Breakthrough: Spectacular Stories of Scientific Discovery from the Higgs Particle to Black Holes

by Marcus Chown

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

'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

'Highly entertaining and accessible.' IRISH TIMES

'Fascinating, life enhancing entertainment.' PROSPECT

'Thoroughly enjoyable . . . Chown has down it again.' BBC SKY AT NIGHT

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 its astonishing predictive power.
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Breakthrough was previously published in 2020 in hardback under the title The Magicians.

Audible Audio

Published August 4, 2021

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.