What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind’s most enduring questions may lie in science’s greatest enigma: black holes. A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life.

Unable to generate enough heat to maintain its outer layers, it shrinks catastrophically down to an infinitely dense point. When this phenomenon was first proposed in 1...