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Product Details
Hardcover: 248 pages
Publisher: Bantam; Upd Sub edition (October 1, 1996)
I started reading a sample of something that Einstein had written and I was almost immediately lost and buried in equations. Attempting to finish would have been a complete waste of time. Hawking had the advantage of knowing that his audience could range anywhere from teenagers all the way up to his contemporaries and knew that he would have to attempt to explain a lot of what he was saying and I'd say he did a four star job of that.
I had not been exposed to any physics for almost fifty years and that was only up to the early college level so I had a lot of catching up to do. I was unaware that Einstein's general theory of relativity broke down at the singularity or subatomic level. I had heard of the word 'quark' but never in a context of what it actually was, and I most definitely had never heard of or contemplated the 'principal of uncertainty'.
Mostly I just stayed aware of what new things we were learning through more and better technology, but not theoretical physics. I had followed the building of CERN and the problems they encountered but I never really knew the reasons they were doing their high energy collisions other than for just general knowledge. I had no idea there was some fundamental theories that could be proven or disproved depending on the results.
I'm not saying I'm ready to engage in any debates with even undergraduate physics students but I do feel that in a very basic way I understand the problems current physicists are dealing with. Hawkings seems to think that he and his colleagues are close to a unifying theory that will tie quantum mechanics and gravitational relativity together.Read more ›
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Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time –A Great Use of Yours
Stephen Hawking, considered the world’s most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein, here addresses the questions that have forever haunted mankind: How did mankind, the earth, our solar system, our galaxy, the other galaxies, and the universe begin and when -- and why? Is there a “Master Plan” or do random forces rule events? He judiciously avoids any statements that might incur the wrath of the world’s religions; rather, he forces the reader to reach his/her own conclusions – thus expanding his reader-audience to include people of all persuasions, but the beauty of this relatively brief treatise is to help us better understand the confounding mysteries of the universe in which we live and to assess mankind’s place in it – a Must Read for all inquisitive minds. A mathematician and physicist, Hawking uses scientific observations of “time” to consider the possibilities. “Time,” is “an indefinite continuous duration regarded as that in which events take place.” (The Unabridged Oxford Dictionary). As Hawking notes, it is now generally agreed that time moves both forward and backward in “arrows” and is not absolute, and, further, each observer has his own measure of time, and that space and time are inexorably linked, and, thus, called “space-time”; and gravity bends both, which (among other things) gives rise to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning (in a Big Bang, some 10,000 million years ago and a habitable earth in approximately half of that time) and likely will end (in a Big Crunch in another 10,000M years).Read more ›
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I just saw the film "Hawking," and I really liked it. While it discusses physics, I would say that it spends most of its time dealing with the life and struggles of Stephen Hawking, which might actually be more interesting.
While I wrote a review of that film, there was a scene that really caught my attention that I had to think about for a while, so my thoughts weren't included in that review. I believe that Mr. Hawking was at a conference, and he was in his wheelchair -- of course he was; "don't leave home without it" as they say -- and he was being fed lunch by his assistant. Naturally, he was struggling, and so was his assistant, but that wasn't the interesting part to me. What was interesting: if you pay close attention, no one in the room was paying any attention to Mr. Hawking, even though they all must have known that he might be the Smartest Guy in the Room. Even amongst world-class physicists.
Perhaps they didn't want to bother him, but I think that it went deeper than that. But I also thought about Mr. Hawking just going out in public. My guess: the average person wouldn't recognize him, and the average person wouldn't give him the time of day. I would imagine that it is worse than that. (I have seen these types of scenarios first-hand with people that I have known, and so I can say with certainty that he encounters this all the time.)
But I think that you should give Mr. Hawking the time of day, and you should also read his book "A Brief History of Time," even though this is by no means a trivial read. It seems that he tried to "dumb down" this book as much as he was able, so that the Average Joe could understand it. And while you're reading, you may be bouncing along, thinking, "This isn't so bad. I understand most of it!Read more ›
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This item: The Illustrated Brief History of Time, Updated and Expanded Edition
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