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Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained
Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time has sold over 9 million copies worldwide. Now, in everyday language, Stephen Hawking's Universe reveals step-by-step how we can all share his understanding of the cosmos, and our own place within it. Stargazing has never been the same since cosmologists discovered that galaxies are moving away from each other at an extraordinary speed. It was this understanding of the movement of galaxies that allowed scientists to develop a theory of how the universe was created—the Big Bang theory. Working with this theory, Stephen Hawking and other physicists felt challenged to come up with a scientific picture that would tackle the fundamental question: what is the nature of the universe? Stephen Hawking's Universe charts this work and provides simple explanations for phenomena that arouse our curiosity. This work is a voyage of discovery with an astonishing set of conclusions that will enable us to understand how matter can be produced from nothing at all and will provide us with an explanation for the basis of our existence and that of everything around us.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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3277 people want to read
About the author
David Filkin
4 books10 followersDavid Filkin is the producer of Stephen Hawking's Universe in collaboration with the independent production company Uden Associates. He is a science documentary maker of international repute and was until 1994 head of BBC Television's Science Department. He lives in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
December 12, 2016
A companion book for the BBC series. I read this book to accompany/to inform my reading of A Brief History of Time. I had tried to read A Brief history before and got stuck on the black hole chapters. I found this book at a a re-sale shop and bought it with the hope that it would make my reading of the other easier. It has.
Although Hawkings writes simply in his book, his style is still academic and dry. Stephen Hawking's Universe is written in the language like the language used on the television show, more relaxed. The relaxed writing made the difference for me.
I am reading A Brief History of Time for a reading club I have joined: Reading for Pleasure.
Although Hawkings writes simply in his book, his style is still academic and dry. Stephen Hawking's Universe is written in the language like the language used on the television show, more relaxed. The relaxed writing made the difference for me.
I am reading A Brief History of Time for a reading club I have joined: Reading for Pleasure.
August 12, 2025
This is a book to be read carefully - to think through what Filkin is saying. The book is a comprehensive story about the state of cosmology in the late 1990s, but how accurate is it? I will highlight four areas that raise questions.
Einstein: Gravity is not a force. It does not attract; it does not pull.
As with others, gravity is still referenced in Newtonian terms. (1) Newton saw gravity as a force. It was not only that: it was also a force of mutual attraction. Two bodies pull on each other, with the more massive body having more pulling effect. Force for Newton was external. It was one body causing another body to move (that later, with others, came to be known as acceleration). Einstein said something different: A massive gravitational body warps spacetime and another body flows toward the gravitational center. It doesn’t act on anything; it is its presence that spacetime reacts to.
This is where Filkin’s description gets fuzzy - he weaves in and out of both accounts. He starts out accurately enough by writing: “Einstein argued that two objects do not directly attract each other as Newton had thought; rather, each of the two objects affects time and space, and any gravitational effects are a consequence of this.” But note the reference to “do not directly attract each other,” suggesting that there is still an attraction, and its a mutual attraction, albeit, not direct, and this is the trouble with his account. He’s trying to have it both ways - Newton and Einstein. In his description of the drawing illustrating Einstein’s warped spacetime, Filkin states that “The more massive the object, the greater the dent it will make in space-time and thus the harder it is for anything passing nearby to avoid being pulled into the object.” Here “attraction” becomes the word “pulled.” (2) Then when two bodies are passing by each other, one “falls” into the “dent” caused by a more massive body “if traveling too slowly,” which implies that “falling” is caused by “pulling” of the larger mass that creates the dent.
