By the star physicist and author of multiple #1 Sunday Times bestsellers a major and
definitive narrative work on black holes and how they can help us understand the universe. At
the heart of our galaxy lies a monster so deadly it can bend space throwing vast jets of
radiation millions of light years out into the cosmos. Its kind were the very first inhabitants
of the universe the black holes. Today across the universe at the heart of every galaxy and
dotted throughout mature black holes are creating chaos. And in a quiet part of the universe
the Swift satellite has picked up evidence of a gruesome death caused by one of these dark
powers. High energy X-ray flares shooting out from deep within the Draco constellation are
thought to be the dying cries of a white dwarf star being ripped apart by the intense tides of
a supermassive black hole ? heating it to millions of degrees as it is shredded at the event
horizon. They have the power to wipe out any of the universe's other inhabitants but no one
has ever seen a black hole itself die. But 1.8 billion light years away the LIGO instruments
have recently detected something that could be the closest a black hole gets to death.
Gravitational waves given off as two enormous black holes merge together. And now scientists
think that these gravitational waves could be evidence of two black holes connecting to form a
wormhole ? a link through space and time. It seems outlandish but today's physicists are
daring to think the unthinkable ? that black holes could connect us to another universe. At
their very heart black holes are also where Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is
stretched in almost unimaginable ways revealing black holes as the key to our understanding of
the fundamentals of our universe and perhaps all other universes. Join Professors Brian Cox and
Jeff Forshaw in exploring our universe's most mysterious inhabitants how they are formed why
they are essential components of every galaxy including our own and what secrets they still
hold waiting to be discovered.
