Carlo Rovelli
Buchi Bianchi

In a pleasantly informal way, Rovelli tries to share his theory on white holes with us, celestial bodies that are currently purely theoretical with a very complicated functioning. More than the white holes themselves, about which probably at the end of the reading everyone will have some doubts (especially those like me who know nothing about physics), what strikes and remains impressed are his digressions on the history of science and, why not, also on the philosophy of science. After all, as well explained in the book, trying to figure out the functioning of something that by definition is neither measurable nor observable, the biggest challenge is being able to understand what of what we think we know about reality needs to be questioned.

The book, interspersed with Dantean quotes, seems, first of all, to want to set the author's reflections on the concepts of time and reality, and in the third part, the most beautiful part of the book, starting from the paradox of the loss of information of matter inside the fallen star, which for Rovelli would be solved precisely by postulating the white hole, the reflection shifts to the perception of time in a reality that in the fourth dimension moves only in one direction, more than forward, downward, as explained by the beautiful final example of the two tanks. Quantum physics forces us to admit that time may not have its own direction, but it is the unbalanced arrangement of matter in the past that determines change, and therefore the very existence of the future state of matter (ultimately identical to the first step?): does the existence of change create the present? Do we remember the past and not know the future only because in the past there was more disorder, and therefore traces and clues of it? And is this the only reason why the effect follows the cause?

Reluctantly, I leave the answers to those who are able to find them. In the book, above all, emerges the figure of a humanist scientist, dedicated not only to scientific thought, but also devoted to the dear old battered analogical thought, always known to the Orientals, initially cultivated in the West by artists. To push us beyond what we know, we must abandon an unknown quantity of rules and "certainties," to try to think modularly, imaginatively. Try to abandon the notions of cause and effect, to discover hidden relationships in what surrounds us.