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A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
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A Brief History of Time (edition 1998)

by Stephen Hawking (Author)

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6,767991,383 (3.96)None
I got the version with no pictures in it, so I can't understand some concepts mentioned in the book. May reread later when I become (more) interested in physics or astronomy.
It's one of the books I just picked randomly, even though my significant other mentioned it at least once.
  DzejnCrvena | Apr 2, 2021 |
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Hawking’s vast knowledge of the universe has always been fascinating to me, and it deeply captivated me when I first read this book several years ago. As a beginner in astronomy, I had much to learn, but that didn’t discourage me. Instead, it only encouraged me to delve deeper into the subject.

Many years later, this book fell into my hands again. And well, who am I to deny Stephen Hawking my full attention?

With each passing year, my appreciation for this book has only grown. Stephen Hawking was a remarkable theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, known for his contributions to physics and his ability to explain complex concepts in a way anyone could understand. Until his death, he made significant contributions to physics despite his physical limitations, and his legacy continues to inspire millions...

Read my full review about this fascinating book on my blog: "www.wordsandfiction.com" ( )
  wordsandfiction | Oct 14, 2023 |
This book was far more interesting and more accessible than I thought it would be. ( )
  Autolycus21 | Oct 10, 2023 |
A Brief History of Time was written in 1988 and has been obsolete for a while. A good chunk of Hawking's rhetoric is based on the slowing down of the expansion of the universe, which we found out to be wrong in 1998. The opposite has been observed - the universe's expansion is accelerating. But most of the rest of the book is still a high-quality way to intimidate the public who don't have sufficient physics to easily follow what Dr. Hawking says about energy. His frivolous use of electronvolts in a popular book astounds me. ( )
  iothemoon | Sep 27, 2023 |
Blew my mind. ( )
  Kim.Sasso | Aug 27, 2023 |
My brain hurts...but in a good way! Adding this to my list of essential non-fiction! ( )
  kylecarroll | Jul 13, 2023 |
This is not light reading! Packed with information but I didn't find it easy to comprehend. ( )
  gianouts | Jul 5, 2023 |
Hawking breaks complex modern theoretical physics concepts down enough for the layman to understand it, without bogging them down with too much detail. It is well written, and has a good flow, where the chapters build on each other. While reading, it makes me feel smart and incredibly stupid at the same time, and I love it. ( )
  Andjhostet | Jul 4, 2023 |
Wow! I wasn't certain how much of this I was going to understand but I've wanted to read it for a while, and now I can say that I definitely enjoyed it and even understood most of it!

I do have a science background, so the chemistry, biology and anthropology were familiar, but I've always struggled with physics, however knowing as little as I did, I was pleased to be able to follow along with the discussion. This is an accessible book, due largely to Professor Hawkings simplifications and explanations as it does cover some very in depth ideas. It does reqire thought and concentration, but this I feel is certainly worth it.

The only thing I would say, is that while I largely followed the theories when discussed in the book, I'm not certain how much I will recall or understand after just one reading. ( )
  calenmarwen | May 29, 2023 |
Excellent. Very clear, concise, readable, though material’s inherently difficult. Maybe too much w/o having had physics coursework. ( )
  garbagedump | Dec 9, 2022 |
Ne bih se bas slozio da je "Kratka povest vremena" knjiga koja je napisana za obicne laike vec da ovo delo iziskuje izvesno poznavanje astronomije, opste fizike i kvantne mehanike.

Neka od pitanja kojima se Hoking bavi ticu se teorija koje ukljucuju postanak i buducnost kosmosa, kvantnu mehaniku, materijalni mikro i makrokosmos i 4 sile koje ga definisu (gravitacija, elektromagnetna, slaba nuklearna i jaka nuklearna sila), prostorno-vremenske konstante, crne rupe (singularnosti), protok vremena (apsolutno, individualno i imaginarno), nasa pozicija u inflatornom univerzumu, teorije multiverzuma i konacno Hokingov rad na teoriji struna kojom je zeleo da objasni teoriju gravitacionih struna kojom bi objedinio Ajnstajnovu teoriju relativiteta i kvantnu mehaniku.

"Kratka povest vremena" je znacajno delo jednog modernog uma koji pokusava ne samo da objedini istoriju vasione vec i nasu poziciju u njoj kao i evoluciju nase spoznaje o njoj.

Ptolomej je bio jedan od najvecih zlocinaca u istoriji nauke. Napisao je "Amalgam" delo koje je propagiralo geocentricni sistem po kome je planeta Zemlja staticno telo oko kojeg kruze sva ostala nebeska tela prateci savrsenu kruznicu. "Amalgam" je kasnije posluzio religiji i inkviziciji da gusi i zatire razum i naucnu misao. Tek u zadnjih par stotina godina pocela je nauka ponovo da se razvija i Stiven Hoking je jedan od njenih najznacajnijih izdanaka na polju astronomije i kosmologije.