This incomplete escape from Newton’s account of gravity is not nitpicking stuff because it affects the way we see certain of the fundamentals of cosmology. What’s implied and not stated explicitly with Einstein is that movement - the “traveling” reference of Filkin - is Newton’s first law of motion, the principle of inertia. A body moves in a straight line or, if at rest (relative to other bodies), it remains at rest, unless acted upon by a force that causes deviation. Newton was interested not in inertial motion per se, but in the cause for deviation from that normative state, and that cause was gravity. But, for Einstein, gravity is not an attractive force, and it’s not a force at all. Rather, gravity is the concentration of energy (mass), and it is this that sits within a cloud of matter-energy (spacetime), that warps itself around a mass. Gravity is a passive “stage.” Inertial motion of objects in spacetime (and spacetime itself) then flow toward or into the gravitational center. (3)
Seen this way, a black hole at the center of a galaxy does not attract matter-energy; rather, the movement toward the gravitational center comes from the inertial properties of matter-energy itself. In addition, the inertial movement created by the big bang, an outward explosion, is sufficient for a time to escape the mass density at the beginning of time, but as that density dissipates over time, the inverse square law applies, to the point that there’s no longer any “felt” effect: Inertial properties in effect have climbed out of their hope, escaped it, allowing mass-energy to be free, as if this is the dark energy pulling, anti-gravitational repulsion (a “weakly repulsive force to cancel the inward pull of gravity”), that is said to be causing cosmic expansion. Then, where does this matter-energy, now free of gravity’s effects (concentrated spacetime), go? If Einstein’s view that gravity is not an attractive force that “pulls,” there can not be a “contraction” back to the beginning point, as an out-and-back thing as it is commonly portrayed. Rather, if the centrality of Einstein’s concept of cosmic curvature applies, inertial movement continues around that curvature to the beginning where, presumably, the concentrated cosmic center lies. (4) This, in turn, leads to a new big bang scenario which which case the cosmos would be cyclical. (5)
Vera Rubin: Do galaxies really orbit?
Rubin gets a lot of attention for her reputed discovery of dark matter. Filkin refers to galaxies as orbital systems that function in the same way as a solar system does: All movement is regularized, orbiting around a galactic center, but by Rubin’s calculations there was not enough mass to hold galactic spirals and prevent them from escaping the orbital system. She calculated that the galactic orbital system needed 10x (or something like that) more matter than was visible to perform the required gravitational function. Hence, she filled this mass deficit with dark matter.
Though her findings were initially rejected - Filkin said because she was a woman in a man’s field - they eventually became the stock answer to the current cosmological model. This is where Einstein’s view of gravity is pertinent. A galactic center doesn’t “pull.” Rather, the inertial movement of matter-energy moves, geometrically, toward the gravitational center, which is a concentrated mass that has wrapped space-time around it. In an orbital system, such as our solar system, there’s a balance between straight-line curvature and the path of space-time into the gravitational center. Hence, there’s a roughly 45 degree compromise between the twin directions of inertial movement. (6). With a galactic system, something else entirely is going on. Movement is not orbital at all. Rather, it's a movement into the galactic center, most likely a black hole. When one looks at the Hubble and Web photos of spiral galaxies and even barred galaxies (the accretion disks from a spiral galaxy?), the spiral arms are moving into the galactic center, where the "bulb" of light is so strong that all differentiation disappears. And then, this kicker: Doesn’t such movement provide “real time” illustration of Einstein’s view of gravity?
Now, back to Rubin, if gravitational pull is no longer the relevant factor, there’s no longer a need for the posited dark matter to keep the galactic arms “pulled in.” Rather, the only force that is at work is inertial: Gas, dust, stars, etc. are all, by their own inertia in the presence of a large gravitational mass (black hole), moving to and then into the massive gravitational center. The only force at work is self-propelled pushing, not a pulling.
Black Holes: Do they really “pull?”
Given the discussion of Rubin and orbiting galaxies, Filkin has a problem because in his discussion of black holes he repeatedly refers to their “pulling” gravitational property, at the galactic heart. How can he have it both ways - to say that a galaxy orbits on the one hand, and that matter-energy is pulled by the massively large gravitational bodies called black holes? But if matter-energy moves toward the black holes, this would explain not only the underlying force at work, but also what feeds a black hole and enlarges its circumference at the event horizon.
