A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help non-scientists understand fundamental questions of physics and our existence: where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to deal with these questions (and where we might look for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; the concepts are so vast (or so tiny) that they cause mental vertigo while reading, and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking for as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of "the mind of God". Reviews of this book Books - Stephen Hawking Books Stephen Hawking Books Professor Hawking has published many books tackling the fundamental questions about the universe and our existence.

Stephen has also published many scientific papers and lecture notes . My Brief History My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking’s improbable journey, from his post-war London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. Illustrated with rarely seen photographs, this concise, witty and candid account introduces readers to the inquisitive schoolboy whose classmates nicknamed him ‘Einstein’; the jokester who once placed a bet with a colleague over the existence of a black hole; and the young husband and father striving to gain a foothold in the world of academia. Read more , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . The Grand Design When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent ‘grand design’ of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. Read more , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . A Brief History of Time Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries?

These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. Read more , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . A Briefer History of Time Although “briefer,” this book is much more than a mere explanation of Hawking’s earlier work. A Briefer History of Time both clarifies and expands on the great subjects of the original, and records the latest developments in the field—from string theory to the search for a unified theory of all the forces of physics. Thirty-seven full-color illustrations enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating and must-have addition in its own right to the great literature of science and ideas. Read more , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . Black Holes: The Reith lectures George and the Blue Moon “It is said that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, and nowhere is that more true than in the case of black holes.

Black holes are stranger than anything dreamed up by science fiction writers.” In 2016 Professor Stephen Hawking delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on a subject that has fascinated him for decades – black holes. In these flagship lectures the legendary physicist argues that if we could only understand black holes and how they challenge the very nature of space and time, we could unlock the secrets of the universe. In my latest book for children, "George and the Blue Moon", George and Annie, set out to solve a mystery set on one of the cosmic waterworlds of space. Is there life under the icy crust? Where did those robots come from and who is controlling them? Meanwhile, my two young heroes win places on a Mars training programme which has a dangerous and unexpected twist. Suddenly, the best friends find themselves fighting for survival in what feels like the Hunger Games set on the red planet. Packed with space facts and essays from leading scientists, it is my most unpredictable thriller so far! George and the Unbreakable Code George and the Big Bang Stephen and Lucy Hawking's fourth book about the adventures of George and Annie.

Just as thrilling a book as all the ones before it, George and the Unbreakable Code also delves deeper and covers topics and ideas that the intended readers might not normally think about. Overall, a brilliant book as always brought from the fabulous Hawking duo. See a review , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . The third book in the series, with a full colour set of photographs, illustrating the wonder of the cosmos, George and the Big Bang, follows George’s adventures in the universe. You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt The second in the series of children's books written by Stephen and Lucy Hawking. George and Annie, the middle-school cosmologists, return in this sequel to George's Secret Key to the Universe. You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . George's Secret Key to the Universe The first in a series of children's books that melds cosmology and adventure, co-authored by Professor Hawking and his daughter Lucy. George's best friend Annie needs help. Her scientist father, Eric, is working on a space project - and it's all going wrong. A robot has landed on Mars, but is behaving very oddly.

And now Annie has discovered something weird on her dad's super-computer... You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . The Universe in a Nutshell In 200 highly illustrated pages, Hawking is pushing the frontiers of popular physics beyond relativity and quantum theory, past superstring theory and imaginary time, into a dizzying new world of M-theory and branes. Read more , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . Black Holes and Baby Universes In his first collection of essays and other pieces - on subjects that range from warmly personal to the wholly scientific- Stephen Hawking is revealed variously as the scientist, the man, the concerned world citizen, and - as always - the rigorous and imaginative thinker. You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . On the Shoulders of Giants On the Shoulders of Giants tells a compelling story, using original papers from Einstein, Copernicus, Galilei, Kepler and Newton. Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking explains how these works changed the course of science, ushering astronomy and physics out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world. Read more , or you can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk .

The Large Scale Structure of Space-time A textbook for Physicists, this 1973 book explores two predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity: first, that the ultimate destiny of many massive stars is to undergo gravitational collapse and to disappear from view, leaving behind a 'black hole' in space; and secondly, that there will exist singularities in space-time itself. You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . God created the Integers God Created The Integersis Stephen Hawking's personal choice of the greatest mathematical works in history. The book includes landmark discoveries spanning 2500 years and representing the work of mathematicians such as Euclid, Georg Cantor, Kurt Godel, Augustin Cauchy, Bernard Riemann and Alan Turing. You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk . A Brief History of Time Summary - eNotes.com A Brief History of Time Summary link Link Stephen Hawking’s popularization of modern cosmology, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, made publishing history (and the Guinness Book of Records) when it remained on the London Times’ best-seller list for more than four years, much longer than any previous book.

It was also extraordinarily successful in the United States and other countries and was translated into more than sixty languages. For a work dealing with abstruse astrophysical concepts to sell more than nine million copies was surprising, even to its author. Variously characterized as a landmark in scientific writing and the most popular scientific text of all time, it was also chosen as one of the one hundred most important books of the twentieth century, and a Cambridge University poll ranked it as the book “most likely” to have the same influence as Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Because of the phenomenal success of A Brief History of Time, Hawking published a series of corrected, updated, and expanded editions, including a tenth-anniversary edition and an illustrated edition with more than 240 photographs, diagrams, and computer-generated images. An abridged and simplified version was published in 2005. American film director Steven Spielberg, who had met Hawking, produced Errol Morris’s successful documentary A Brief History of Time, released in 1991, which documented Hawking’s life and accomplishments.

The film’s success led to the publication of a reader’s companion to the film and book. The success of the companion in turn led to a six-part television miniseries, Stephen Hawking’s Universe, first televised in 1997. In 2008, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time was combined with the illustrated version of Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), demonstrating the book’s continuing popularity. Critics, scholars, and even Hawking’s mother developed various explanations for the book’s exceptional success. Hawking’s publisher, who had warned him that every mathematical equation included in the text would halve the book’s sales, felt that the absence of mathematics—with the exception of Albert Einstein’s famous expression of the relationship between matter and energy—played a role in the book’s popularity. Some commentators attributed the book’s prodigious sales to the author’s genuine talent for using similes, analogies, and humor to make complex mathematical and physical ideas understandable to lay readers. Others thought that, like Einstein, Hawking was able to communicate to ordinary readers his childlike wonder over the mysteries of the universe and the joy of discovering the solutions to some of these mysteries.

More controversially, a few critics admonished the book’s publisher for exploiting Hawking’s disabilities for commercial purposes. For most of his life, Hawking has suffered an increasingly debilitating case of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which requires him to use a wheelchair (as depicted on the front of the book’s dust jacket). His mother responded that her son’s ability to overcome his handicaps and become a very successful scientist and science popularizer served as an example of inspiration, not exploitation. Hawking himself has stated that he wrote the book, which took him over five years, to help provide for his family, especially for the education of his children. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking tries to answer certain basic questions that nonscientists have about the universe. For example, how did it originate, how will it end, how is it structured, and is it finite or infinite? To communicate how modern scientists answer these questions, Hawking uses two fundamental theories: general relativity and quantum mechanics. General relativity is Einstein’s theory, involving innovative ideas of space, time, matter, and gravity that enabled him and others to deepen their understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe.

