Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of a Genius. The structure of the Universe - in simple terms. "A Brief History of Time." Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow

Brief history of time

Preface

Only four letters distinguish the title of this book from the title of the one first published in 1988. “A Brief History of Time” remained on the London Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks, and every 750th person on our planet, adult or child, purchased it. A remarkable success for a book devoted to the most difficult problems of modern physics. However, these are not only the most difficult, but also the most exciting problems, because they address us to fundamental questions: what do we really know about the Universe, how did we acquire this knowledge, where did the Universe come from and where is it going? These questions formed the main subject of A Brief History of Time and became the focus of this book. A year after the publication of A Brief History of Time, responses began to pour in from readers of all ages and backgrounds around the world. Many of them expressed the wish for a new version of the book to be published that, while retaining the essence of A Brief History of Time, would explain the most important concepts in a simpler and more entertaining way. Although some may have expected it to be A Long History of Time, the response from readers made it clear that very few of them were eager to read a lengthy treatise that covered the subject at the level of a college course in cosmology. Therefore, while working on “The Shortest History of Time,” we preserved and even expanded the fundamental essence of the first book, but at the same time tried to leave its volume and accessibility of presentation unchanged. This is in fact shortest history, since we have omitted some purely technical aspects, however, as it seems to us, this gap is more than filled with a deeper interpretation of the material, which truly forms the core of the book.

We also took the opportunity to update the information and include the latest theoretical and experimental data in the book. A Brief History of Time describes the progress that has been made toward a complete unified theory in recent times. In particular, it concerns the latest provisions of string theory, wave-particle duality, and reveals the connection between various physical theories, indicating that a unified theory exists. As for practical research, the book contains important results of recent observations obtained, in particular, using the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Chapter first

THINKING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE

We live in a strange and wonderful universe. An extraordinary imagination is required to appreciate its age, size, fierceness and even beauty. The place occupied by people in this boundless space may seem insignificant. And yet we are trying to understand how this whole world works and how we, people, look in it.

Several decades ago, a famous scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) gave a public lecture on astronomy. He said that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and it, in turn, revolves around the center of a vast star system called our Galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a small old lady sitting in the back stood up and said:

You've been telling us complete nonsense here. In reality, the world is a flat slab resting on the back of a giant turtle.

Smiling with a feeling of superiority, the scientist asked:

What is the turtle standing on?

“You are a very smart young man, very much,” answered the old lady. - She stands on another turtle, and so on, ad infinitum!

Most people today would find this picture of the universe, this never-ending tower of turtles, quite funny. But what makes us think we know more?

Forget for a minute what you know—or think you know—about space. Look into the night sky. What do all these luminous points look like to you? Maybe they're tiny lights? It is difficult for us to guess what they really are, because this reality is too far from our everyday experience.

British scientist Stephen Hawking, known as the brightest star in modern astrophysics, has died at the age of 76.

Hawking is among the scientists who have had the greatest influence on our modern understanding of the universe with his study of black holes and popular science works such as A Brief History of Time. Born in 1942, the Briton was considered one of the world's greatest minds and was considered by some to be the most famous scientist in the modern world. For other scientists, he was a symbol of the unlimited possibilities of the human mind.

“His departure left an intellectual vacuum. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of energy penetrating the fabric of spacetime that cannot be measured." , world-renowned astrophysicist and science author Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted.

At the age of 21, Professor Hawking was diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease, and doctors gave him only a few years to live. His disease, however, progressed unusually slowly, causing him to work for more than half a century while confined to a wheelchair. In fact, Hawking was a medical miracle - only 5 percent of people who have this form of the disease live more than ten years after diagnosis, but he lived with it for more than five decades. He himself said that his physical condition was not a significant obstacle to his scientific work in the field of theoretical physics and even in some sense helped him.

Hawking lost his voice after severe pneumonia and complications. For a time, his only way of communicating was to spell words literally, raising his eyebrows when someone pointed to the correct letter on a special card. Later, a computer expert from California named Walt Waltow sent him his computer program called "Equalizer", with which the professor could select words from a menu on a screen controlled by a button in his hand. This, combined with a speech synthesizer, became Hawking's trademark "electronic" voice.

The illness did not interfere with his personal life. In 1965, he married his youthful love, Jane Wilde, although at that time he had already been diagnosed with a terrible disease. Their marriage lasted 26 years and ended in misunderstanding, but Hawking became the father of three children.

In 1995, he entered into his second marriage to Elaine Mason, a nurse who then took care of him. They remained together until 2006.
Hawking with his second wife Elaine Mason

The British scientist was known for his work on black holes and relativity, and is among the scientists who have most influenced the modern understanding of the Universe.

