The Exploration of Space and Time in Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time

February 12, 2022 by Essay Writer

‘A Brief History of Time’ is Stephen Hawking’s way of explaining the most complex concept and ideas of physics such as space, time, black holes, planets, stars and gravity so that we can understand how planet was created, where it came from and where its going. This book will surely let you think beyond what you have learnt. It helps to unfols the concept that lies in darkness. It unfolds the concept of black hole. There is a famous quote from the book itself, that is; ‘The Universe doesn’t allow perfection’ This book is must is must for those who want to think behind the science of each and every celestial bodies and co-relates it to a more easier way of understanding it. Though this is not a much image-based book, so it may be boring for some readers.

Hawking set out a theory of cosmology explained by the union of the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The readers with no prior knowlwdge of scientific theories will find this book interesting and easier to understand because of its use of non- technical terms. The famous theories from this book include the The Bing Bang Theory and The Black Hole Theory. The possibilities of Time travel and Wormhole is another ride of this book. The book is written by an personality who despite having physical limitations has solely discovered many secrets of the universe. Stephen Hawking was a hero before this book arrived and after this book, he became a sort of legend. This can be easily proven by the fact that he was the professor at the same university and was sitting in the same position where Newton used to sit.

There is only one equation used in the book and that too is the most familiar equation of all time. Even people who hate maths, physics and science know about the equation. The equation was; E=MC^2 The world-famous equation given by Einstein which changed the way scientists looked at the matter and helped them and others invent many things thereafter. This book is recommended to all those readers who want to think beyond the box. Already renowned in academia for his contributions to cosmology and scitific phenomenon, Hawking grew into a cultural icon and one of the world’s most celebrated science communicators. Black holes, superstrings and deep dives into the finite yet boundless nature of the universe necessarily make up for great reading. The manner in which Hawking broke down complex concepts of science in theoretical physics, along with his nuisense use of humor and analogy, clearly won over many readers. One of the book’s most famous quote: ‘That if humankind did discover a unified theory of the universe, “we would know the mind of God.”’  A Brief History of Time

It was a book written to explain where the universe came from and where it was headed, and the incredible and complex events that happen in between. He explain the nature of the life of stars and their sizes. The various efforts that have helped us to understand them better. From the old tradition of watching the night skies and forming 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 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 changing this space time-fabric. And then comes a case of singularity which cannot be explained by classical complex theories – what happens inside black holes, and what happened during the Big Bang.

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.His main goal is to give an overview of the subject, but he also attempts to explain some complex things regarding cosmology. Hawking discusses the possibility of time travel and wormholes and explores the possibility of having a universe without a quantum singularity(when there was no time that is, at the beginning of time.

Hawking begins with an account of the historical studies of astronomy by ancients such as Aristotle and Ptolemy. He came to this conclusion via his observations of lunar eclipses and by considering the altitude of the North Star from various observational points. He, like Ptolemy, believed the sun and stars orbited the Earth. This hypothesis was later disp roven by the work of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. As studies of the origin of the universe progressed, two opposing viewpoints become the most common: philosophers believed that the universe had always existed, while theologians generally argued that the universe was created at a specific point in time in the past. The dominant name among the theologians, St. Augustine, held this belief, coupled with the idea that time itself was a concept that did not exist until the creation of the universe. By the twentieth century, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving away from each other, meaning that at one time they were all in one place. Scientists continue to seek a theory that would uncover everything in the universe and be able to explain it all.

Space and time are examined in Chapter Two, especially with respect to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. The big bang, which grew to be the dominant theory of the creation of the universe, is the basis for the third chapter in the described book. This concept of an expanding universe is explained by Hawking via the Doppler shift, which occurs when something moves toward or away from something else. The uncertainty principle, which indicates that the speed and the position of particles cannot both be found at the same time, is the concept of another Chapter. This exclaimed chapter considers the behaviors of light and serves to undermine the concept of deterministic theories, which were said to be able to predict everything in the future. The next chapter explains the building blocks of the universe. These are the smallest things from which all matter is made, and are called quarks. Nuclear forces unite the quarks into neutrons and protons and keep the neutrons and protons together in atoms. Hawking goes on to describe what is known as a “grand unified theory” in which some scientists attempt to explain weak and strong nuclear forces and electromagnetic forces in a unified manner.

Black holes are the central focus of the given book. Black holes are stars that have collapsed into one very small point called a singularity(which has a very strong gravity). They have a very strong gravitational force, thus are able to pull things, including light and stars, to their centers. Black holes are almost impossible to locate because they do not let light out as in return they bend it. However, they can be seen by telescopes when they suck in other stars or a planet, thus emitting x-rays. Subsequent parts explain topics in cosmology including entropy, which concerns disorder in the universe, and the big bang explosion, which is commonly believed to have been the birth of the universe. Wormholes and time travel are discussed as well. A worm hole is, in theory, a passage that could serve as a shortcut through the universe by collapsing space and time.

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