A Brief History of Time

Résumé : ‘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?’ Starting with Aristotle, Ptolemy and the birth of physics, Hawking proceeds to tackle the biggest questions about our universe and the nature of time. He deals with Einstein’s theory of relativity, the expanding universe, the big bang, the big crunch, wormholes, black holes, cold stars, pulsars and time travel, and along the way he poses those questions that lie at the heart of human curiosity. Why, for example, do we remember the past and not the future? Is time travel possible and, if so, why haven’t we seen any travellers from the future? Ultimately, Hawking furthers the search for a single unifying theory – an equation that would fuse quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity, bringing us closer to ‘a complete description of the universe we live in’. With 16 pages of colour and black and white plates as well as a frontispiece, this edition features remarkable illustrations of space that bring Hawking’s universe to life, among them whirlpool galaxies, the eerie spectacle of gas and dust rising through the Eagle Nebula, and Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that sits at the centre of the Milky Way. In his introduction, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees outlines Hawking’s extraordinary achievements, including how he has helped to usher in an age in which our understanding of the cosmos is greater than it has ever been, and how ‘millions have had their cosmic horizons widened’ by this remarkable work. Published in series with Chaos: Making a New Science.