Author: Stephen Hawking
Pages: 226, Year: 1988,
ISBN: 0553380168
A Brief History of Time can unquestionably be considered as the genre of popular science and accepted by the general audience. And that was chiefly because of the pure profoundness with which Hawking elucidated ideas that had hitherto been restricted to the common people and to many extent scientific community. The book tried to wrestle questions that are essential for every human in everyday lives. Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? Is the universe endless? Was there a beginning of time? What is our place in the universe?
Stephen Hawking is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of A Brief History of Time which was an international bestseller. Now the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Founder of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge, his other books for the general reader include A Briefer History of Time, the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universe and The Universe in a Nutshell.
A brief summary of the chapters;
In the first chapter; Our Picture of the Universe: A rudimentary knowledge of the history and expansion of cosmology starting from Ptolemy's Universe, Copernicus, Galileo to the recent notion. In the second chapter; Space & Time: Dr. Hawking presents, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, how Einstein recycled Maxwell's equations, the constancy for the speed of light to form it. Then comes the famous Michelson-Morley experiment. Here Prof. Hawking swiftly presents, Einstein's magnum opus: The General Theory of Relativity, which transformed our perspective of space time. In the third chapter; The Expanding Universe: Hubble's observation, Doppler Effect, The red shift, Friedmann model. Here he presenting the concept of singularity: the extreme prediction of General relativity and Black Hole. In the fourth chapter; The Uncertainty Principle: Enter the particle zoo. The crux of particle physics, Heinsenberg's uncertainty principle. Uncertainty principle, Wave particle duality, The double-slit. In the fifth chapter; Elementary Particle & The Forces of Nature: Understanding elementary particles, quarks (which makes up proton and neutron). Electron spin, what is a half spin.
In the sixth chapter; Black Holes. Chandrashekhar Limit, Tolman-Volkoff-Oppenheimer Limit, What is Schwarzschild radius, Clear out the misunderstanding between infinite density and infinite mass. In the seventh chapter; Black Holes are not So Black. Here Dr.Hawking searches more into black holes, event horizon. For the first time, Hawking presents his wonderful work which is called The Hawking radiation-entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. In the eighth chapter; The Origin and the fate of Universe: in this chapter author talks about the beginning and the ongoing process of the universe. In the ninth chapter; The Arrow of time: here author expounds about disorder, entropy, the thermodynamic arrow of time. In the tenth chapter; Wormhole and time travel: here authors talks about Grand unified theory (GUT) and his attempt to relate the three forces of nature. Author then talks about string theory, supper symmetry and many cutting-edge ideas.
Dr. Hawking ends the book with an optimists note: A complete, consistent, unified theory is only the first step; our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence. 'If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason for then we would know the mind of God.' (Ch. 11). "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" (Ch 8). "These laws of physics may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it." (Ch 8) Though Hawking undeniably seeks to display some parameters on the role of the Creator or, more precisely, to eradicate the necessity of a Creator's intervention in the existence and expansion of the universe, he is not trying to remove Him altogether. He categorically discards the tag "atheist." He comes closer, possibly, to appropriate the description of a deist.
His denial of the God of the Bible also explains why Hawking is forced to discard the anthropic principle. (Ch 8) The anthropic principle is an opinion that the universe has all the essential and narrowly-defined features to make man and his continuous existence conceivable. Hawking seemingly finds it unbearable to trust that "this whole vast construction exists simply for our sake." As support he says that "there does not seem to be any need for all those other galaxies nor for the universe to be so uniform and similar in every direction on the large scale” (Ch 3), but here he overlooks a rising body of research. The uniformity, homogeneity, and mass density of the universe all must be exactly valued for human life to be potential at any time in the history of the universe. In the introductory paragraph of his final chapter, Hawking states the objectives of his life and work. "What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?" Hawking's vision is to answer these questions through physics alone, which he would never be able to answer.
The question Hawking never answered was why those laws of physics exist? Even if it were possible, why would it be anticipated that such laws of physics would exist that universes to be created from nothing? Why wouldn't a true nothing consist of no laws of physics and no probability of anything popping into existence? Anyway it was a pleasure to read it, except a couple of chapters which really would be difficult for common reader, and it is going to enjoyment any reader who likes the genre of popular science.
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