Licno se ne slazem sa Hokingovim idejama po pitanju imaginarnog vremena i teorijom multiverzuma premda time ne tvrdim da Hoking nije u pravu, vec da je meni posve nemoguce da percipiram te dve teorije. Uostalom teorija i ostaje samo teorija dok se ne potvrdi eksperimentom i to u svim svojim segmentima.
M
oja konacna ocena 4. Delo nije veliko ali je prilicno sveobuhvatno, zahteva predznanje o materiji, u zadnjih par poglavlja prilicno tesko za razumevanje. Rekao bih da se u tih zadnjih par poglavlja Hoking ne obraca citaocu vec samom sebi. ( )
  srdjashin | Nov 14, 2022 |
This book puts me in mind of the story about how a Harvard number theorist, through some malfunction of the scheduling computer, got assigned to teach an introductory course in pre-calculus. ( )
  Iqrakhalid | Sep 12, 2022 |
Explicaciones de algunos conceptos complejos de forma simple. ( )
  jordisolisc | Aug 7, 2022 |
Hawking gives an eponymously brief rundown on all things time, including black holes, string theory, and whether he thinks time travel is possible.

While some things in the book I didn't understand, I'm proud of myself for the amount that I did get. Relativity boggles me, but I kind of love it and want to learn more. Hawkings writing style is perfect - a good mix of personable and informative. I'm always amazed when super-bright people are able to explain their ideas in a way that makes sense to us common folk. ( )
  scaifea | Jul 7, 2022 |
Afskaplega fróðleg bók og merkilega aðgengileg miðað við hver skrifar hana. Maður má þó hafa sig allan við að skilja það sem um er rætt en eftir stendur að viðhorfið gagnvart tíma og geimnum hefur tekið miklum stakkaskiptum. ( )
  SkuliSael | Apr 28, 2022 |
Hawking seems by turns repelled and reassured by tautologies, and accomplishes his explanations of the history of physics with more clarity than his elaboration of newer theories, but I still grasp these concepts better when they're explained by practitioners of the science than via layman interpretation. ( )
  slimikin | Mar 27, 2022 |
Excellent book!

Really loved Hawking's way of describing everything from the Big Bang to Black Holes. He has a way of explaining this that will expand your mind as well as your knowledge. I've watched a few documentaries on some of the topics and used to accept a few things as 'given'. But here, he amazingly explained them in detail so that you know where those 'given' things came from

Guess he has a great mind after all.

However, there was this part about imaginary time and all that I didn't grasp, and there are some of his views which I don't agree with, of course. So, I'll give it a solid 4.

Recommended. ( )
  nonames | Jan 14, 2022 |
A brief, readable, understandable introduction to twentieth century physics by one of the greats of physics. Informative, interesting, and at times thought-provoking, with no abstruse math to clutter things up for the layman. In the original editions, the images are fairly understandable, though some don't really aid in understanding. Brian Greene's PBS specials are way better, but way later than this book, which was an inexplicable bestseller in the late 1980s and made Hawking a star and a cultural touchstone. I read and reviewed the updated and expanded tenth anniversary edition, which removed an introduction by Carl Sagan and added a chapter on wormholes and time travel. ( )
  tuckerresearch | Oct 14, 2021 |
deservedly a classic. very cool stuff. ( )
  royragsdale | Sep 22, 2021 |
Cool book. I must re-read it and pay closer attention next time because I could have understood it better. My favorite chapter was "The arrow of time".

It is really interesting to me that we see time as moving "forward" because that is the only way we could see it. Not because that is the way that it is.
It's like those goggles that make you see up as down and down as up: your brain just cannot function that way and it flips the image. That doesn't mean that up is any more up than down. As far as your eye is concerned it's just light. We just need up to look a certain way.
I might have misunderstood it but it seems that our brain is doing the same thing with time. If it was even possible for there to exist something like a pair of trafalmadorian goggles that allowed you to perceive time the other way round, remembering the future, it would just flip everything back again.

I love that my copy was marketed to kids. We patronize kids far too much, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't read this and I think it would make a great birthday present for any child that likes reading and has some curiosity about the universe. ( )
  RebeccaBooks | Sep 16, 2021 |
Oof. That's an intense book.

Hawking does an impressive job of making cosmology and the Big Bang and black holes seem relatively digestable, but even for me--with a strong background in mathematics, a pretty decent one in at least undergradate level physics and a stronger study specifically in quantum weirdness, albeit more from a computational perspective--this book is hard to read at times.

Well worth the read though. I learned all sorts of crazy things. (Just read the book, but if you need even more convincing...)

Yet another proof the Earth is round:

First, he realized that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth coming between the sun and the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true only if the earth was spherical. If the earth had been a flat disk, the shadow would have been elongated and elliptical, unless the eclipse always occurred at a time when the sun was directly under the center of the disk.


Kepler didn't like orbits not being perfect circles:

As far as Kepler was concerned, elliptical orbits were merely an ad hoc hypothesis, and a rather repugnant one at that, because ellipses were clearly less perfect than circles.


Relativity is measurable even on the scale of the orbit of Mercury:

For example, very accurate observations of the planet Mercury revealed a small difference between its motion and the predictions of Newton’s theory of gravity.


