Watch this space

Black holes may offer insights to our most baffling technology problems.

BLACK HOLES: The key to understanding the universe, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (ABC Books, $37.99)

“Black holes,” write the authors, “are perfect for learning about physics because understanding them requires pretty much all of it.”

If this sounds daunting, it is, but buckle up – you are in for quite a ride. Jeff Forshaw and “rock star” science broadcaster Brian Cox are particle physicists at the University of Manchester. They have perfected the art of hurling readers into the world of wacky physics, armed with all the latest discoveries and immense skill at explaining them.

I mean, who can go past sentences like this? “There are electrons in your hand and electrons in the Andromeda Galaxy, separated by over two million light years, linked through quantum entanglement.” This sounds like a near-mystical claim – spooky even. Crucially for the logical coherence of the world, however, these correlations cannot be exploited to send messages at faster-than-light speed, so — we can almost hear Cox’s droll Mancunian twang — “Don’t get too excited.”

Yes, there are equations and diagrams, but if you don’t understand a word, keep reading; the book is filled with thoughtprovoking insights which require no maths.

Black holes, such as Sagittarius A*, an object four million times the size of our Sun that sits at the centre of the Milky Way, seem to undo the laws of physics. But they have much to say about the nature of reality. (Spoiler alert: in the final pages, the book asks: “Are we living inside a giant quantum computer? The evidence is mounting that it may be so.”)

I gained a clearer understanding of the work of Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Roy Kerr, the now-88-year-old New Zealand mathematician who has a chapter devoted to his work titled “The Kerr Wonderland”.

Theoretical physics like Kerr’s and Hawking’s work once seemed the most azure of blue-skies research. But there are tantalising signs that the biggest problem in theoretical physics and the biggest problem in technology, quantum computing, may have much to offer each other. Quantum gravity, a field that has emerged from the study of black holes, may have “an experimental side to it”, say the authors, in a sentence of spine-tingling understatement.

So the most abstruse of sciences may hold the secrets of quantum computing, and, as well as revealing a universe “enchanting in its strangeness and logical beauty”, be “bloody useful too”. ▮