Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking is a tough one to get through because of the deep subject matter but it tells the fascinating story of important scientific advances during the last century. It chronicles the work of Einstein, Heisenburg, and Hawking. If you are looking for a good explanation why most scientists believe in the Big Bang this is your book. In addition, Hawking describes his no boundary proposal which attempts to do away with an absolute singularity in the beginning of time which reduces the role of God as the immediate cause of the universe. This book is very good and a must read if you are interested in origins.

to quote: "If the universe is completely self-contained, with no singularities or boundaries, and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as Creator. Einstein once asked the question: "How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?" If the no boundary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions. He would, of course, still have had the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. This, however, may not really have been all that much of a choice; there may well be only one, or a small number, of complete unified theories, such as the heterotic string theory, that are self-consistent and allow the existence of structures as complicated as human beings who can investigate the laws of the universe and ask about the nature of God."

The book was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the nature of the universe, but since then there have been extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic world. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed the wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected.

Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these many observations, as well as his most recent research, for this revised and expanded edition Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, revised and updated the original chapters throughout, and written an entirely new chapter on the fascinating subject of wormholes and time travel.

A classic work that now brings to the reader the latest understanding of cosmology, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time is the story of the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space..

If you are interested in finding about constructing the universe then this book is MUST read..

Happy reading...