What does it feel like to understand something about the universe that no one has ever known before? To predict real things using only equations scrawled on a blackboard - and why is mathematics is such a perfect model of our physical reality?
From the discovery of Neptune to Einstein's troublesome prediction of gravitational waves to the huge multinational project of proving Higgs' boson, Marcus Chown takes us on a vivid, witty and illuminating tour of science's most significant breakthroughs, and highlights the central, mysterious magic of science: its astonishing predictive power.