A Brief History Of Time - Book Review
Transcript of A Brief History Of Time - Book Review
A Brief History Of Time
By : Taher K D
CONTENTS
Title Of Book
Publisher’s Detail
Introduction to Author
About the Book
Book Synopsis
Central Idea of the book
My Reading Experience
PUBLISHER’S DETAIL
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely
by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin
Random House. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr.,
Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine. It has since been
purchased several times by companies including National
General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most
recently, Bertelsmann; It began as a mass market publisher,
mostly of reprints of hardcover books, with some original
paperbacks as well.
INTRODUCTION TO AUTHOR
Stephen William Hawking (born 8 January 1942) is an
English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of
Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within
the University of Cambridge. Hawking was the first to set forth a
theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of
relativity and quantum mechanics. He is an Honorary Fellow of
the Royal Society of Arts, and a recipient of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United
States. Hawking has achieved commercial success with works
of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and
cosmology in general.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A Brief History of Time (1988) is a book written by
the scientist and mathematician Stephen Hawking. This book is
about physics, or the study of laws that predict how things work
in the universe. In this book, Stephen Hawking talks about many
theories (or ideas) in physics. Some of the things that he talks
about are the history of physics, gravity, how light moves in the
universe, space-time, elementary particles, black holes, the Big
Bang, and time travel. A Brief History of Time stayed on the
British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237
weeks.
BOOK SYNOPSIS
In this brief history of time and science as we know it today, he
takes us on a journey from the time when Aristotle and the world
of that era believed that Earth was the center of the universe and
supported on the back of a giant tortoise to our contemporary age
when we know better. It is a brief and enjoyable story of science,
the painstaking efforts on the part of scientists and philosophers
to explain the world as we see it or as they saw it, the mistakes
they committed, and the profound truths that they unraveled.
He explain the nature of the stars, their life and their sizes.
The various efforts that have helped us understand them better.
From the old tradition of watching the night skies and forming
stories and superstitions about them to Newton’s law of gravity
and to Einstein’s General theory of relativity, we discover how
it works and how we’ve come this far.
He breaks our notions of absolutes, of how, Newton discovered,
space is relative and then nearly 250 years later, Einstein
shook the world by showing that time isn’t absolute either and
how everything in the world is altering this space time-fabric.
And then comes a case of singularity which cannot be
explained by classical theories - what happens inside black
holes, and what happened during the Big Bang.
Then, he diverts the gaze from the stars to smaller things,
searching for answers on the microscopic level - on how things
are made, and what they are made of.
Until attempts are made to unify the two major theories – The
Quantum theory of electrodynamics which seems to govern
everything small, and the general theory of relativity which
dominates large things– into a single unified ‘Quantum theory
of gravity’. However, we still hold that ‘Gravity is not the
reason why people fall in love’.
If you follow close, as exasperating as it might get - how it all
began and how it will all end, of the existence of God and why
the things are the way they are.
Stephen Hawking, as he himself says, has tried to find
the nature of God, or later as he corrects, the mind of
God in this grand design. He does not disappoint the
meta-physicist who is appeased by the idea of divine
intervention.
In numerous places, he argues with himself over the
universe being a work of God, and how did he go about
doing it? ‘What did God do before he created the
universe?
CENTRAL IDEA OF THE BOOK
Hawking attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology,
including the big bang, black holes and light cones, to the
nonspecialist reader. His main goal is to give an overview of the
subject, but he also attempts to explain some complex
mathematics. In the 1996 edition of the book and subsequent
editions, Hawking discusses the possibility of time travel and
wormholes and explores the possibility of having a universe
without a quantum singularity at the beginning of time.
MY READING EXPERIENCE
The book is beautiful in a way that it is presented. It is a fun read,
but be wary that the jump into the quantum domain can turn the
best of believers into agnostic worriers, so give some allowance to
doubt. It might all be an illusion after all, with us living in the
imaginary while thinking that the real is imaginary, something
like living inside a mirror and thinking that the real person is our
mirror image. It might all lead to zero, everything coming out of
nothing, and yet amounting to nothing (which would be very
frustrating to find out after going through all this). As is often
quoted in the religious books – Seek, and Ye shall find!
Thank You