextricable linkage between persistent human endeavour, perpetual faith and possibilities that are endless is what makes A Crack in Everything one of the best reads of the year for me.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about black holes - and there are two ways to look at these amazing phenomena. One is to meander about in endless speculation concerning firewalls and holographic universes and the like, where there is no basis in observation, only mathematical magic. This, for me, is often closer to science fiction than science fact. The alternative, which is what Marcus Chown does so well here (apart from a single chapter), is to explore the aspects of theory that have observational evidence to back them up - and he does it wonderfully.

I'm reminded in a way of the play The Audience which was the predecessor to The Crown. In the play, we see a series of moments in history when Queen Elizabeth II is meeting with her prime ministers, giving a view of what was happening in life and politics at that point in time. Here, Chown takes us to visit various breakthroughs over the last 100 or so years when a step was made in the understanding of black holes.

The first few are around the basic theory - for example Schwarzschild's remarkable first solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity from his First World War hospital bed, and the gradual realisation of the implications of a large star losing the energy to keep itself fluffed up. Then come the shocking discoveries - quasars which turned out to be active supermassive black holes, the detection of the real things, black hole collisions detected using gravitational waves and more. As mentioned, there is one summary chapter on the speculative stuff, for me by far the least interesting bit of the whole thing, but that didn't spoil the enjoyment of the whole.

I'm really struggling to find anything to moan about. There is the occasional touch of hyperbole - at one point Chown says of Kerr's rotating black hole solution 'Arguably it would turn out to be the most important solution to any equation in physics' - I tend to think there are plenty with more practical applications (from Newton's equations of motion to some in quantum physics) that perhaps could be considered more important. And I think he could have made more of a throwaway comment in a footnote that Kerr had written a paper questioning whether black holes have to be singularities - the biggest problem the theoretical side faces - but these are trivial points.

What was so engaging in reading this book apart from the subject matter, much of which is passed over in other books on black holes in the rush to get to the speculation, and the personal touch from the interviews and biographical detail that Chown incorporates, is his writing style. I can honest say I don't know another science writer who is as good a storyteller as Chown. His writing is not fancy and full of literary tweaks and unnecessary technical terms. Chown is to popular science writing what Isaac Asimov was to science fiction. Not necessarily the most elegant writer, but a superb craftsman who really understands how to put across a narrative. Usually this skill is focused on the science, but here Chown applies it particularly to biography and history where it works even better: I'd say it makes this his best book yet.

[Jess ~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through a series of historical overviews and interviews with modern scientists working in the field of theoretical and experimental physics, Chown provides an in depth yet digestible chronological history of our knowledge of black holes, focusing on the “moment of discovery” by those who discovered them.

While there are some technical aspects to this book (to be expected given the subject matter) it did not read like a textbook at all despite the easily digestible scientific explanations built right into the text. A Crack in Everything feels like listening to a lecture from your favorite professor, the one who made the subject fascinating because they loved it so much. The personal anecdotes from scientists deliver the information in a very human way, and bring a subject that sometimes feels so out of reach back down to earth for us to relate to. I also appreciated that women’s contributions to physics (shout out Louise Webster) were given the necessary accolades they deserve for their discoveries.

In my short thirty-some years of life, I first learned about black holes in elementary school as some sort of abstract cosmic terror that devours all light in its path; I then watched documentaries during my university years that explained that at the center of each galaxy is a supermassive black hole and perhaps they weren’t as terrifying as previously thought; finally, I saw the first ever image of a black hole as it was released to the public in 2022 - what a humbling realization that we are living through and witnessing the golden age of physics coming to fruition after hundreds of years of theorizing. A Crack in Everything puts all of that into perspective, and captures the feelings of being simultaneously as small as a speck of dust as well as humbled by our innate human curiosity and ability to discern the world around us. I don't pick up too many books on theoretical or experimental physics, but I’m happy that this one caught my eye.

“The black hole teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but.” - John Wheeler

My sincerest thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury USA | Apollo, and Marcus Chown for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Haxxunne · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a scintillating amalgam of history of science and scientific biography, Chown narrates the (mostly) linear origin story of black holes as scientific concepts and cosmological entities. The diversity of characters, the details of their lives, all brings the big subject at hand into neat focus.

There’s obviously science and some light maths, but there’s also biographic detail that brings the last 120 years to life, presenting not only the birth of black holes as theory but also the motivations behind the scientists who contributed to their discovery. The real world is never far away from the breathless descriptions of seat-of-your-pants number crunching, whether we’re talking the horror of the First World War and poor Schwarzschild’s rare disease, or the languor of a 1960s Dallas swimming pool as the unlikely jumping off-point for a disastrous conference that announced a seismic solution to a problem unsolved by Einstein.

The book works at both the huge, practically unimaginable cosmological scale and the minutiae of the human, bolstered by the author’s personal interviews with living protagonists and the letters, papers and oral histories of those who have already passed. There is a whiplash effect when the narrative flips between these two scales but perhaps that’s the secret of this book: that black holes need observers trying to understand what they are before they can be black holes. In a universe without observers, who would know that any of it existed?

Without an academic science background, the book can be appreciable for its relatively common sense descriptions of the mysteries and reality-warping natures of black holes, and the biographical detail keeps the narrative going, giving a clear sense of why theoretical science and then searching for the measurable evidence is a pursuit worthy of human effort.

A solid four stars.

[James Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest achievement in any nonfiction book about scientific matters is to clearly and simply explain esoteric and complex material in a readable format for the casual reader. If in addition to this the book can be entertaining as well as informative, then you are on to an absolute winner. “A Crack in Everything” about black holes written by Marcus Chown is one of very few that I have come across which achieves it all. And this is no small task considering that everything from quantum physics to cutting edge radio telescope techniques are covered in chronological order as it actually happened.

