Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays

Stephen Hawking

Bantam Books, 1993 - Cosmology - 182 pages

In his phenomenal bestseller A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking literally transformed the way we think about physics, the universe, reality itself. Widely regarded as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein, he has opened our minds to today's most important scientific ideas about the cosmos. Now Stephen Hawking returns to shed new light on the darkest regions of space and time...and to reveal an extraordinary array of possibilities for our understanding of the universe. These thirteen essays and one remarkable extended interview broadcast over the BBC on Christmas day 1992 range from the autobiographical to the purely scientific. Building on his earlier work, Stephen Hawking discusses imaginary time, how black holes can give birth to baby universes, and scientists' efforts to find a complete unified theory that would predict everything in the universe, a concept that he believes will come to seem as natural to the next generation as the idea that the world is round. With the great unfolding mysteries of the universe as a backdrop, Stephen Hawking also reflects on free will, the value of life, and his perceptions of death. He looks at how science theory converges with - and diverges from - science fiction, as well as how science fact interfaces with our own lives. The pieces in this collection reveal Stephen Hawking variously as the scientist, the concerned world citizen, the man, and - always - the rigorous and imaginative thinker. Severely disabled by ALS - Lou Gehrig's disease - he describes the way in which this has affected but not constrained his personal and intellectual life: from the special computer technology that lets him translate his thoughts intowords and his words into sounds, enabling him to write and speak, to the process of evolving his ideas, teaching his students, and working with his colleagues. Using his characteristic mastery of language, his sense of humor, his commitment to plain speaking, and his disdain for pompousness, Stephen Hawking invites us in this book to know him better and to share his passion for the voyage of intellect and imagination that has opened new ways to understanding the very nature of the universe.

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BLACK HOLES AND BABY UNIVERSES: and Other Essays

User Review  - Kirkus

Superstar physicist Hawking—whose A Brief History of Time (1988) is ensconsed in the Guinness Book of Records for having had the longest bestseller-run in English-language history—returns with 11 ...

Black holes and baby universes and other essays

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Hawking is quite probably the most admired and recognizable figure in science today. His A Brief History of Time ( LJ 4/15/88) was a surprise best seller that stimulated a public fascination with this ...

Contents

• PHYSICS?: 49
• THE QUANTUM MECHANICS OF BLACK HOLES: 101
• BLACK HOLES AND BABY UNIVERSES: 115

About the author

Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8, 1942. He received a first class honors degree in natural science from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He was a theoretical physicist and has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University from 1982 until his death. In 1974, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific organization. In 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease confined him to a wheelchair and reduced his bodily control to the flexing of a finger and voluntary eye movements, but left his mental faculties untouched. He became a leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes. He wrote numerous books including A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Black Holes and Baby Universes, On the Shoulders of Giants, A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, and Brief Answers to the Big Questions. In 1982, he was named a commander of the British Empire. A film about his life, The Theory of Everything, was released in 2014 and was based on his first wife Jane Hawking's book Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. He died on March 14, 2018 at the age of 76.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays; A Bantam book
• Author: Stephen Hawking
• Publisher: Bantam Books, 1993
• Original from: University of Minnesota
• Digitized: Jan 21, 2010
• ISBN: 0553095234, 9780553095234
• Length: 182 pages