At the age of 17, Hawking received a place at Oxford. In 1971, together with Sir Roger Penrose, they provided a mathematical basis to support the Big Bang theory: they showed that if the theory of relativity is correct, then there must be a wormhole point in space-time. They also created the Hawking-Penrose theory of the early development of the universe after the Big Bang and its exponential expansion from a state of much higher temperature and density.
Hawking believed that the future of the human species lay in space.

Hawking also suggested that immediately after the Big Bang, primordial black holes formed and evaporated almost instantly. He later discovered that black holes emit energy and evaporate, a phenomenon that later became known as Hawking Radiation.

Over the years, he has worked on other theories about black holes, including the idea that they can lead to other universes.

In the early 1980s, he proposed that although the Universe has no boundaries, it has a finite size in spacetime. A mathematical proof of this theory was given a little later. According to him, the Universe is limitless, but finite.

Stephen Hawking's work in astrophysics places him among the most prestigious scientists in the world today. He was awarded 12 honorary titles, the Order of the British Empire and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. For 30 years he was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a position held by Isaac Newton and other famous scientists. Although Hawking retired in 2009, he continued to work at the university. Barack Obama presents Hawking with the US Presidential Medal of Freedom

His work in popularizing science brought him widespread fame and glory. A Brief History of Time, published in 1988, was a Sunday Times bestseller for 237 weeks - almost five years - with more than 10 million copies sold and translated into dozens of languages. The book describes in clear language the structure, origin and development of the Universe, exploring phenomena such as the Big Bang and the foundations of quantum mechanics.

In an interview with New Scientist shortly before his 70th birthday, the physicist said one of the greatest physics achievements of his career was the COBE satellite's discovery of small variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang.

Hawking believed that the future of the human species lay in space. He has repeatedly stated that humans will not survive if they remain only on Earth due to our invasive nature.

His unique life has repeatedly attracted the attention of documentarians and filmmakers, and in 2014, a biographical film about him, “Stephen Hawking Universe,” was made about him, starring Eddie Redmayne as Hawking. In addition, the scientist has appeared in several television shows, including The Simpsons, Red Dwarf and The Big Bang Theory.
At the premiere of the biographical film "Stephen Hawking's Universe"

In addition to his scientific work, Hawking was also known for his visionary statements. Here are some of them:

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is the way it is, and why it exists at all.

In my opinion, the brain is a computer that stops working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken computers; This is a fairy tale story for people who are afraid of the dark.

I think the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the Universe, and no one controls our destiny. This brings me to the profound realization that there is probably no heaven or afterlife. We have one lifetime to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Remember to look at the stars and not at your feet.

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21 years old. Everything from then on was a bonus.

People who brag about their intelligence are losers.

We are just a progressive species of apes on a small planet of a very small star. But we can understand the universe. It turns us into something special.

Tags: ,

Stephen Hawking

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME:

FROM THE BIG BANG TO BLACK HOLES

© Stephen Hawking, 1988, 1996

© AST Publishing House LLC, 2019 (design, translation into Russian)

Preface

I did not write the preface to the first edition of A Brief History of Time. Carl Sagan did it. Instead, I added a short section called “Acknowledgments,” where I was encouraged to express my gratitude to everyone. True, some of the charitable foundations that supported me were not very happy that I mentioned them - they received many more applications.

I think that no one - not the publisher, not my agent, not even myself - expected the book to be such a success. It made it onto the London newspaper's bestseller list. Sunday Times as many as 237 weeks - this is more than any other book (naturally, not counting the Bible and the works of Shakespeare). It was translated into about forty languages ​​and sold in huge numbers - for every 750 inhabitants of the Earth, men, women and children, there is approximately one copy. As Nathan Myhrvold of the firm noted Microsoft(this is my former graduate student), I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has sold books on sex.

The success of A Brief History of Time means that people are very interested in fundamental questions about where we came from and why the universe is the way we know it.

I took advantage of the opportunity presented to me to supplement the book with newer observational data and theoretical results that were obtained after the release of the first edition (April 1, 1988, on April Fool's Day). I've added a new chapter on wormholes and time travel. It appears that Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility of creating and maintaining wormholes—small tunnels connecting different regions of space-time. In this case, we could use them to quickly move around the Galaxy or to travel back in time. Of course, we have not yet met a single alien from the future (or maybe we have?), but I will try to guess what the explanation for this might be.

I will also discuss recent progress in the search for “duality,” or correspondence, between seemingly different physical theories. These correspondences are serious evidence in favor of the existence of a unified physical theory. But they also suggest that the theory may not be formulated in a consistent, fundamental way. Instead, in different situations one has to be content with different “reflections” of the underlying theory. Likewise, we cannot depict the entire earth's surface in detail on one map and are forced to use different maps for different areas. Such a theory would be a revolution in our ideas about the possibility of unifying the laws of nature.

