Customer Reviews

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes

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This is a wonderful book. It really explains many concepts of modern physics in layman's terms. Often we hear scientific words bantered about on various educational television programming without really understanding the concepts and theories behind them. This book goes into concise detail on quite a few topics and does a rather good job explaining them. I thought the explanation of Einstein's general theory of relativity was well done. The explanation of time differential when matter nears the speed of light was explained quite clearly. It truly is relative from your vantage point. Also the concept of space being curved was well presented. This is really a very interesting book. I truly couldn't put it down when I found it in the library. It really stimulates your thought processes and gives you new perspectives on the world we live in. I really like this book.

For those who thought they knew the mind of God

A Brief History of Time (ABHOT) has been with me since its first publication. I now feel, after nearly 20 years of it as a passive hobby, to be able to comprehend and explain what it means to me. It is a deeply personal voyage that I am most glad to have undertaken.

Firstly to call this just a science book, a view I once held, is an understatement. It is both a scientific presentation and the exposure of the corruption of minds that submit completely to a mystery answer for mystery questions. You cannot separate the two in this book. They are interlinked by ABHOT's critic of the persistence of some members of mankind to maintain a wanton lack of knowledge.

This armchair sufficiency in a mystery answer must be combated at all costs in order for us to stop denying that we possess a large brain. If we invoke the mystery explanation as the answer for anything then God just might as well have finished with the spinal cord which would have been enough for us. We are faced with the facts. Creation happened and we want to know how. Hawking knows how.

Since this book deals specifically with theological questions and scientific ones it would be best to start with the theology problems posed by Hawking (the word God appears 40 times). Hawking claims that in 1981, at the end of a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican that they "...were granted an audience with the Pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God." Whether the Pope said this or not is up for debate (the Pope has made official declarations on this matter and they do not feature this element of non-inquiry) but Hawking thinks he knows how this God went about his business. The book builds up to the explanation of the universe starting with this critic of the Church in Chapter 8 - Origins and Fate of the Universe, which describes the history of time as we know it and gives the Church a nudge in the process.

It is obvious that Hawking, strictly using the scientific method, describes the history of time without invoking God or a mystery. Hawking shows us that he knows things about how creation came about and that at no point is an intelligence being used to describe the cosmos. This veil, he believes, was removed long ago with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and now once more by himself.

This is not the first time the Catholic Church is featured in the book. It has a historical relationship with cosmology and a pretty poor one when it comes to Galileo who effectively ended the dark ages by reviving Greek mathematics and physics with an obvious fact that the heaven's change. The Church simply got this badly wrong whatever way you try to cut it (how can God's representatives get it so badly wrong?). The Earth is not the centre of universe. How does the Catholic Church keep their claim to God's representative on Earth if other people are explaining creation without recourse to a mystery? Hawking gives you problem equation that the Church is now dealing with. That equation is... the more we explain things, the less there is for God to do. God = ?

Now we get down to the brass tacks after finishing with this quick lesson about a major negative in theology. How does Hawking know there is less for God to do in his model of the universe? The answer is in the laws that exist and that remain unbroken. Things are the way they are. If God created the universe, he did it this way, the one we observe, the one with laws he doesn't break.

According to Hawking if we know what these laws are then we understand everything there is about how the universe governs itself. This means predicting what it will do. So how do they do that? How do these men of science come up with such outstanding prophecies! Probably the best way to go about ABHOT is to break it down into easy to understand sections.

Contrary to book blurbs, even though this is made for the layman, you can't do it with just this book alone unless you have a background in studying physics. Intense study over the period of several months, years even, as was my case, may be required.

Introduction by Carl Sagan.

Chapter 1 - Our Picture of the Universe
This chapter is easy to understand. It deals with the history of mankind's perception of the universe and gives special note to the Catholic Church's dealings with Copernicus and Galileo. In short the net result is that Churches tell us how to get to heaven while scientists tell us how the heavens work. The Earth actually goes around the sun.

Chapter 2 - Space and Time
Quickly combining Newtonian Gravity with Einstein's relativity we are given examples of spacetime models to explain the speed of light, how time can dilate, light cones and the geometry of spacetime according to relativity (imagine a rubber mesh with balls creating dips in the mesh that in turn create contours, called geodesics, for objects to follow naturally). Mass grips space by telling it how to curve, space grips mass by telling it how to move.*
*If this Chapter does not make sense then read "Introducing Newton and Classical Physics" by William Rankin for Newtonian Physics and "Introducing Relativity" by Bruce Bassett.