Quantum mechanics, developed by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg and others, enabled scientists to understand puzzling phenomena at the subatomic level. Like all theories, relativity and quantum mechanics are provisional. They are not even consistent with each other. Nevertheless, they superseded the model of matter and the universe that had been formulated by Sir Isaac Newton, whose mathematical description of gravity as a mutual... (The entire section is 1870 words.) Get Free Access Start your free trial with eNotes for complete access to this resource and thousands more. 30,000+ Study Guides Save time with thousands of teacher-approved book and topic summaries. Get Homework Help Ask real teachers questions on any subject or search 300,000+ answers. On the Go Access Stephen Hawking - IMDb IMDb Actor | Writer | Miscellaneous Crew Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England as Stephen William Hawking. He is an actor, known for A Brief History of Time (1991), Stephen Hawking's Universe (1997) and Hawking (2013). He was previously married to Elaine Mason and Jane Hawking .

See full bio » Born: a list of 42 people created 12 Jan 2013 a list of 7 people created 29 Jan 2013 a list of 212 people created 13 May 2014 a list of 35 people created 05 May 2015 a list of 970 people created 11 months ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Stephen Hawking's work have you seen? User Polls The 11th Hour Himself - Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge University (2007) 2016 Quantum Is Calling (TV Movie) Stephen Hawking - Descent: Part 1 (1993) ... Stephen Hawking (as Professor Stephen Hawking) Hide Devil Hunters (consultant: theoretical physics) ( announced ) Hide - Stephen Hawking's Universe (2009) ...

(special thanks) 2006 Big Nothing (thanks - as Professor Stephen Hawking) 1997-1998 TV Offal (TV Series) (special thanks - 7 episodes) - Episode #1.6 (1998) ... (special thanks - as Professor Stephen Hawking) - Episode #1.5 (1998) ... (special thanks - as Professor Stephen Hawking) - Episode #1.4 (1998) ... (special thanks - as Professor Stephen Hawking) - Episode #1.3 (1998) ... (special thanks - as Professor Stephen Hawking) - Episode #1.2 (1998) ...

(special thanks - as Professor Stephen Hawking) 2016 GENIUS by Stephen Hawking (TV Series documentary) Himself 2015 Destination Mars (TV Mini-Series documentary) Himself 2015 Hubble's Cosmic Journey (TV Movie documentary) Himself - Cosmologist 2013 South Today (TV Series) Himself 2012 Stephen Hawking's Grand Design (TV Mini-Series documentary) Himself 2011 Curiosity (TV Series documentary) Himself - Host 2011 Beautiful Equations (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2010 Larry King Live (TV Series) Himself 2010 Stephen Hawking's Universe (TV Mini-Series documentary) Himself 2010 How the Universe Works (TV Series documentary) Himself - Phd., Theoretical Physicist 2008 The One Show (TV Series) Himself - Little Brother (2007) ... Himself - Host - The Discarded (2007) ...

Himself - Host (as Professor Stephen Hawking) 2007 The Culture Show (TV Series documentary) Himself 2006 Last Days on Earth (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2006 Invasion of the Ideas (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2005 Richard & Judy (TV Series) Himself 1996-2005 Horizon (TV Series documentary) Himself 2005 Alien Planet (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2004 Naked Science (TV Series documentary) Himself - Cosmologist 2004 This Week (TV Series) Himself 2003 60 Minutes (TV Series documentary) Himself - Physicist (segment "Stephen Hawking") 2002 The Sky at Night (TV Series documentary) Himself 2001 Campus, le magazine de l'écrit (TV Series documentary) Himself 1997-1998 TV Offal (TV Series) Himself - Introduction 1998 'Red Dwarf' A-Z (TV Movie) Himself (as Prof.

