Includes bibliographical references and index.

A brief history of black holes
Unifying space and time
Bringing infinity to a finite place
Warping spacetime
Into the black hole
White holes and wormholes
The Kerr wonderland
Real black holes from collapsing stars
Black hole thermodynamics
Hawking radiation
Spaghettified and vaporized
The sound of one hand clapping
The world as a hologram
Islands in the stream
The perfect code

"At the heart of our galaxy lies a monster four million times more massive than the Sun. Within its domain, space and time are so warped that no light escapes. According to Einstein, here lies the end of time. According to twenty-first century physics, the reality may be far more bizarre. Meet the most extraordinary object in the universe: the black hole . . . In this . . . book, acclaimed physicists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw take you to the edge of our understanding of black holes; a scientific journey to the research frontier spanning a century of physics, from Einstein to Hawking and beyond"--Provided by publisher