Chapter 3 - The Expanding Universe
Astronomical observations by Hubble (has the telescope named after him) prove that the universe is expanding which means at one time in the past it was all together. Penzias and Wilson in 1965 discovered background radiation noise from the big bang. Friedman's projected model of the universe is analysed and Hawking introduces three outcomes where two expands forever and one collapses in eventually, from a big bang to a big crunch.

Chapter 4 - The Uncertainty Principle
This chapter quickly covers three important scientific experiments (blackbody radiation, photoelectric effect and the double-slit experiment problem) that led to the development of Quantum Mechanics and the uncertainty principle that the process of measuring particles on the quantum scale can alter some their attributes*.
*While this chapter can be understood somewhat on its own, it is terribly short. Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" explains it a whole lot better in Chapter 4 - Microscopic Weirdness.

Chapter 5 - Elementary Particles and the Forces of Nature
**Stop Here**. You are not going to understand this part. You could skip this section but then you will not understand Chapter 7. "Introducing Quantum Theory" by J. P. McEvoy does it a lot better and also compliments the Greene book. Spend as long as you need to get an understanding of this. Relativity and quantum mechanics are not unified by the model presented by Hawking (gravity is not unified with the strong or electroweak force). Thus relativity describes macro events, while Quantum Mechanics describes subatomic particle events.

Chapter 6 - Black Holes
Hawking describes the history of Black Holes, what they are and how they advanced our understanding of quantum mechanics and relativity. Keywords are John Wheeler, Chandrasekhar, Oppenheimer and Cygus X-1.

Chapter 7 - Black Holes Ain't So Black
Hawking describes the dynamics of the black hole incorporating quantum mechanics. This section is why Chapter 5 needs to be understood very well.

Chapter 8 - The Origin and Fate of the Universe
This is the big description of how we came to be from the beginnings up until now with the predicted future of the universe which is described as a finite without boundary model. Keywords are Gamow, inflation and Guth.

Chapter 9 - The Arrow of Time
This is amazing. Here Hawking answers the question about Entropy and why the macro universe is gravitating towards disorder in the system it is in. Call an apple order and imagine all the possibilities of a disordered apple. There are much more possibilities of disorder than order. However since our universe was ordered according to the big bang event then the disorder model when collapsed backwards reveals events becoming more ordered as they return to their original state.*
*This chapter excludes how systems can become more ordered in systems that are not closed such as our planet which did not generate or destroy energy or change the balance of energy in the universe because the energy used in our evolution was transformed finally into heat which leaves the planet and goes back into the universe.

Chapter 10 - Wormholes and Time Travel
This chapter did not appear in the original edition. It appears in the new one. Einstein-Rosen bridges are more in-depth in Greene's work.

Chapter 10 (11 in new book) - The Unification of Physics
Hawking points to strings as a possible unification theory. The prediction looks good. Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is a whole book about this. Relativity and quantum mechanics are unified by the models found in superstring theory (see M-Theory and Edward Witten).

Chapter 11 (12 in new book) - Conclusion
Hawking sums up his thoughts.

Glossary
You will reference this constantly to remember important terms. Put it to great use.

Ultimately Hawking does not say God does not exist (that would impossible to prove) but he can certainly critic those who think they know his mind. Wouldn't you think that if anyone was going to dictate how his world works that it would be the Church he started? Consult Galileo on attempts to show them how it worked.


Hawking is obviously the best explanation for creation since the writers of Genesis redacted the creation account from the Enuma Elish somewhere over 2200 years ago.

Living at the end of the 20th century meant being privy to facts that no one else had understood before. I only got it in the 21st. Why settle for anything less than the truth?

Thank you Mr. Hawking for explaining creation like no one else has done before.

This book was written in 1987, and since then others have made developments in physics available to the layman. (See Brian Greene's Elegant Universe, and I believe Hawking has an updated version of Brief History out now.) But this book became available from a friend and I jumped at the opportunity to read it.

Hawking's writing style is very reader-friendly, and generally in layman's terms. There are no equations in this book, although he constantly refers to crunching numbers with relativistic and quantum mechanical equations. The reason why this book remains a good read is because it explains how our understanding of our universe developed from the time of Aristotle through Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein and the scientists of the 20th century. Hawking does a great job explaining how our notions changed as relativity and quantum mechanics were shown to be valid models of physical behavior.

It seems that Hawking's passion is for black holes, but his discussion of them seems very abstract to me. I was more captivated by one of the final chapters called the Arrow of Time. He poses the question of why the thermodynamic, psychological, and cosmological arrows of time run in the same direction. In other words, why does it take energy to create order, why don't we remember the future, and why is the universe expanding? Would it be plausible the other way around? There are lots of intriguing ideas in this brief survey - highly recommended.

