At last!
I finished Stephen Hawking's book!

• 05 June 2008 at 12:21
• Music, cinema, TV, books..., Revelations

Image credits: Bantam Books/Manni Mason

A Brief History of Time is a book written by famous scientist Stephen Hawking. The cover indicates that the book enables the reader to understand easily how the universe started and how it works, according to modern physics. But of course, it's very complicated! It took me more than a month to read it and my brain is a mess. Nevertheless, it's an absolutely passionating book.

Stephen Hawking explains the laws ruling the universe such as general relativity or quantum physics, galaxies, black holes, the big bang, and so on. Each page reveals a new concept that revolutionise your conception of the univers and, in the end, of life itself. By the way, I realised how ignorant I am of physics (even though I had a pretty good mark at my baccalauréat if I remember well... but Hawking explains this is normal, it takes tens of years before some concepts make it to school).

I had heard about the theory of general relativity but I didn't really know what it was about. Roughly speaking, what I remember from the book is that according to general relativity, space and time are not absolute. Thus, the time passing on Earth is different from the time passing in a black hole (it could even be that time stops in a black hole). This is crazy!

Similarly, the principles of quatum physics nearly get me into an identity crisis! Indeed, I was a complete determinist (not a genetic determinist though!) and so far, I imagined that everything could be explained by equations, theorems and stuff. But now, quantum physics introduce the principle of uncertainty. That is, randomness exists and must be taken into account. There even is a constant for randomness!

Hawking explains many other concepts, but he doesn't only do that. A very interesting part of the book is about a questioning of science itself: what is the goal of science, what is its legitimacy when what we believe today can be questioned the day after, is the complete explanation of the universe only a chimera? Another very interesting part is the position of science regarding God. Hawking warns that according to the next science discoveries, we could prove that God doesn't exist. Indeed, a hypothesis on the nature of the universe suggests that there could have been no beginning and there would be no ending of the universe, dismissing the idea of a creation and thus, of a creator. Otherwise, he also makes geeky jokes.

Now the problem is that the book is 20 year-old. And Hawking explains that science evolves so fast that what I learnt from it is probably already obsolete!

• Permalink At last!
  I finished Stephen Hawking's book!