Description:
A popular science book written by Professor Hawking of the University of
Cambridge, described on the book jacket as 'the most brilliant theoretical
physicist since Einstein'.
Reference:
Hawking, S. W. (1988) A Brief History of Time from the Big Bang to Black
Holes, London and Auckland: Bantam Press.
A well‑known
scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on
astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in
turn, orbits around the center
of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a
little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us
is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the
tortoise standing on?' 'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the
old lady. 'But it's turtles
all the way down!'
Most
people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises
rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about
the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and
where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before
then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in Physics, made possible in part by
fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these long-standing
questions. Some day these answers may seem as obvious to us
as the earth orbiting the sun ‑ or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of
tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be) will tell.