I reccommend this book to anyone who has ever thought of those big questions like "what is time", and "what is are status in the universe". This book provides a wonderfull look into the Einstien of our time, Dr. Stephen Hawking.
A WORD OF WARNING, HOWEVER: The book is very dense and builds rapidly. It should be read straight through. Some parts you may already know, and others you not understand at all, but try to read it cover to cover. You will get much more out of it that way. Don't worry if you don't understand some of the concepts. Overall I found it to be a great work on the philosophy of science.

Have you ever thought how everything started? This is what Hawking explains by describing the current theories about the universe.
Although he tries hard to keep it simple, his scientific background doesn't let him be clear enough in some concepts, which are difficult to grasp for ordinary people.

Many of the reviewers of this work have expressed annoyance at both the language and brevity of Stephen Hawking.

As others noted, his wording is NOT difficult and is far 'simpler' than typical scientific literature.

It is not possible to fit a complete, yet brief, description of every topic covered by Hawking in a mere 208 pages! He puts increased emphasis on concepts that are more difficult to understand. Whereas a decent understanding of the important ideas behind Galileo and Ptolemy may be obtained within a few minutes, much more time is necessary to understand the basics of a black hole, anti-matter, etc.

This is a brief history of time, not a brief history of Newton, quantum mechanics, etc. One should not expect to get the full idea from this text but starting points for further research. Each idea is interrelated and thus will help in the big picture. Hawking's book is directed to individuals who otherwise would not pick up a lengthy scientific text. In only 208 pages, one can obtain the starting point for an entirely new dialogue.

First released in 1988 this fantastic cassette settles all arguments about the musical antecedents of the All Your Bases rave phenomenon. This remastered and re-engineered classic benefits enormously from Talvin Singh's deft touch in the studio and Professor Roger Penrose's innovative remixing of several of Stephen Hawking's central equations. Old favourites such as "Big Bang to Big Crunch - Singularity to Singularity" are still here, but revised thinking on non-baryonic particles is reflected, in the case of the above track, with a fresh UK Garage rub surely not foreseen by the astrophysicist when he first started experimenting with Newtonian general relativity and quantum mechanics back in the day. Hawking's freestyling with Roots Manuva on provides a competent (if inevitable) concession to hip-hop - think "Dusted" jacked up with an almost ironic take on string theory. But the Cambridge Lucasian Professor of Mathematics is at his best when he lays down his trademark dub-saturated beats as in "The Role of Weakly Interacting Cold Particles" with Sons of Silence and Professor Alexander Valenkin and the Tufts University Particle Fizzix Boyz taking the 'nuff respects on the sleeve notes.

A great book from one of the greatest minds of our time. This should be required reading for all human beings.

This review pertains to the audio version done by Michael Jackson. I have wanted to read A Brief History of Time for many years, and finally got to it. I was disappointed. The first few chapters were bad enough. Although I understood the early material, since it was a review of past theories, the way Mr. Jackson handled the reading was annoying. He would speed up his reading, then slow it down for mysterious reasons. I started to wonder if he was having trouble understanding the words. Then every once in a while he would snicker at something, apparently trying to make Hawking's occasional dry wit into roll-on-the-floor laughter. By about the third chapter I was seriously considering quitting the whole thing. Only the fame of this book kept me going. The middle chapters were more satisfying, but toward the end when he got into string theory, which I really don't understand, I began having serious problems with Mr. Jackson's lack of feel for the material. He would rush through a long, rather complicated sentence and I would have to rewind and listen to it again, then stop so I could think about what it meant. I kept wishing he would slow down, but he never did, except when he stumbled over a word.

The other thing that would have really helped this recording is if he had started each new side of each tape with a repetition of the previous sentence or two. The previous audio book I listened to did this, and it was really helpful for getting my bearings, especially since I only listened in my car and there were several hours (or sometimes days) between tapes.

All in all, I would not recommend this tape. Try a different one or read the book.

As a confirmed layman fan of all things science related I have, over a span of 40+ years, read and studied concepts related to Special and General Relativity. I picked up Brief History of Time when it came out and simply couldn't digest it. More reading, more study, more thinking and Voila! I picked up Hawking's book again and read it with understanding! With this book, Dr. Hawking has helped me pull all of that study together into a cohesive conceptual body (no small task!). If you have pursued this subject in a similar manner then you will be delighted with this treatment of Relativity and beyond. Now, it is on to String Theory, Dark Energy, Dark Matter and more Hawking books to help explain them.