Regarding the event horizon, the mathematics lead from it to a singularity at the center, usually so small that there’s not even a point despite such connotation by the term “singularity.” But what if the mathematics don’t match the reality? (7) Since nothing can be known about what lies between the event horizon and the singularity, might it not be possible that the black hole, from the inside of the event horizon, itself is the singularity? What if such a amount of concentrated mass can only grow at its circumference, outside of the event horizon where there is no longer space to accept incoming matter-energy (the mass is impossibly dense)? And, what if the outside of the event horizon rejects what the black hole won’t accept because of density, and spits out the rejected energy via electro-magnetic forces toward the axis of rotation, the poles, where gravitational mass is less than at the galactic equator where the accretion disk lies? Could this be the Hawking radiation?
Does light really bend?
Of the well-known Einstein question, and Eddington experimental confirmation, Filkin refers to the bending of light by a large gravitational mass. But if gravity is not a force and if light has no mass (begging the question: just what is kinetic mass?), how then does light bend? Drawing upon Einstein, might not an alternative explanation be relevant: spacetime warps around a large gravitational mass and light “merely” follows these geometric lines on their (rays of light) straight-line paths?
These are the larger issues with this book. There are others, e.g. he refers to the “expansionary force” of the cosmos, making it what, a 5th force along with gravity and the three atomic-subatomic forces? And if there’s an expansionary force like this, is this the reason for inertial movement, and is there a relationship to the reputed dark energy? These issues may be indicative of the writing overall on modern cosmology, which seems to operate within black hole-like paradigm, unable to escape prevailing assumptions and the overwhelming standardized model of the way the cosmos works. Filkin also dresses up his account with frequent references to mathematics and science as if these alone, regardless of the assumptions they operate from, make his statements authoritative sounding. Toward the end of the book, Filkin’s narrative gets to Hawking, as if he’s the capstone to modern cosmology, with his thoughts on a boundless universe that, at the time, got some attention, but seems to have withered some 25 years later. Finally, he has this casually familiar and annoying way of referring to some scientists by their first name - so there’s Stephen, and Vera and Carlos (but there’s no Isaac or Albert).
1. Most see Einstein building on Newton, not countering him; or, while Bertrand Russell made the point that Einstein did not see gravity as a force, he also added that it was too complicated to explain so that, by default, it was ok to continue referring to gravity as an attractive force that “pulls.”
2. There’s also a new problem with “warping” becoming “a dent” in spacetime, as if the latter is a flat sheet with a concave indentation, rather than a cloud that surrounds a massive object. Most commentators now use the term “fabric” and such poetic license has the unfortunate effect of molding our perceptions of Einstein's spacetime: we see it as a flat sheet that is indented by a massive object.
3. Newton’s inverse square law still applies but the explanation regarding the cause of motion is inertia not gravitational attraction. See footnote 6 for more on "inertia."
4. Filkin does say, interestingly, that other parts of the universe “beyond our field of vision, might be moving in the opposite direction and contracting.” He also refers to the inertial movement as “the expansionary force” to counter gravitational “pull.” By this account we have a new force to add to the four forces? And, of course, Einstein said that gravity was not a force at all. This suggests that the standard four fundamental forces should be reconceptualized and gravity is not at odds with the three micro-level forces (electro-magnetic, strong and weak nuclear force) because it’s not a force. And maybe it’s inertia, not gravity, that is the single cosmic-level macro force.
5. This begs a question: what lies beyond the circumference of cosmic curvature?
6. While “Inertia” has unfortunate connotation of “inertness” - lack of movement, Newton’s first law of movement - the principle of inertia - has a body moves in a straight line, or remains in place if in place, unless another force causes deviation. Even a body at rest - such as an orbital body - is in motion; its rest state is a balance point between what it wants to do as an inertial body in the presence of a large gravitational mass (Einstein’s point).