However, it would in no way affect the most important thing: the Universe is subject to a set of rational laws that we are able to discover and comprehend.

As for the observational aspect, the most important achievement here, of course, was the measurement of fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation within the framework of the project COBE(English) Cosmic Background Explorer –"Cosmic Background Radiation Researcher") 1
Fluctuations, or anisotropies, of the cosmic microwave background radiation were first discovered by the Soviet Relict project. – Note scientific ed.

And others. These fluctuations are, in essence, the “seal” of creation. We are talking about very small inhomogeneities in the early Universe, which was otherwise quite homogeneous. Subsequently, they turned into galaxies, stars and other structures that we observe through a telescope. The forms of fluctuations are consistent with the predictions of a model of the Universe that has no boundaries in the imaginary time direction. But in order to prefer the proposed model to other possible explanations for CMB fluctuations, new observations will be required. In a few years it will become clear whether our Universe can be considered completely closed, without beginning and end.

Stephen Hawking

Chapter first. Our picture of the Universe

One day a famous scientist (they say it was Bertrand Russell) gave a public lecture on astronomy. He talked about how the Earth moves in orbit around the Sun and how the Sun, in turn, moves in orbit around the center of a huge cluster of stars called our Galaxy. When the lecture ended, a small elderly woman in the back row of the audience stood up and said: “Everything that was said here is complete nonsense. The world is a flat plate on the back of a giant turtle." The scientist smiled condescendingly and asked: “What is that turtle standing on?” “You are a very smart young man, very smart,” the lady answered. “A turtle stands on another turtle, and that turtle stands on the next one, and so on ad infinitum!”

Most would consider it ridiculous to try to pass off our Universe as an infinitely tall tower of turtles. But why are we so sure that our idea of ​​the world is better? What do we really know about the Universe and how do we know all this? How did the Universe originate? What does the future hold for her? Did the Universe have a beginning, and if so, what came before it? What is the nature of time? Will it ever end? Is it possible to go back in time? Some of these long-standing questions are being answered by recent breakthroughs in physics, thanks in part to the advent of fantastic new technologies. Someday we will find new knowledge as obvious as the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Or maybe as absurd as the idea of ​​a tower of turtles. Only time (whatever that is) will tell.

A long time ago, 340 years BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote a treatise “On Heaven”. In it, he put forward two convincing proofs that the Earth is spherical and not at all flat, like a plate. First, he realized that the cause of lunar eclipses is the passage of the Earth between the Sun and the Moon. The shadow cast by the Earth on the Moon is always round in shape, and this is only possible if the Earth is also round. If the Earth were shaped like a flat disk, the shadow would typically be elliptical; It would be round only if the Sun during an eclipse was located exactly under the center of the disk. Secondly, the ancient Greeks knew from the experience of their travels that in the south the North Star is located closer to the horizon than when observed in areas located to the north. (Since the North Star is located above the North Pole, an observer at the North Pole sees it directly overhead, and an observer near the equator sees it just above the horizon.) Moreover, Aristotle, based on the difference in the apparent position of the North Star during observations in Egypt and Greece, was able to estimate the circumference of the Earth at 400,000 stadia. We do not know exactly what one stade was equal to, but if we assume that it was about 180 meters, then Aristotle's estimate is about twice the currently accepted value. The Greeks also had a third argument in favor of the round shape of the Earth: how else to explain why, when a ship approaches the shore, first only its sails are shown, and only then the hull?

Aristotle believed that the Earth was motionless, and also believed that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolved in circular orbits around the Earth. He was guided by mystical considerations: the Earth, according to Aristotle, is the center of the Universe, and circular motion is the most perfect. In the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy built a comprehensive cosmological model based on this idea. At the center of the Universe was the Earth, surrounded by eight nested rotating spheres, and on these spheres were located the Moon, Sun, stars and the five planets known at that time - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (Fig. 1.1). Each planet moved relative to its sphere in a small circle - in order to describe the very complex trajectories of these luminaries in the sky. The stars were fixed to the outer sphere, and therefore their relative positions remained unchanged, the configuration rotating in the sky as a single whole. Ideas about what was located outside the outer sphere remained very vague, but it was certainly located outside the part of the Universe accessible to humanity for observation.

Ptolemy's model made it possible to quite accurately predict the position of the luminaries in the sky. But in order to achieve agreement between predictions and observations, Ptolemy had to assume that the distance from the Moon to the Earth at different times could differ by a factor of two. This meant that the apparent size of the Moon sometimes had to be twice as large as usual! Ptolemy was aware of this shortcoming of his system, which nevertheless did not prevent the almost unanimous recognition of his picture of the world. The Christian Church accepted the Ptolemaic system because it found it consistent with Scripture: there was plenty of room for heaven and hell beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.