Stephen Hawking) 1997 Stephen Hawking's Universe (TV Mini-Series documentary) Himself 1997 Great Composers (TV Series documentary) Scientist 1996 The Big Question (TV Series) Himself 1995 The Colours of Infinity (TV Movie documentary) Himself (uncredited) 1995 Reality on the Rocks (TV Series documentary) Himself 1995 The Science of Star Trek (TV Movie documentary) Himself 1992 Time Travel: The Next Frontier (TV Movie documentary) Himself 1991 The Astronomers (TV Series documentary) Himself 1985 Creation of the Universe (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2016 The Entire Universe (TV Movie) Himself 2015 Quantum Earth (TV Series) Himself - Guest 2014 Nostalgia Critic (TV Series) Himself 2013 America's Book of Secrets (TV Series documentary) Himself 2012 Sendung ohne Namen (TV Series documentary) Himself 2012 Through the Wormhole (TV Series documentary) Himself - Theoretical Physicist 2011/II When Aliens Attack (TV Movie

 documentary) Himself - Theoretical Physicist 2009 Mars: A Horizon Guide (TV Movie documentary) Himself (uncredited) 2008 The Universe (TV Series documentary) Himself - Theoretical Physicist 2005 La Marató 2005 (TV Special) Himself Book: "The Universe in a Nutshell." See more » Publicity Listings: 4 Biographical Movies | 3 Print Biographies | 4 Interviews | 10 Articles | 2 Magazine Cover Photos | See more » Official Sites: Did You Know?

Personal Quote: I think that computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. See more » Trivia: Hawking has been portrayed by actors including Benedict Cumberbatch (in the 2004 TV movie Hawking) and Eddie Redmayne (in The Theory of Everything). Hawking has appeared as himself in shows including "The Big Bang Theory," "The Simpsons," and "Star Trek: The Next Generation". See more » Trademark: His computerized voice box for communicating See more » Star Sign: Stephen Hawking - Wikiquote Stephen Hawking Jump to: navigation , search For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution .

So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality . Quotes[ edit ] Many people would claim that the boundary conditions are not part of physics but belong to metaphysics or religion. They would claim that nature had complete freedom to start the universe off any way it wanted. That may be so, but it could also have made it evolve in a completely arbitrary and random manner. Yet all the evidence is that it evolves in a regular way according to certain laws. Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already! in chronological order The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe. ...we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe. with G.F.R. Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" (1973) Preface. I regard [the many worlds interpretation ] as self-evidently correct. [T.F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves.] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering —is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat , I reach for my gun. In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345 Many people would claim that the boundary conditions are not part of physics but belong to metaphysics or religion. They would claim that nature had complete freedom to start the universe off any way it wanted.

That may be so, but it could also have made it evolve in a completely arbitrary and random manner. Yet all the evidence is that it evolves in a regular way according to certain laws. It would therefore seem reasonable to suppose that there are also laws governing the boundary conditions. "The Quantum State of the Universe", Nuclear Physics (1984) If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics.

Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can. "Handicapped People and Science" by Stephen Hawking, Science Digest 92, No. 9 (September 1984): 92 (details of citation from here ). My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. As quoted in Stephen Hawking's Universe (1985) by John Boslough, Ch. 7 : The Final Question, p. 77. There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary? As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler . p. 444.

Einstein is the only figure in the physical sciences with a stature that can be compared with Newton . Newton is reported to have said "If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." This remark is even more true of Einstein who stood on the shoulders of Newton. Both Newton and Einstein put forward a theory of mechanics and a theory of gravity but Einstein was able to base General Relativity on the mathematical theory of curved spaces that had been constructed by Riemann while Newton had to develop his own mathematical machinery. It is therefore appropriate to acclaim Newton as the greatest figure in mathematical physics and the Principia is his greatest achievement. "Newton's Principia" in 300 Years of Gravitation. (1987) by S. W. Hawking and W. Israel , p. 4 Cambridge University Press , Cambridge ISBN 0521343127 What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

Der Spiegel (17 October 1988). We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. Der Spiegel (17 October 1988). On seeing the Enterprise's warp engine while visiting the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation (where he would briefly play himself in the 1993 episode Descent, Part I ), Hawking smiled and said: I'm working on that. Quoted in The Star Trek Encyclopedia (1999) by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, p. 185. For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd 's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin' (2014). [discussing Roger Penrose ] These lectures have shown very clearly the difference between Roger and me. He's a Platonist and I'm a positivist. He's worried that Schrödinger's cat is in a quantum state, where it is half alive and half dead. He feels that can't correspond to reality. But that doesn't bother me. I don't demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don't know what it is. Reality is not a quality you can test with litmus paper. All I'm concerned with is that the theory should predict the results of measurements. Quantum theory does this very successfully. It predicts that the result of an observation is either that the cat is alive or that it is dead. It is like you can't be slightly pregnant: you either are or you aren't.

