This is the inside account of the battle over the true nature of black holes-with nothing less than our understanding of the entire universe at stake. What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed that it did-and in doing so, put at risk everything we know about the fundamental laws of the universe. Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft realized the threat...

A string theorist and a citizen scientist instruct lay readers on elementary principles of physics and associated math that amateur enthusiasts should know in order to study more advanced topics, in a reference that covers such topics as classical mechanics, electromagnetic fields and chaos theory. "A first course in physics and associated math for the ardent amateur ... beginning with classical mechanics"--Dust jacket flap.