Mass doesn't increase as quickly as I'd thought as you get up towards light speed:

For example, at 10 percent of the speed of light an object’s mass is only 0.5 percent more than normal, while at 90 percent of the speed of light it would be more than twice its normal mass.


Another way of looking at how large masses actually 'curve' three dimensional space, and 'into what':

The mass of the sun curves space-time in such a way that although the earth follows a straight path in four-dimensional space-time, it appears to us to move along a circular orbit in three-dimensional space.


Physicists get weird when it comes to naming things:

It is believed that this force is carried by another spin-1 particle, called the gluon, which interacts only with itself and with the quarks. The strong nuclear force has a curious property called confinement: it always binds particles together into combinations that have no color. One cannot have a single quark on its own because it would have a color (red, green, or blue). Instead, a red quark has to be joined to a green and a blue quark by a “string” of gluons (red green blue = white). Such a triplet constitutes a proton or a neutron. Another possibility is a pair consisting of a quark and an antiquark (red antired, or green antigreen, or blue antiblue = white).


Even more weirdness than expected when it comes to the speed of light being constant:

A cannonball fired upward from the earth will be slowed down by gravity and will eventually stop and fall back; a photon, however, must continue upward at a constant speed. How then can Newtonian gravity affect light?


When you get into the scale of space, numbers can get unintuitive:

The rate of energy loss in the case of the earth and the sun is very low—about enough to run a small electric heater. This means it will take about a thousand million million million million years for the earth to run into the sun, so there’s no immediate cause for worry!


Hawking has an amusing sense of humor:


Despite this, I had a bet with Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology that in fact Cygnus X-l does not contain a black hole! This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist.

I started to think about black holes as I was getting into bed. My disability makes this rather a slow process, so I had plenty of time.


Despite being one of the craziest events in the history of our universe, the Big Bang didn't last very long:

Within only a few hours of the big bang, the production of helium and other elements would have stopped. And after that, for the next million years or so, the universe would have just continued expanding, without anything much happening.


Thinking about the universe or space-time itself leads to some interesting questions:

His space-time had the curious property that the whole universe was rotating. One might ask: “Rotating with respect to what?” The answer is that distant matter would be rotating with respect to directions that little tops or gyroscopes point in.


Einstein wasn't perfect (and causality and faster than light travel have some issues):

This had the side effect that it would be possible for someone to go off in a rocket ship and return to earth before he set out. This property really upset Einstein, who had thought that general relativity wouldn’t allow time travel. However, given Einstein’s record of ill-founded opposition to gravitational collapse and the uncertainty principle, maybe this was an encouraging sign.


More humor:

There was a young lady of Wight Who travelled much faster than light. She departed one day, In a relative way, And arrived on the previous night.


Just what a Grand Unified Theory of Everything could mean:

However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.


A factoid about Galileo's relationships with the Church that I'd not heard of before:

In 1623, a longtime friend of Galileo’s became the Pope. Immediately Galileo tried to get the 1616 decree revoked.


And finally, a bit of an understatement:

In the twenty years since the last revision of this book, progress in cosmology has been rapid.


Like I said. A fascinating book. Worth the read.
( )
  jpv0 | Jul 21, 2021 |
Great book for anyone interested in physics or science. This is a classic and I can't believe I haven't read it before. Generally it's simplified as much as possible so the rest of us have a chance at understanding the material. I've also enjoyed the Richard Feynman books so give those a look. ( )
  hvector | Jul 10, 2021 |
Honestly? I wanted to like it more than I did because everyone else seems to like it so much and I want to feel that love. I love science so I thought this book would be perfect. Plus some British guy was the reader in the audio version and who doesn't love a British accent?! But, alas, I did not feel connected to this book. It held me at arms length and I never got closer. ( )
  Tosta | Jul 5, 2021 |
Defniitely a must read if you have ever wondered about how the universe and even life on earth came to be and the quest to find the mathematical equation to explain EVERYTHING. Not over the top in terms of equations and math, but is written in a way where anybody could comprehend how specific ideas came to be. ( )
  sjh4255 | May 4, 2021 |
I got the version with no pictures in it, so I can't understand some concepts mentioned in the book. May reread later when I become (more) interested in physics or astronomy.
It's one of the books I just picked randomly, even though my significant other mentioned it at least once.
  DzejnCrvena | Apr 2, 2021 |
A Brief History of Time, no doubt, is the most science I've attempted "reading" in many years. I did listen to it on audiobook (some illustrations would have been helpful), and I won't pretend that I understood a lot of what he was talking about.

I do feel I know more about black holes, the big bang, the general theory of relativity, general history (i.e. names and dates) of important scientists and discoveries, quarks, quantum mechanics, and the uncertainty principle. But not much. Sadly, I'm pretty sure it was in one ear and out the other, in that I'll recognize the basic concepts, nod when someone breaches the subject, and add little more. I felt I had to slog through parts of it, while other parts kept my attention.

I felt he could have "dumbed it down" a bit more for the layperson. For science, I will probably stick with Science Mike (on podcasts) or Neil deGrasse Tyson. I feel like they are better communicators, and with less hubris. ( )
  nrt43 | Dec 29, 2020 |
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