The Magicians

This is the story of the magicians: the scientists who, using mathematics, predicted the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles, and even antimatter. The journey from prediction to proof transports us from seats of learning in Paris and Cambridge to the war-torn Russian front to bunkers beneath nuclear reactors, observatories in Berlin and California, and huge tunnels under the Swiss-French border. From electromagnetism to Einstein's gravitational waves to Wolfgang Pauli's elusive neutrino, acclaimed science writer Marcus Chown takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the major breakthroughs of modern physics and highlights science's central mystery: its astonishing predictive power.