7. Regarding big crunch or big bang scenarios, Filkin wrote that “Einstein had argued that, at a critical density, when matter had been compressed to its maximum, it would resist the inward pressure of the collapse, thus bringing the collapse to a halt.” Does this comment by Einstein connect also to black holes?
Einstein: Gravity is not a force. It does not attract; it does not pull.
As with others, gravity is still referenced in Newtonian terms. (1) Newton saw gravity as a force. It was not only that: it was also a force of mutual attraction. Two bodies pull on each other, with the more massive body having more pulling effect. Force for Newton was external. It was one body causing another body to move (that later, with others, came to be known as acceleration). Einstein said something different: A massive gravitational body warps spacetime and another body flows toward the gravitational center. It doesn’t act on anything; it is its presence that spacetime reacts to.
This is where Filkin’s description gets fuzzy - he weaves in and out of both accounts. He starts out accurately enough by writing: “Einstein argued that two objects do not directly attract each other as Newton had thought; rather, each of the two objects affects time and space, and any gravitational effects are a consequence of this.” But note the reference to “do not directly attract each other,” suggesting that there is still an attraction, and its a mutual attraction, albeit, not direct, and this is the trouble with his account. He’s trying to have it both ways - Newton and Einstein. In his description of the drawing illustrating Einstein’s warped spacetime, Filkin states that “The more massive the object, the greater the dent it will make in space-time and thus the harder it is for anything passing nearby to avoid being pulled into the object.” Here “attraction” becomes the word “pulled.” (2) Then when two bodies are passing by each other, one “falls” into the “dent” caused by a more massive body “if traveling too slowly,” which implies that “falling” is caused by “pulling” of the larger mass that creates the dent.
This incomplete escape from Newton’s account of gravity is not nitpicking stuff because it affects the way we see certain of the fundamentals of cosmology. What’s implied and not stated explicitly with Einstein is that movement - the “traveling” reference of Filkin - is Newton’s first law of motion, the principle of inertia. A body moves in a straight line or, if at rest (relative to other bodies), it remains at rest, unless acted upon by a force that causes deviation. Newton was interested not in inertial motion per se, but in the cause for deviation from that normative state, and that cause was gravity. But, for Einstein, gravity is not an attractive force, and it’s not a force at all. Rather, gravity is the concentration of energy (mass), and it is this that sits within a cloud of matter-energy (spacetime), that warps itself around a mass. Gravity is a passive “stage.” Inertial motion of objects in spacetime (and spacetime itself) then flow toward or into the gravitational center. (3)
Seen this way, a black hole at the center of a galaxy does not attract matter-energy; rather, the movement toward the gravitational center comes from the inertial properties of matter-energy itself. In addition, the inertial movement created by the big bang, an outward explosion, is sufficient for a time to escape the mass density at the beginning of time, but as that density dissipates over time, the inverse square law applies, to the point that there’s no longer any “felt” effect: Inertial properties in effect have climbed out of their hope, escaped it, allowing mass-energy to be free, as if this is the dark energy pulling, anti-gravitational repulsion (a “weakly repulsive force to cancel the inward pull of gravity”), that is said to be causing cosmic expansion. Then, where does this matter-energy, now free of gravity’s effects (concentrated spacetime), go? If Einstein’s view that gravity is not an attractive force that “pulls,” there can not be a “contraction” back to the beginning point, as an out-and-back thing as it is commonly portrayed. Rather, if the centrality of Einstein’s concept of cosmic curvature applies, inertial movement continues around that curvature to the beginning where, presumably, the concentrated cosmic center lies. (4) This, in turn, leads to a new big bang scenario which which case the cosmos would be cyclical. (5)
Vera Rubin: Do galaxies really orbit?