During a debate with Roger Penrose in 1994 at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 121 So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. Unsourced variants: Not only does God play dice with the Universe; he sometimes casts them where they can't be seen. Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. I don't believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already! It could come in the next 20 years, but we might never find it. Science Watch (September 1994).

The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes. From an interview with Ken Campbell on the 1995 show Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. At a speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in The Daily News (4 August 1994) . A nearly identical quote can be found at the end of the second paragraph of his lecture Life in the Universe , written in 1996. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. From the lecture Life in the Universe , written in 1996. Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do. Einstein was confused, not the quantum theory .

Lecture at the Amsterdam Symposium on Gravity, Black Holes, and String Theory (June 21, 1997) All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. From the 1997 television program Stephen Hawking's Universe Unsourced variant: All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. Perhaps that is why I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. This quote seems to combine the above sentence from Stephen Hawking's Universe with a statement from the Foreword to The Illustrated Brief History of Time: As Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft (a former post-doc of mine) remarked: I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological — technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. From Hawking's article A Brief History of Relativity , in Time magazine (31 December 1999).

One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds? The Universe in a Nutshell , p. 59 (2001). Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do. Interview "Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001) I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space... I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.

"Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001). We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life. We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics. Quoted in "Leaping the Abyss" (April 2002) by Gregory Benford, in Reason Magazine . [on the possibility of contact with an alien civilization] I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low. From an appearance in the National Geographic Channel program Naked Science: Alien Contact, as quoted in The New York Times (24 November 2004) and a CNN transcript of an interview with Seth Shostak from Anderson Cooper 360 (26 November 2004) . I have no idea.

People who boast about their IQ are losers. Response upon being questioned as to his IQ , in interview with Deborah Solomon "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004). Life would be tragic if it weren't funny. As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004). I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos? As quoted in a TED talk, " Asking big questions about the universe ". My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus. As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004) Unsourced variant: "When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have." The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to generate spontaneously elsewhere in the universe. From an appearance in the Discovery Channel program Alien Planet (14 May 2005).

I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in a state where it can not be easily recognized. I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in a state where it can not be easily recognized. It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, if one keeps the smoke and the ashes. But it is difficult to read. In practice, it would be too difficult to re-build a macroscopic object like an encyclopedia that fell inside a black hole from information in the radiation, but the information preserving result is important for microscopic processes involving virtual black holes. I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.

As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005). It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining. As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005). Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry. Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry. As quoted in Stephen Hawking: A Biography (2005) by Kristine Larsen, p. 43. The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope. On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006) . The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already.

The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can. ABC News interview (16 August 2006). As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change... There’s a realization that we are changing our climate for the worse. That would have catastrophic effects.

Although the threat is not as dire as that of nuclear weapons right now, in the long term we are looking at a serious threat. At a press conference for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , as the Doomsday Clock is moved forward by two minutes to five minutes to midnight, as quoted in "Nukes, climate push 'Doomsday Clock' forward" MSNBC (1 January 2007). The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away. Quoted in "Stephen Hawking prepares for weightless flight", New Scientist (26 April 2007) . The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come! After completing a zero-gravity flight in a specially modified plane, as quoted in "Hawking takes zero-gravity flight" BBC News (27 April 2007) . In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?

