The authoritative story from the headline-making discovery of gravitational waves-by an eminent theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer.

From the writer of The way the Universe Got Its Spots and A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, the epic story from the scientific campaign to record the soundtrack of our universe.

Black openings are dark. That is their fact. When black openings collide, they’ll do this unilluminated. Yet the black gap collision can be an event stronger than any about Black Gap Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space since the origins of the world. The profusion of energy will emanate as waves in the shape of spacetime: gravitational waves. No telescope will ever record the function; instead, the just evidence will be the sound of spacetime buzzing. In 1916, Einstein expected the lifestyle of gravitational waves, his priority after he suggested his theory of curved spacetime. One hundred years afterwards, we are recording the first sounds from space, the soundtrack to accompany astronomy’s silent film.

In Black Opening Blues and Various other Songs from Outer Space, Janna Levin recounts the exciting tale of the obsessions, the aspirations, and the trials from the scientists who embarked on a difficult, fifty-year try to capture these elusive waves. An experimental ambition that began as an amusing thought experiment, a mad idea, became the object of fixation for the original architects-Rai Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ron Drever. Trying to help make the ambition a reality, the original three gradually accumulated an international team of hundreds. As this reserve was created, two massive devices of remarkably delicate sensitivity were taken to advanced ability. As the reserve draws to a detailed, five decades following the experimental ambition began, the group races to intercept a wisp of a audio with two colossal devices, hoping to succeed in time for the centenary of Einstein’s most radical idea. Janna Levin’s absorbing account from the surprises, disappointments, achievements, and risks within this unfolding story offers a portrait of modern science that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.