Rubin gets a lot of attention for her reputed discovery of dark matter. Filkin refers to galaxies as orbital systems that function in the same way as a solar system does: All movement is regularized, orbiting around a galactic center, but by Rubin’s calculations there was not enough mass to hold galactic spirals and prevent them from escaping the orbital system. She calculated that the galactic orbital system needed 10x (or something like that) more matter than was visible to perform the required gravitational function. Hence, she filled this mass deficit with dark matter.
Though her findings were initially rejected - Filkin said because she was a woman in a man’s field - they eventually became the stock answer to the current cosmological model. This is where Einstein’s view of gravity is pertinent. A galactic center doesn’t “pull.” Rather, the inertial movement of matter-energy moves, geometrically, toward the gravitational center, which is a concentrated mass that has wrapped space-time around it. In an orbital system, such as our solar system, there’s a balance between straight-line curvature and the path of space-time into the gravitational center. Hence, there’s a roughly 45 degree compromise between the twin directions of inertial movement. (6). With a galactic system, something else entirely is going on. Movement is not orbital at all. Rather, it's a movement into the galactic center, most likely a black hole. When one looks at the Hubble and Web photos of spiral galaxies and even barred galaxies (the accretion disks from a spiral galaxy?), the spiral arms are moving into the galactic center, where the "bulb" of light is so strong that all differentiation disappears. And then, this kicker: Doesn’t such movement provide “real time” illustration of Einstein’s view of gravity?
Now, back to Rubin, if gravitational pull is no longer the relevant factor, there’s no longer a need for the posited dark matter to keep the galactic arms “pulled in.” Rather, the only force that is at work is inertial: Gas, dust, stars, etc. are all, by their own inertia in the presence of a large gravitational mass (black hole), moving to and then into the massive gravitational center. The only force at work is self-propelled pushing, not a pulling.
Black Holes: Do they really “pull?”
Given the discussion of Rubin and orbiting galaxies, Filkin has a problem because in his discussion of black holes he repeatedly refers to their “pulling” gravitational property, at the galactic heart. How can he have it both ways - to say that a galaxy orbits on the one hand, and that matter-energy is pulled by the massively large gravitational bodies called black holes? But if matter-energy moves toward the black holes, this would explain not only the underlying force at work, but also what feeds a black hole and enlarges its circumference at the event horizon.
Regarding the event horizon, the mathematics lead from it to a singularity at the center, usually so small that there’s not even a point despite such connotation by the term “singularity.” But what if the mathematics don’t match the reality? (7) Since nothing can be known about what lies between the event horizon and the singularity, might it not be possible that the black hole, from the inside of the event horizon, itself is the singularity? What if such a amount of concentrated mass can only grow at its circumference, outside of the event horizon where there is no longer space to accept incoming matter-energy (the mass is impossibly dense)? And, what if the outside of the event horizon rejects what the black hole won’t accept because of density, and spits out the rejected energy via electro-magnetic forces toward the axis of rotation, the poles, where gravitational mass is less than at the galactic equator where the accretion disk lies? Could this be the Hawking radiation?
Does light really bend?
Of the well-known Einstein question, and Eddington experimental confirmation, Filkin refers to the bending of light by a large gravitational mass. But if gravity is not a force and if light has no mass (begging the question: just what is kinetic mass?), how then does light bend? Drawing upon Einstein, might not an alternative explanation be relevant: spacetime warps around a large gravitational mass and light “merely” follows these geometric lines on their (rays of light) straight-line paths?
These are the larger issues with this book. There are others, e.g. he refers to the “expansionary force” of the cosmos, making it what, a 5th force along with gravity and the three atomic-subatomic forces? And if there’s an expansionary force like this, is this the reason for inertial movement, and is there a relationship to the reputed dark energy? These issues may be indicative of the writing overall on modern cosmology, which seems to operate within black hole-like paradigm, unable to escape prevailing assumptions and the overwhelming standardized model of the way the cosmos works. Filkin also dresses up his account with frequent references to mathematics and science as if these alone, regardless of the assumptions they operate from, make his statements authoritative sounding. Toward the end of the book, Filkin’s narrative gets to Hawking, as if he’s the capstone to modern cosmology, with his thoughts on a boundless universe that, at the time, got some attention, but seems to have withered some 25 years later. Finally, he has this casually familiar and annoying way of referring to some scientists by their first name - so there’s Stephen, and Vera and Carlos (but there’s no Isaac or Albert).
