The Nature of Space and Time

Front Cover
Princeton University Press, 2000 - Science - 141 pages

From two of the world's great physicists--Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureate Roger Penrose--a lively debate about the nature of space and time

Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. But was he right? Can the quantum theory of fields and Einstein's general theory of relativity, the two most accurate and successful theories in all of physics, be united in a single quantum theory of gravity? Can quantum and cosmos ever be combined? On this issue, two of the world's most famous physicists--Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) and Roger Penrose (The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind)--disagree. Here they explain their positions in a work based on six lectures with a final debate, all originally presented at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

How could quantum gravity, a theory that could explain the earlier moments of the big bang and the physics of the enigmatic objects known as black holes, be constructed? Why does our patch of the universe look just as Einstein predicted, with no hint of quantum effects in sight? What strange quantum processes can cause black holes to evaporate, and what happens to all the information that they swallow? Why does time go forward, not backward?

In this book, the two opponents touch on all these questions. Penrose, like Einstein, refuses to believe that quantum mechanics is a final theory. Hawking thinks otherwise, and argues that general relativity simply cannot account for how the universe began. Only a quantum theory of gravity, coupled with the no-boundary hypothesis, can ever hope to explain adequately what little we can observe about our universe. Penrose, playing the realist to Hawking's positivist, thinks that the universe is unbounded and will expand forever. The universe can be understood, he argues, in terms of the geometry of light cones, the compression and distortion of spacetime, and by the use of twistor theory. With the final debate, the reader will come to realize how much Hawking and Penrose diverge in their opinions of the ultimate quest to combine quantum mechanics and relativity, and how differently they have tried to comprehend the incomprehensible.

 

Contents

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3
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V
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VI
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VII
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139
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Nature of Space and Time
Stephen W. Hawking,Roger Penrose
No preview available - 1996
The Nature of Space and Time

No preview available - 2019

Common terms and phrases

asymptotically Euclidean metrics big bang black hole boundary Carter-Penrose diagram catdead Cauchy development causal classical theory compact complex conjugate points converging coordinate corresponds cosmological constant dead cat density matrix Einstein energy condition Euclidean four-sphere Euclidean space event horizon expanding field equations Figure globally hyperbolic gravitational collapse gravitational field holomorphic İ+(S imaginary law of thermodynamics lecture light rays live cat manifold mass measurement microwave background Minkowski space naked singularities no-boundary proposal null geodesic observer pair creation particles past path integral perturbations phase-space volume photon Phys physical Planck point q predictions problem quantum gravity quantum theory radius Riemann sphere scalar field Schwarzschild second law Sitter spacelike spacetime string theory superposition surface term symmetry t₁ temperature thermal radiation three-sphere timelike curve timelike or null tion topology trapped surface twistor space twistor theory vector wave function Weyl curvature Weyl tensor white holes zero

References to this book

About the author (2000)

Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8, 1942. He received a first class honors degree in natural science from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He was a theoretical physicist and has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University from 1982 until his death. In 1974, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific organization. In 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease confined him to a wheelchair and reduced his bodily control to the flexing of a finger and voluntary eye movements, but left his mental faculties untouched. He became a leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes. He wrote numerous books including A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Black Holes and Baby Universes, On the Shoulders of Giants, A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, and Brief Answers to the Big Questions. In 1982, he was named a commander of the British Empire. A film about his life, The Theory of Everything, was released in 2014 and was based on his first wife Jane Hawking's book Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. He died on March 14, 2018 at the age of 76.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Nature of Space and Time
Volume 2 of Isaac Newton Institute series of lectures
Isaac Newton Institute
Princeton science library
AuthorsStephen Hawking, Roger Penrose
Editionillustrated, reprint, revised
PublisherPrinceton University Press, 2000
ISBN0691050848, 9780691050843
Length141 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Science / Physics / Astrophysics
Science / Physics / General
Science / Physics / Quantum Theory
Science / Space Science / Cosmology
Science / Time
  
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