White Holes

“If you want to remember why you once fell in love with the idea of the cosmos, or want to fall in love with that idea for the first time, then this book is for you. For my part, I found myself following Rovelli into a weird and wonderful new universe and I was very content to be there.” —Observer (UK)

“It is always worth reading Rovelli. He writes like he believes you are as learned and clever as he is. Yet he also writes with such care for your ignorance that it feels every page is urging and coaxing you—a non-physicist—to see what he can see.” —The Times (UK)

“White Holes edifies, excites, and even transforms me. Rovelli summons us to novel forms of knowledge while also breathing life into questions that affect all sentient beings, such as: how do we proceed when our guides no longer suffice? I’m grateful for the warm invitation to the journey.” —Maggie Nelson

“Meet the new Stephen Hawking.” —The Sunday Times (UK)

“No one writes about the cosmos like theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli.” —The Washington Post

“The physicist known for making complex science intelligible.” —Financial Times

“One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline.” —John Banville, The Wall Street Journal

A mesmerizing trip to the strange world of white holes from the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time.

Let us journey, with beloved physicist Carlo Rovelli, into the heart of a black hole. We slip beyond its horizon and tumble down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we see geometry fold. Time and space pull and stretch. And finally, at the black hole’s core, space and time dissolve, and a white hole is born.Rovelli has dedicated his career to uniting the time-warping ideas of general relativity and the perplexing uncertainties of quantum mechanics. In White Holes, he reveals the mind of a scientist at work. He traces the ongoing adventure of his own cutting-edge research, investigating whether all black holes could eventually turn into white holes, equally compact objects in which the arrow of time is reversed.

Rovelli writes just as compellingly about the work of a scientist as he does the marvels of the universe. He shares the fear, uncertainty, and frequent disappointment of exploring hypotheses and unknown worlds, and the delight of chasing new ideas to unexpected conclusions. Guiding us beyond the horizon, he invites us to experience the fever and the disquiet of science—and the strange and startling life of a white hole.