1. Most see Einstein building on Newton, not countering him; or, while Bertrand Russell made the point that Einstein did not see gravity as a force, he also added that it was too complicated to explain so that, by default, it was ok to continue referring to gravity as an attractive force that “pulls.”
2. There’s also a new problem with “warping” becoming “a dent” in spacetime, as if the latter is a flat sheet with a concave indentation, rather than a cloud that surrounds a massive object. Most commentators now use the term “fabric” and such poetic license has the unfortunate effect of molding our perceptions of Einstein's spacetime: we see it as a flat sheet that is indented by a massive object.
3. Newton’s inverse square law still applies but the explanation regarding the cause of motion is inertia not gravitational attraction. See footnote 6 for more on "inertia."
4. Filkin does say, interestingly, that other parts of the universe “beyond our field of vision, might be moving in the opposite direction and contracting.” He also refers to the inertial movement as “the expansionary force” to counter gravitational “pull.” By this account we have a new force to add to the four forces? And, of course, Einstein said that gravity was not a force at all. This suggests that the standard four fundamental forces should be reconceptualized and gravity is not at odds with the three micro-level forces (electro-magnetic, strong and weak nuclear force) because it’s not a force. And maybe it’s inertia, not gravity, that is the single cosmic-level macro force.
5. This begs a question: what lies beyond the circumference of cosmic curvature?
6. While “Inertia” has unfortunate connotation of “inertness” - lack of movement, Newton’s first law of movement - the principle of inertia - has a body moves in a straight line, or remains in place if in place, unless another force causes deviation. Even a body at rest - such as an orbital body - is in motion; its rest state is a balance point between what it wants to do as an inertial body in the presence of a large gravitational mass (Einstein’s point).
7. Regarding big crunch or big bang scenarios, Filkin wrote that “Einstein had argued that, at a critical density, when matter had been compressed to its maximum, it would resist the inward pressure of the collapse, thus bringing the collapse to a halt.” Does this comment by Einstein connect also to black holes?
April 20, 2021
Rescued from the local dump trailer. I've probably encountered most of what I've read so far(a lot of history) over the course of my now sort-of long life. I don't "get" all of it, but enough to keep me going. Back in high school(boarding school actually) I was a miserable science student. My first course was called AGM(Astronomy-Geology-Meteorology[?]) and I nearly flunked it. Then came Chemistry in my junior year, and I almost flunked THAT as well. When I went back to college in the 70's I took only one science class - Biology for Non-Majors. YAY! I got an "A"(I think) in that one.
Finished up last night and feeling like my understanding of life, the universe and everything is a BIT better than before. In some ways it still seems like a deep dark secret.
Finished up last night and feeling like my understanding of life, the universe and everything is a BIT better than before. In some ways it still seems like a deep dark secret.
March 26, 2009
This was a good layman's approach to astronomy and what we actually know and what we are just guessing about. It was fascinating and even though it was dumbed down as much as possible, towards the end it was still a little over my head. Very little to do with Stephen Hawking but a great book about the universe.
January 3, 2019
Logical step up from brief history of time.
Liked the lengt and topics of this book. Stephen manages to explain his complex theories in a understandable way.
Only complain I have is the same as with brief history of time. The author occasionally slides into eco-centric places where he is flattering himself instead of staying on topic.
Liked the lengt and topics of this book. Stephen manages to explain his complex theories in a understandable way.
Only complain I have is the same as with brief history of time. The author occasionally slides into eco-centric places where he is flattering himself instead of staying on topic.