But in 1514, the Polish priest Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a simpler model. (However, at first, for fear of being accused of heresy by the church, Copernicus disseminated his cosmological ideas anonymously.) Copernicus proposed that the Sun was motionless and located in the center, and the Earth and planets moved around it in circular orbits. It took almost a century for this idea to be taken seriously. Two astronomers, the German Johannes Kepler and the Italian Galileo Galilei, were among the first to publicly speak out in favor of the Copernican theory, despite the fact that the trajectories of celestial bodies predicted by this theory did not coincide exactly with those observed. The final blow to the world system of Aristotle and Ptolemy was dealt by the events of 1609 - then Galileo began observing the night sky through the newly invented telescope 2
The telescope as a spotting scope was first invented by the Dutch spectacle maker Johann Lippershey in 1608, but Galileo was the first to point a telescope at the sky in 1609 and use it for astronomical observations. – Note translation

Looking at the planet Jupiter, Galileo discovered several small moons orbiting around it. It followed that not all celestial bodies revolve around the Earth, as Aristotle and Ptolemy believed. (One could, of course, continue to consider the Earth stationary and located at the center of the Universe, believing that the satellites of Jupiter move around the Earth in extremely intricate trajectories so that it is similar to their revolution around Jupiter. But still, Copernicus’ theory was much simpler.) Approximately at the same time, Kepler clarified the Copernican theory, suggesting that the planets do not move in circular orbits, but in elliptical (i.e., elongated) orbits, thanks to which it was possible to achieve agreement between the predictions of the theory and observations.

True, Kepler considered ellipses only as a mathematical trick, and a very odious one at that, because ellipses are less perfect figures than circles. Kepler discovered, almost by accident, that elliptical orbits described observations well, but he could not reconcile the assumption of elliptical orbits with his idea of ​​​​magnetic forces as the cause of the motion of planets around the Sun. The reason for the motion of the planets around the Sun was revealed much later, in 1687, by Sir Isaac Newton in his treatise “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” - perhaps the most important work on physics ever published. In this work, Newton not only put forward a theory describing the movement of bodies in space and time, but also developed a complex mathematical apparatus necessary to describe this movement. In addition, Newton formulated the law of universal gravitation, according to which every body in the Universe is attracted to any other body with a force, which is greater, the greater the mass of the bodies and the smaller the distance between interacting bodies. This is the same force that causes objects to fall to the ground. (The story that Newton's idea of ​​the law of universal gravitation was inspired by an apple falling on his head is most likely just a fiction. Newton only said that the idea came to him when he was "in a contemplative mood" and was "under the impression from the fall of an apple.”) Newton showed that, according to the law he formulated, under the influence of gravity, the Moon should move in an elliptical orbit around the Earth, and the Earth and the planets should move in elliptical orbits around the Sun.

The Copernican model eliminated the need for Ptolemaic spheres, and with them the assumption that the Universe had some kind of natural external boundary. Since the “fixed” stars did not show any movement other than the general daily movement of the sky caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis, it was natural to assume that these were the same bodies as our Sun, only located much further away.

Newton realized that according to his theory of gravity, stars must attract each other and therefore, apparently, cannot remain motionless. Why didn’t they get closer and accumulate in one place? In a letter to another prominent thinker of his time, Richard Bentley, written in 1691, Newton argued that they would converge and cluster only if the number of stars concentrated in a limited region of space was finite. And if the number of stars is infinite and they are distributed more or less evenly in infinite space, then this will not happen due to the absence of any obvious central point into which the stars could “fall”.

This is one of those pitfalls that occur when thinking about infinity. In an infinite Universe, any point can be considered its center, because on each side of it there is an infinite number of stars. The correct approach (which came much later) is to solve the problem in the finite case where stars fall on each other, and study how the result changes when adding stars to the configuration that are located outside the region under consideration and are distributed more or less evenly. According to Newton's law, on average, the additional stars in the aggregate should have no effect on the original stars, and therefore these stars of the original configuration should still fall rapidly into one another. So no matter how many stars you add, they will still fall on top of each other. Now we know that it is impossible to obtain an infinite stationary model of the Universe in which the force of gravity is exclusively “attractive” in nature.

It says a lot about the intellectual atmosphere before the beginning of the 20th century that no one then thought of a scenario according to which the Universe could contract or expand. The generally accepted concept of the Universe was either that it had always existed in an unchanged form, or that it had been created at some point in the past - in the form in which we observe it now. This could, in part, be a consequence of the fact that people tend to believe in eternal truths. It is worth remembering at least that the greatest comfort comes from the thought that although we all grow old and die, the Universe is eternal and unchanging.