Needless to say, this marvellous book has come along at just the right time considering where the scientific world has reached in its understanding of a phenomena that is stranger than anything dreamt up by science fiction. From Einstein's theory of relativity that postulated these singularities, which he came to believe were exceedingly unlikely to occur in real life, to actually taking an image of a real black hole in not much more than a hundred years is truly astounding. From the term “black hole” coined in the early 1960’s, to the discovery of the first black hole in the 1970’s, to the realisation that these utterly strange entities are no cosmic rarity, but at the centre of all galaxies is such an exciting read.

This book should be on every A level physics reading list and be easily picked up by those with only a passing interest in physics and astronomy. Read it! It’s a blast!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

***.5

I struggled with this book. There have been a bunch of popular science books on black holes (and rightly so, black holes are fascinating), and I've learned something from all of them. As the subtitle suggests, this time the emphasis is on the historical discoveries that led to their important role in how we think about the universe. Specifically, the massive black holes at the center of galaxies.

It therefore includes more history than science, but occasionally dumps formulas and other complex concepts on the reader. The jumble of topics makes it hard to hold onto the thread that binds them together, as we flit from German theoreticians to American observers, from Eddington and Hubble to the cutting edge discoveries of LIGO and EHT.

On the positive side, Chown writes clearly and does a good job describing the work of incredible people like Schwarzchild and Chandrasekhar, who I mostly know from their respective eponymous 'radius' and 'limit' fame. I applaud these efforts to make scientists celebrities, our society is entirely too fixated on pop culture and political figures.

The audiobook narration did the content no favours. The reader uses various gruff and funny voices to read direct quotes, which was entirely gratuitous, distracting, and supremely annoying. In addition to the rather dry formal British delivery, he also pronounced several words in weirdly wrong ways, such as a heavily French accented "Toussaint" for Tuscon, AZ. I winced every time, incredulous that no one thought to correct him.

[Fatguyreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of astronomy and all things space, so this was right up my street, and it certainly lived up to my expectations.

The author tells the story of black holes, their origins, history etc and also tells the stories of those involved in their study.

It's written in a very accessible way to all readers, including those with a scientific background.

Told over 10 engrossing, mind expanding chapters with titles such as "The Unbearable Whiteness of Black Holes" and " The Gates of Hell", it's an exciting read packed full of lots of interesting information.

It's most eleganly written by an incredibly skilled author who know exactly how to put a narrative across.

For me, his best book yet.

A huge five shooting 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me ( pun intended, ha ha )

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started off as an enjoyable march through history of how the concept of black holes evolved within the scientific community. But around halfway through I started noticing of repetitive sections and phrases. Would be one thing if the metaphor grew and evolved with each telling, but in the case of tiles falling, it was almost exactly the same each time, and did nothing to help my understanding of the concept.

Plus there was a section towards the end where the author explains twice in relative quick succession how one of the co-founders of LIGO was unable to receive the Nobel prize because he suffered from Alzheimer’s. But the second time it’s mentioned didn’t reference/acknowledge the first instance at all, and was just very odd and disruptive to my enjoyment of the topic.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrative flow is brilliant, taking the reader from general relativity as a theory in the early 20th century to one of the greatest astronomical images in history, that of the M87 black hole revealed in 2019. The author guides the reader through this complex journey and never loses them due to a deft mix of biography, anecdote and hard science. Would have given it five stars if it contained some illustrations or images, for example, of the aforementioned M87 image.
Made me appreciate the importance and awe-inducing contribution of radio astronomy to human knowledge.

[Thomas J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

an up to date report on Black Holes

The author has done a superb job of assembling the history of discovery and current understanding about black holes. He ties in a lot of information recently obtained from several new sources, including X-ray telescopes, radio astronomy interferometry and LIGO. And he shows the critical role that black holes play in galactic formation and evolution. And how the black hole at the center of our own galaxy, SagA* has affected our galaxy’s trajectory over time.

Very accessible writing for the interested layman.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a lot of strong points. I loved the biographical information and the interviews with the actual scientists. I also enjoyed the quotes that started each chapter. The book shows how science works, with newer research updating or replacing previous research. I found the book very entertaining and although some of the information is complicated, Chown did a great job of explaining the science. Thank you to Netgalley and Apollo for the advance reader copy.

[Mario Mirabelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

What possessed me to read this book is unknown but it was worth it. Black holes seem cool, deadly and mostly unknown but this book lays down a straightforward explanation and for the most part sticks with it. From a soldier in WW I, Einstein and recent computer generated pictures of an actual blackhole, this book at times can be a page turner. A few times you do descend into the weeds, but nothing to robust. Enjoy the trip and don't get too close to the BLACKHOLE!!

[WinterGirl83 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book about black holes. Goes into lots of information (some of it above my beginner's head I'm afraid), but detailed all the same. Lots of theory, a bit of maths and plenty of tidbits about black holes.

[Hugh Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating book. I loved the stories of the people behind the various discoveries, and I loved the science (which I found very well-written but also accessible).

[Raymond Woehr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on both the history of discoveries of the stages of stars life cycles as well as the explanations of those life cycles. Special emphasis on black holes and theories about them.

[Ron at Rockhaven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great narrative science and history on the development of our understandings on black holes and related discoveries. We need more of these.

[Reader]

The Free Library of Philadelphia

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable and accessible book about how Black Holes were discovered. The author did a nice job balancing t

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating!