White Holes by Carlo Rovelli review – space odyssey

Time, quantum mechanics, and the nature of reality are woven together in a mind-bending journey to the edge of reality

Black Holes: The End of the Universe? by John Taylor was the first book I bought with myown hard-earned cash from a poorly paid paper round. It was 1974,Iwas 11. It was the subtitle thatgrabbed my attention, since I'd neverheard of black holes. At the time these mysterious cosmic objects were merely a theoretical possibility, but ahalf-century later we have ample evidence that they really do exist. After writing bestsellers about quantum mechanics, time, and the nature of reality, Italian physicist CarloRovelli weaves all three togetherin his latest book, taking us on a journey deep inside a black hole. An accomplished storyteller, Rovelli begins this mind-boggling ride by explaining how they form.

Sooner or later, stars run out of fueland stop shining. At that point, their own gravity causes them to become compressed. Our sun will endup as a so-called white dwarf, itsmass squeezed until it's the size ofthe Earth. However, some stars areso massive, with such strong gravity, that the collapse continues until they're squeezed to a point known as asingularity. That's where the known laws of physics break down. A black hole is a singularity surrounded by its event horizon, a one-way boundary shielding it from the rest of the universe. Anything thatgets too closewill be unable to escape, draggedinto the hole and crushed out of existence. This is the conventional view, one that Rovelli challenges in his short, utterly engaging and densely packed narrative that you may have to readmore than once.