Even scientists who understood that, according to Newton's theory of gravity, the Universe could not be static, did not dare to suggest that it could expand. Instead, they tried to adjust the theory so that the gravitational force becomes repulsive over very large distances. This assumption did not significantly change the predicted movements of the planets, but allowed an infinite number of stars to remain in a state of equilibrium: the attractive forces from nearby stars were balanced by the repulsive forces from more distant stars. Now it is believed that such an equilibrium state must be unstable: as soon as the stars in any region get a little closer to each other, their mutual attraction will intensify and exceed the repulsive forces, as a result of which the stars will continue to fall on each other. On the other hand, if the stars are only slightly further away from each other, the repulsive forces will prevail over the attractive forces and the stars will fly apart.

Another objection to the concept of an infinite static universe is usually associated with the name of the German philosopher Heinrich Olbers, who published his reasoning on this matter in 1823. In fact, many of Newton's contemporaries drew attention to this problem, and Olbers's paper was by no means the first to present strong arguments against such a concept. However, it was the first to receive widespread recognition. The fact is that in an infinite static Universe, almost any ray of vision should rest on the surface of some star, and therefore the entire sky should glow as brightly as the Sun, even at night. Olbers' counter-argument was that the light from distant stars must be attenuated by absorption by matter between us and those stars. But then this substance would heat up and glow as brightly as the stars themselves. The only way to avoid the conclusion that the brightness of the entire sky is comparable to the brightness of the Sun is to assume that the stars did not shine forever, but “lit up” some specific time ago. In this case, the absorbing substance would not have time to heat up or the light of distant stars would not have time to reach us. Thus, we come to the question of the reason why the stars lit up.

Of course, people discussed the origin of the universe long before this. In many early cosmological ideas, as well as in Jewish, Christian and Muslim pictures of the world, the Universe arose at a certain and not very distant time in the past. One of the arguments in favor of such a beginning was the feeling of the need for some kind of first cause that would explain the existence of the Universe. (Within the Universe itself, any event that occurs in it is explained as a consequence of another, earlier event; the existence of the Universe itself can be explained in this way only by supposing that it had some kind of beginning.) Another argument was expressed by Aurelius Augustine, or St. Augustine, in the work “On the City of God.” He noted that civilization is developing and that we remember who committed this or that act or invented this or that mechanism. Consequently, man, and perhaps the Universe, could not have existed for a very long time. St. Augustine believed, in accordance with the Book of Genesis, that the Universe was created approximately 5000 years before the birth of Christ. (Interestingly, this is close to the end of the last Ice Age - around 10,000 BC - which archaeologists consider the beginning of civilization.)

Aristotle, as well as most ancient Greek philosophers, on the contrary, did not like the idea of ​​​​the creation of the world, because it came from divine intervention. They believed that the human race and the world have always existed and will exist forever. The thinkers of antiquity also comprehended the above-mentioned argument about the progress of civilization and countered: they stated that the human race periodically returned to the stage of the beginning of civilization under the influence of floods and other natural disasters.

Questions about whether the Universe had a beginning in time and whether it is limited in space were also raised by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in his monumental (though very difficult to understand) work “Critique of Pure Reason,” published in 1781. Kant called these questions the antinomies (that is, contradictions) of pure reason because he felt that there were equally compelling arguments for both the thesis - that is, that the Universe had a beginning - and the antithesis, that is, that the Universe has always existed . To prove his thesis, Kant cites the following reasoning: if the Universe had no beginning, then any event should have been preceded by an infinite time, which, according to the philosopher, is absurd. In favor of the antithesis, the consideration was put forward that if the Universe had a beginning, then an infinite amount of time must have passed before it, and it is not clear why the Universe arose at any specific moment in time. In essence, Kant's justifications for thesis and antithesis are almost identical. In both cases, the reasoning is based on the philosopher's implicit assumption that time continues indefinitely into the past, regardless of whether the Universe has always existed. As we will see, the concept of time has no meaning until the birth of the Universe. St. Augustine was the first to note this. He was asked, “What did God do before he created the world?” and Augustine did not argue that God was preparing hell for those who asked such questions. Instead, he postulated that time is a property of God's created world and that before the beginning of the universe, time did not exist.

When most people considered the universe as a whole to be static and unchanging, the question of whether it had a beginning was more a matter of metaphysics or theology. The observed picture of the world could equally well be explained both within the framework of the theory that the Universe has always existed, and on the basis of the assumption that it was set in motion at some specific time, but in such a way that the appearance remains that it exists forever. But in 1929, Edwin Hubble made a fundamental discovery: he noticed that distant galaxies, no matter where they are in the sky, are always moving away from us at high speeds [proportional to their distance] 3
Here and below, the translator's comments clarifying the author's text are placed in square brackets. – Note ed.

