The Barefoot Hiker
A Brief History of Time
A Brief History of Time
From the Big Bang to Black Holesby Stephen W. Hawking
1988, Bantam Books, ISBN: 0-553-05340-X
Stephen W. Hawking has achieved international prominence as one of
the great minds of the twentieth century. Now, for the first time, he has
written a popular work exploring the outer limits of our knowledge of
astrophysics and the nature of time and the universe. The result is a truly
enlightening book: a classic introduction to today's most important scientific
ideas about the cosmos, and a unique opportunity to experience the intellect of
one of the most imaginative, influential thinkers of our age.
From the vantage point of the wheelchair where he has spent the last twenty
years trapped by Lou Gehrig's disease, Professor Hawking himself has
transformed our view of the universe. His groundbreaking research into black
holes offers clues to that elusive moment when the universe was born. Now, in
the incisive style which is his trademark, Professor Hawking shows us how
mankind's "world culture" evolved from the time of Aristotle through
the 1915 breakthrough of Albert Einsten, to the exciting ideas ot today's
prominent young physicists.
Was there a beginning of time? Will there be an end? Is the universe
infinite? Or does it have boundaries? With these fundamental questions in
mind, Hawking reviews the great theories of the cosmos -- and all the puzzles,
paradoxes and contradictions still unresolved. With great care he explains
Galileo's and Newton's discoveries.
Next he takes us step-by-step through Einstein's general theory of relativity
(which concerns the extraordinarily vast) and then moves on to the other great
theory of our century, quantum mechanics (which concerns the extraordinarily
tiny). And last, he explores the worldwide effort to combine the two into a
single quantum theory of gravity, the unified theory, which should resolve all
the mysteries left unsolved -- and he tells why he believes that momentous
discovery is not far off.
Professor Hawking also travels into the exotic realms of deep space, distant
galaxies, black holes, quarks, GUTs, particles with "flavors" and
"spin," antimatter, the "arrows of time" -- and intrigues
us with their unexpected implications. He reveals the unsettling possibilities
of time running backward when an expanding universe collapses, a universe with
as many as eleven dimensions, a theory of a "no boundary" universe
that may replace the big bang theory and a God who may be increasingly fenced
in by new discoveries -- who may be the prime mover in the creation of it all.
A Brief History of Time is a landmark book written for those of us who
prefer words to equations. Told by an extraordinary contributor to the ideas
of humankind, this is the story of the ultimate quest for knowledge, the
ongoing search for the secrets at the heart of time and space.
Coming Out to Parents
Cosmos
Crazy English
Dove
Endangered Pleasures
Finding True Love in a Man-Eat-Man World
HAL's Legacy
The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide
Mutant Message Down Under
Odyssey
Silicon Snake Oil