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
The Magicians 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.
'Marcus Chown rocks!' Brian May
How does it feel to know something about the universe that no one has ever known before? And why is mathematics so magically good at revealing nature's secrets?
This is the story of the magicians: the scientists who, using mathematics, predicted the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles, and even antimatter.
The journey from prediction to proof transports us from seats of learning in Paris and Cambridge to the war-torn Russian front, to bunkers beneath nuclear reactors, observatories in Berlin and California, and huge tunnels under the Swiss-French border. From electromagnetism to Einstein's gravitational waves to Wolfgang Pauli's elusive neutrino, acclaimed science writer Marcus Chown takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the major breakthroughs of modern physics and highlights science's central mystery: its astonishing predictive power.
Praise for Marcus Chown:
'What good popular science writing is all about.' Jim Al-Khalili
'Pretty wonderful.' Richard Dawkins
'Entertaining and at times mind-boggling.' The Times
