"For decades, Kip Thorne has been consumed by a desire to better understand our universe's "Warped Side." Using an untold number of computer simulations and mathematical equations, and with a thousand-person fleet of scientists and engineers, Thorne has relentlessly pursued his quest, inventing and constructing, in the process, LIGO, the world's largest gravitational wave observatory, to mediate our first encounters with the Warped Side. Thirteen years in the making, The Warped Side of Our Universe marks the extraordinary collaboration of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and award-winning painter Lia Halloran, and explores the very concepts that first set Thorne to task. Through verse and poetry, the authors address the oldest questions known to man: How did our universe begin? Can anything travel backward in time? How does the Warped Side impact the material side, the side that we humans see and feel? Featuring rich illustrations of stars-giant and dwarf, red and blue-and galaxies-large and small, diffuse and spiraled-and even a soaring Stephen Hawking anchored to his wheelchair, this stunning volume carries us into and through the dark side of the universe"-- Provided by publisher.