In other words, the Universe is expanding. This means that in the past, objects in the Universe were closer to each other than they are now. And it seems that at some point in time - somewhere 10-20 billion years ago - everything that is in the Universe was concentrated in one place, and therefore the density of the Universe was infinite. This discovery brought the question of the beginning of the Universe into the realm of science.

Stephen Hawking is a legendary man, an English theoretical physicist and popularizer of science, known for his work in the field of black holes. As a result of his illness, Hawking found himself confined to a wheelchair, which, despite everything, did not break, but only inspired the famous scientist. Today, Hawking continues to give lectures, write books, communicate with fans and make important warnings to humanity: about meeting aliens, about artificial intelligence, about the relocation of civilizations to another planet, and remains one of the largest and most authoritative modern scientists.

"A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes" is Stephen Hawking's most popular book, first published in 1988. The book talks about the emergence of the Universe, the nature of space and time, black holes, superstring theory and some mathematical problems, but On the pages of the publication you can find only one formula E=mc². The book became a bestseller from the moment it was published and continues to be one.

This was the “official” summary of the book, and now I would like to say a few words of my own. Many people won't like them.

The book is quite entertaining, but I didn’t find anything in it that caused so much fuss. There are several interesting places, some things have become clearer, some things have become even more unclear. The absence of formulas is, of course, good, but Hawking replaced the formulas with a solid wall of text. The book completely lacks any structure. There are few illustrations, but even those that exist are not visual. Hawking promised figurative analogies... there are practically none. It seems that something is starting to become clearer, but the author moves somewhere to the side and completely forgets about the previous topic and you feel that he will not return back, believing that everything is already clear... but it is, damn it, incomprehensible .

Those points that I hoped for clarification are either not mentioned here at all or are mentioned in passing and are not presented in an interesting way. The main thing is that I did not find answers to my simple questions in it.

Physics and cosmology are sciences that cannot be studied using books like this. Well... the book is ancient, written almost 30 years ago, this is not dialectics, which can be studied according to Hegel. By modern standards, much in it is already outdated, refuted and supplemented. So it's a waste of time.

I just found out that there is a book published in 2005, revised and expanded. But... I won’t read it. Firstly, the year 2005 was already 12 years ago, which is also, as it were, not yesterday, and secondly, it will be the same text fence with new formulas in text form. Most likely, there will also be little that is interesting to me there.

Perhaps someone will be interested, I am posting the 2005 edition in FB2 and RTF formats. Download and read:

The bottom line: informative, short, chaotic. I had a desire to look for other sources of information, which is good, at least the book fulfilled this function. My searches have not yet been crowned with success. Too many theories, too many things. You also come across charlatans, you waste time on them, and then you realize that you have been deceived. For example, I spent several hours watching videos of a certain Katyuschik. At first it was interesting, sound thoughts, good explanations, but then suspicions arose, which led me to the conclusion that I couldn’t trust this gentleman without hesitation, as many do. We need to think hard. His words strongly contradict fundamental science, and his arguments are not always convincing. So you need to read a lot in order to even touch the edge of your brain on this vast topic. The book “A Brief History of Time” did not help me with this...

The most important book.

I believe that this work should be included in the compulsory study program, like the Primer or the Periodic Table. A Brief History of Time doesn't just shape one's worldview - it can change it. I can easily imagine a person, an adherent of a certain religion, who, after reading it, will change his views on the world. And if he doesn’t change it, then he will be forced to disagree with much of what is written, which by definition is stupid and meaningless, because this work is based solely on scientific, experimentally confirmed facts.

This book gives answers to all the basic questions (including those that have never occurred to some people): what is time and space, is the existence of a higher mind possible (if possible, then what restrictions are imposed on it), what is the universe, how it arose and how it will die (if it will die at all), whether human consciousness is deterministic (i.e., does it have free will... By the way, the answer to the last question has not been clearly given - it has just been explained that quantum particles are unpredictable in their behavior; but is unpredictability synonymous with free will? And what role do these particles play in the human brain/consciousness? If their role is small (or even reduced to zero), then couldn’t a quantum computer be more human than the person himself (after all, his thinking is based on quantum processes, and therefore is not deterministic at all).

This work is the only one of its kind, combining disparate theories (most of which any person has heard at least once in their life) into a single, coherent and consistent concept. It immediately becomes clear what is possible in this universe (at least theoretically) and what is not; that is, after it, it is no longer possible to watch any pseudo-scientific programs on Ren-TV/NTV without laughing - an internal switch is immediately activated, informing that this information is a fairy tale, but this one, yes, may be a real fact.

