The Wonderful Secrets of Gravity

This book in part tells the story of that faraway place. In the last few decades a remarkable and strange panorama has emerged. It extends far beyond the esoteric and fantastical studies of the extremes of space and time that have been the hallmark of black hole science. Astronomy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries revealed that black holes are varied and common. Although we think that most of them start out as comparatively small objects, with the mass of only a few suns, some have managed to grow to much greater size. The biggest are known to have tens of billions of times the mass of the Sun. They are mind-boggling and challenge our core ideas about how all the objects and structures we see in the Universe came to be. At the same time, they do not hide like inert, invisible and indifferent bodies. We have come to realize that the science of black holes is very real and very immediate. Their Presence it makes itself felt throughout the cosmos. Black holes play a crucial role in making the Universe look the way it is.
For this reason, they also profoundly influence the environments and circumstances in which planets and planetary systems form, as well as the chemical and elemental combinations that make them up. Life, the phenomenon of which we are a part, is deeply connected to all these chains of events. To say that black holes have implications for life in the Universe may seem far-fetched and unlikely, but it's the plain and simple truth, and that's the story we're going to tell.
To begin to explain the epic cataclysm that appeared on my computer screen, I have to go back a few centuries, back to a time when that tiny squadron of photons still traversed the outer edge of the Milky Way's Orion Arm. There was another era on Earth, when there were big changes and new ideas – especially in a small corner of the planet. WITH ITS tall and austere stone TOWER, St Michael's Parish Church in the village of Thornhill in West Yorkshire, England, seems like an unlikely place to cultivate the secrets of the Universe. Perhaps there is something in the wild green terrain of the surroundings or in the skies of harsh winters that causes a person to ruminate on great cosmic thoughts. In fact, in 1767, a remarkable event occurred in the small community. Into that milieu emerged an extraordinary thinker, a polymath whose mind roamed the vastness of space. And he was also the new Dean of Thornhill.