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