October 22, 2020
This has been a good read. The author has put a lot of time and effort. Being a writer myself, I find it commendable. The content is decent and keeps you hooked for a long time. And some parts are simply minds blowing. I look forward to reading more books like this. All in all, a good experience for an avid reader like me.
Read
October 28, 2023Ideal for a Birthday or Christmas present for young and budding Astronomers! Easy reading from the great man and great illustrations too! Very good value and was in great condition for a used book. If you want things explained in fairly un-tech like terms, then this is the one to buy.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2024
Meant for the general reader; it is a good overview of how we got from an earth, covered by a dome, with holes in it, revealing distant fires, believed by ancient peoples, to our current understanding, using instrumentation of our relatively, advanced, technologies.
October 24, 2025
A brilliant book exploring the mathematical theories and cosmological efforts to discover the history and age of our universe, including our solar system and planet. A worthy companion to a television series developed by David Filkin and Stephen Hawking.
December 30, 2016
A good book with lot of theories condensed together but with a great concluding philosophical question -' What is it all for? Science alone cannot answer this question.'
January 28, 2019
is interesting
May 14, 2021
Very little in this book about Stephen Hawking or his work. Most of the book is about the history of cosmology. I was surprised by how little about Stephen Hawking and his work was in this book
April 28, 2023
VERY GOOD
December 23, 2023
Excellent expanations of complex ideas for the non-scientist.
April 8, 2025
3.5/5.
A basic look into the historical development of how we understand the universe and cosmology. Grateful that it is written in simple English as I would have been extremely lost with added physics and mathematics jargon.
A basic look into the historical development of how we understand the universe and cosmology. Grateful that it is written in simple English as I would have been extremely lost with added physics and mathematics jargon.
October 4, 2007
This book sets out to be the "Stephen Hakwing for Dummies." The first few pages promise that this is Hawking's theory "explained in everyday language." Really, this means that they have dumbed down Hawking's uber genius ideas so that other lesser geniuses can comprehend them. The result is this: overcomplicated theories explained in condesned (yet still somehow dense) language spaced out in little chunks on pages with a LOT of white space, combined with goofy pictures that are enormous and reminiscent of large children's picture books. The result? David Finkin fails to teach me the ins and outs of Hawking's theories. Not only do I feel dumber for having attempted to read this, but I also feel like I'm back in Ms. Boisviert's first grade class in the Eagle Reading Group. Sheesh.
August 12, 2007
For all science nerds out there - here is something I could understand and it has lots of pictures. Hawking can explain something so complex and make it meaningful. I kept thinking, "Oh - so that's why."
December 8, 2009
This is a fabulous bok. It explains the most complex theories and ideas presented by modern physics using language that the average reader can comprehend. If you thought you could never understand Relativity and Qauntum Mehchanics, Think again!
June 11, 2007
It's the companion to a television special I never saw, but it's got pictures! I like looking at pictures.
January 28, 2008
Read it a long time ago... From what I remember, it was my first intro. to dark matter.
March 7, 2008
I great read before the Golden Compass, it tells about dark matter and the stranger things in the universe like the multi dimension theory and the sort..
December 19, 2008
Bought for my Old Man for Christmas, but (shh) it's really for me.
July 7, 2011
Really liked the basic explanations but felt the author fabricated too much religious/political connection to science.
July 31, 2011
Loved it! The big bang, black holes, white dwarfs, time, life in the universe, and much more you didn't even know existed. All easy to understand.
September 24, 2012
A nice place to start if you are a person that knows next to nothing about astronomy and cosmology (like me!).
Read
August 2, 2014lioke
January 13, 2015
Lots of topics are easy to understand. After black holes, I got lost and postponed to read it later.
February 7, 2015
The title is a little deceiving ... the theories aren't all by Stephen Hawking. But this book takes some very complicated ideas and makes them almost understandable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews