First published 2008
When Stephen Hawking declared that matter vanishes completely inside black holes, he threatened the foundation of physics itself. Leonard Susskind recognized the danger in Hawking's claim. If information could truly disappear, the basic laws governing our universe would crumble. Susskind joined forces with Gerard t'Hooft to mount a scientific counteroffensive. Their decades-long dispute with Hawking would reshape modern physics. The battle centered on a fundamental question: what really happens when objects fall into black holes? Susskind argues that information survives, encoded on the black hole's surface like a hologram. This book chronicles the intellectual warfare between brilliant minds, complete with Hawking's eventual concession that he was wrong. Susskind reveals how this conflict led to the startling conclusion that our entire reality might be a projection from the edges of space.
Genres: science, science-fiction, physics, academic
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: intellectual-warfare
Kindle Edition · Little, Brown and Company