Europe recently installed a Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), in Geneva, making the organization the world's foremost research centre for particle physics. Scientists hope that projected experiments will enable them to find the hypothetical Higgs boson particle, which is missing from the Standard Model. LHC will also create some black holes so physicists can study them experimentally. A black hole exists when all forms of interaction between particles disappear, with the exception of gravity, causing all matter to collapse into itself. Stephen Hawking is the world's leading theorist on black holes. Some scientists think that black holes are not a cosmological void but instead wormholes leading to other universes. As was widely reported, two Americans filed a lawsuit against CERN, alleging that LHC may create a black hole that will swallow up the Earth.

In his distinctive style, combining the scholarship and reliability of a leading scientist with the poetic brilliancy of a great writer, Michel Cassé sets out to explain the physics of black holes. For him, the new goal of theoretical physics is to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity.

This beautifully written book explains the meaning of CERN's current experimentation with the world's largest machine. Cassé book will spark interest in the universe, and his explanation of black holes will enable readers to understand the ideas of the famous British physicist Stephen Hawking.

Michel Cassé is an astrophysicist working at the Atomic Energy Commission. He is the author of Du vide et de la création (1993), Généalogie de la matière (2000) and Energie noire, matière noire (2004).