Open question, posted to the Internet, as quoted in The Guardian, and "Watching the World" in Awake! magazine (June 2007); a month after posting the question he explained: I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face. To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit. From Hawking's Foreward to The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss (2007), p. xiii . There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works. Interview with Diane Sawyer , as quoted in "Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'" on ABC World News (07 June 2010) . I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first... I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. "Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive interview" in New Scientist, 4 January 2012. I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn’t prevent them from doing and not regret those they can’t do…I visited the Soviet Union seven times. The first time I went with a student party in which one member, a Baptist, wished to distribute Russian-language Bibles and asked us to smuggle them in. We managed this undetected, but by the time we were on our way out the authorities had discovered what we had done and detained us for a while. However, to charge us with smuggling Bibles would have caused an international incident and unfavorable publicity, so they let us go after a few hours. [1] The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.

BBC, Dec 2 2014 If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution . So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality . A Brief History of Time (1988)[ edit ] The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired. Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein 's famous equation, E {\displaystyle E=mc^{2}} . I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers. Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.

No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory. Ch. 1. It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chances of survival. However, provided the universe has evolved in a regular way, we might expect that the reasoning abilities that natural selection has given us would be valid also in our search for a complete unified theory, and so would not lead us to the wrong conclusions.

Ch. 1. Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points. Ch. 2 I still believe there are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature. The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired. Ch. 8. Galileo , perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science. p. 179. One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE. Ch. 8. Just like a computer, we must remember things in the order in which entropy increases. This makes the second law of thermodynamics almost trivial.

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. You can’t have a safer bet than that! Ch. 9. As I shall describe, the prospects for finding such a theory seem to be much better now because we know so much more about the universe. But we must beware of overconfidence - we have had false dawns before! At the beginning of this century, for example, it was thought that everything could be explained in terms of the properties of continuous matter, such as elasticity and heat conduction. The discovery of atomic structure and the uncertainty principle put an emphatic end to that. Then again, in 1928, physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Born told a group of visitors to Gottingen University, "Physics, as we know it, will be over in six months." His confidence was based on the recent discovery by Dirac of the equation that governed the electron. It was thought that a similar equation would govern the proton, which was the only other particle known at the time, and that would be the end of theoretical physics. However, the discovery of the neutron and of nuclear forces knocked that one on the head too.

Having said this, I still believe there are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature. Ch. 11. Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities.The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability. Ch. 12. Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Ch. 12. Online text To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen. When I gave a lecture in Japan, I was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, because it might affect the stock market.

However, I can re-assure anyone who is nervous about their investments that it is a bit early to sell: even if the universe does come to an end, it won't be for at least twenty billion years. By that time, maybe the GATT trade agreement will have come into effect. The Steady State theory was what Karl Popper would call a good scientific theory: it made definite predictions, which could be tested by observation, and possibly falsified. Unfortunately for the theory, they were falsified. To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen. The universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. As any economist could have predicted, the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe. God Created the Integers (2007)[ edit ] Full title: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (2007).

Mathematics is more than a tool and language for science. It is also an end in itself, and as such, it has, over the centuries, affected our worldview in its own right. Preface. Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010)[ edit ] So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist. If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. … We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. The Grand Design (2010)[ edit ] Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. Curiosity (2011)[ edit ] We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God.

No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful. (Quoted from the Discovery Channel , 15 August 2011.) Stephen Hawking (Author of A Brief History of Time) edit data Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England. His parents' house was in north London, but during the second world war Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead. After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science.

Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one wo Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England. His parents' house was in north London, but during the second world war Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead. After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science. Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton. Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G.F.R. Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W. Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W. Israel. Stephen Hawking has three popular books published; his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays and most recently in 2001, The Universe in a Nutshell. There are .pdf and .ps versions of his full publication list. Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes and is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Stephen Hawking continues to combine family life (he has three children and one grandchild), and his research into theoretical physics together with an extensive programme of travel and public lectures. ...more

Question: Which physicist wrote "A Brief History of Time"?
Answer: Stephen Hawking