And finally, this book is really capable of scaring: some of the concepts shook me more than any horror book! This is damn reality - all this is happening here and now; directly with me! And it REALLY makes an impression - from horror to delight.

Bottom line: the bible of science; simplified for mere mortals, but nevertheless quite clearly and fully describing the laws of existence; the very essence of the world in which we live, the logic of its development and functioning. An absolute ontological colossus!

p.s. I actually read A Brief History of Time, but the difference between the two versions of the book, as I understand it, is not that great, so I’ll leave a review here.

Rating: 10

I do not undertake to comment on the main content of this book. I think there are no more than a thousand people on the whole Earth who can say something truly sensible about this. I want to express my admiration for the author. A person who has lost the ability to move and speak, but who has retained interest in work, love of life and even a sense of humor. One of the greatest physicists of our time, presenting his own and others’ ideas in a language that everyone can understand. And to those who forgot physics a long time ago, and to those who didn’t really teach it. The only condition necessary for reading is an interest in the development of the Universe. As for the lack of formulas - without them, of course, physics is not physics, but they do not make the presented material proven for eternity. Ptolemy's theory also had a mathematical basis, almost flawless for its time.

The most interesting cosmological question, in my amateurish opinion, is not even the arrow of time (a kind of culmination of Hawking’s book), but the never-resolved question of the relationship between the main physical constants. The anthropic principle is only a recognition of a fact, but not its explanation. Why do fifteen constants (or even just one) in our world have exactly the values ​​at which life can arise? With any deviation, not only living beings, but even molecules and atoms would not have arisen. All answers, including Hawking's, come down to one of three fundamentally irrefutable options. The first approach is that God created the world, and he created physical laws and the ratio of constants exactly as needed for the correct development of the Universe. The second approach is that there are a huge variety of Universes (or regions within the heterogeneous Universe) where different laws apply. If their number is sufficiently large, the necessary ratios should develop in one of them. (As an unconvincing option - there is one Universe, and in it, purely by chance, everything turned out the way we need. Lucky.) The third option - there is only I, the One, and time, space, the Universe and its inhabitants exist only in my consciousness. I don’t even want to discuss this option, but it is just as invulnerable as the first two. All that remains is to believe in what you are used to - in God, in the laws of large numbers, or in the One and Only Oneself. Although the first two approaches are compatible.

Rating: 10

You can't help but admire the starry sky. It has attracted the attention of people since ancient times and has not let go to this day. After all, nothing attracts a person more than the secrets of the world around him, which throughout his entire existence he tries to uncover and give the “correct” explanation.

Our Universe is one big mystery that is nearby and at the same time unimaginably far away.

Many people avoid this kind of book, since the content is often based on abstruse formulas on the entire page with an equally abstruse explanation. But not in this book! The author tries to reduce the amount of incomprehensible text as much as possible. Naturally, you cannot do without specific terminology, but if the school physics course was not an unbearable burden for you, then there should be no problems with reading it.

We often ask ourselves questions: How big is the Universe? How many stars does it have? Why is everything arranged this way? Is there intelligent life anywhere else? Do black holes exist and what are they? Are there other Universes near us? What came before the Universe? What will happen after? What is Time that we always lack?

No, this book does not provide definitive answers to all questions. The author is only trying to explain the processes occurring in our Universe from the point of view of modern science. And even to the question about the place of God in the Universe, the author gives his own reasoning.

No, in this book there are no goblins, elves, or orcs familiar to modern literature. But there are quasars and galaxies, black holes and pulsars, nebulae and supernovae.

After reading the book, you will look at the night sky differently, since part of the secret of our Universe will have already been revealed to you by the great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

And even if you don’t understand everything from what you read, you can definitely surprise your significant other with a fascinating story.

Rating: 10

An excellent popular science book that tells the average person about those things that physics students have been studying for years at universities and which scientists have been struggling to prove for decades. And Stephen Hawking managed to explain all these super-abstruse astrophysical theories in simple and understandable language, understandable not only to luminaries of the physical sciences, but even to ordinary housewives and other people far from complex sciences. That’s for sure - a book is the best gift, especially if this book is “A Brief History of Time” designed for the broadest masses.

Speaking about this book, one cannot help but recall its courageous author, who, despite a serious illness that confined him to a chair and a speech synthesizer, lives much more active and productive than most of his readers. Here is a real role model for the younger generation.

Rating: 9

Without a doubt, the book is very interesting and important, since it touches on the deepest physical foundations of ontology. True, I would not call it very simple, accessible (to the full) to everyone. Of course, the author’s talent for popularization is very high, but the subject of his consideration is very difficult. It would be great if ardent fans of science fiction literature among the “humanities” find something useful in this book. I think it cannot be otherwise.

