A scintillating portrait of the most significant eureka moments in scientific history by the bestselling popular science writer. What does it feel like to understand something about the universe that no one has ever known before?
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.