In my opinion, the book provides the fullest and best account of the nature of black holes. The direction of time is also convincingly justified. But “imaginary time” is the result, it seems to me, of playing with equations, to which theoretical physicists (in fact, mathematicians) are sometimes prone. It is unlikely that imaginary time has not only a mathematical meaning (in mathematics, as we know, everything is possible) but also a real physical (ontological) meaning. This is more likely from the realm of SF. However, in this case, such an idea rather decorates than spoils the book, showing that solving the problems of cosmology and cosmogony requires special imagination.

Rating: 9

I met Stephen Hawking once in his series of documentaries “The Universe of Stephen Hawking”. Even then, it was amazing that a person with a really serious and serious disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) did not lose heart and not only continued his scientific work, but in fact became the world’s leading scientist in his field.

“A Brief History of Time” is remarkable precisely because it gives an understanding of the formation of the views of mankind and the basic concepts of astrophysics in a language accessible to the average person. Physicist and joker Richard Feynman once said, “If you are a scientist, a quantum physicist, but cannot explain in a nutshell to a five-year-old child what you do, you are a charlatan.” Hawking is not a quantum physicist, but he is definitely not a charlatan and really understands the structure of stars and modern theories of the origin of the Universe.

I also want to note that often people do not take on such literature, fearing complex mathematical presentations and logical conclusions. But in the case of this book, there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of! The logic of the story is clear and simple, but there is no mathematical apparatus at all (well, more precisely, there is one formula - Einstein’s E = mc^2).

I believe that “A Brief History of Time” can be recommended for anyone to read, regardless of their gender, age, education and status. This is just a wonderful book for easy, but at the same time interesting and information-rich reading. And it is quite possible that it will be she who will open you to the boundless world of popular science literature.

Rating: 10

Great book. Any physics graduate sooner or later, and most likely more than once, faces the question: where to send a humanities student who asks “to read something to become educated in the field of physics.” When it is clear that giving a textbook is stupid and rude, but sending it to Wikipedia is even stupider. And Hawking saved me more than once. For which I thank him. Big and human. Popular science as it should be (not to be confused with science).

Rating: 9

And I will not repeat the general delight that flows from all the other reviews in a vast stream. Yes, the book is interesting, and overall educational; The author's personality is worthy of respect for his strength and will, destiny. But. She does not and cannot give any specific answers, which the author admits from the very beginning and which I, for example, also respect. The author, unlike many forum users in discussions, does not speak in a categorical tone that he has comprehended the secrets of the universe, or that modern science has comprehended them.

Moreover, he writes that, in fact, the turtle version of the flat world and the modern big bang theory are equivalent! Namely, they cannot be considered true, just one of them is better consistent with observations and experiments, and the other is worse. Tomorrow they may come up with another theory (and the author hopes so) that will do this even better.

The idea of ​​an expanding Universe does not exclude the Creator, but it does impose restrictions on the possible date of his work!

and even more directly:

It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in this way, other than by an act of God designed to create beings like us.

I will not try here to find all the quotes from the book where the author reflects on this topic, but he thinks quite a bit in this vein. Which, I must admit, I was somewhat surprised by, but I respect: if the author cannot explain or reject something, then he writes that way, or tries to compare possible explanations, trying not to be unfounded, unlike many, and he thinks very broadly. So, he compares the creationist theory and possible “scientific” theories of the origin of the Universe, mainly variants of the Big Bang theory, but according to the author they do not contradict one another: trying to comprehend the mechanisms of the origin of the Universe, science cannot refute that it is only trying to comprehend the path, the mechanism of Creation. I would be interested in reading the author’s thoughts if he compared another original theory - that we all live in a virtual simulation - I recently came across such a very funny theory that can explain almost anything.

Rating: 10

In essence, “A Brief History of Time” is a retelling in accessible language of the existing paradigm in theoretical physics. And despite the accessibility of the language, in some places it was necessary to “hover” over some sentences or paragraphs in order to understand the author’s thoughts. After all, we are talking about such speculative things that they are almost impossible to imagine. However, Hawking had enough talent to simplify as much as possible the explanation of such a difficult topic for the average person (and especially for the humanities) without losing the meaning. This is the merit of the author. He sincerely wants to get to the bottom of the answers to fundamental questions in physics (and not only physics), and hopes to convey his research interest to the reader. To do this, you need to be able to convey your ideas clearly and clearly. Hawking coped with this.

Of course, after reading the book, the reader will not become an expert in the field of quantum mechanics and general relativity. But as an example of a good non-fiction book, A Brief History of Time is suitable. You can get quite definite ideas about the subject of research of modern physicists (I think the questions covered by Hawking in this work are still relevant today), about the origin of the Universe, about black holes, the beginning and end of time, and even about the role of God in all these processes. Thanks to the author for this.