“A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking is a fascinating exploration of cosmology. In this book, Hawking introduces three arrows of time:
- Thermodynamic Arrow: This arrow relates to entropy and points toward increasing disorder. For example, it explains why whole glasses tend to shatter into pieces rather than spontaneously forming back together.
- Cosmological Arrow: This arrow describes the direction of time in which the Universe is expanding rather than contracting. During a contraction phase, the thermodynamic and cosmological arrows of time would not agree.
- Psychological Arrow: Although not explicitly mentioned in your query, it’s worth noting that Hawking also posited a psychological arrow of time, corresponding to our human perception of time and our memories of the past.
The topic that discuses the theory behind the Big Bang, Big Crunch, is tackled in this chapter. Answers as to what happened and will happen are explored. This is coming after the two chapters on the Black Holes that are somehow difficult to understand; therefore Hawking uses a simpler relatively plain language here. He even goes ahead to explain the incidence of the Pope and the scientists in which the issue of Cosmology was being discussed. This is where he conceived his idea that time was irrelevant, an issue that he was in conflict with the church. This fascinating incidence draws the readers’ interest and therefore reads on with a craving to know more about this controversial issue. This followed by the topic on the Arrow of Time. This is a very complicated and at the same time confusing topic. The chapter does not help much in simplifying it, in fact it complicates it more. After this the reader is presented with the last topic before the conclusion, in which Hawking comes to a general consensus that there is indeed one theory that will try to explain the universe and all its aspects, that at present, the theory is beyond us. Scientists are therefore just trying to discover just pieces of this theory, which they can build on to get a clear picture of the Grand Unified Theory. In the concluding chapter, Professor Hawking ends by posing short questions for readers to digest on what he has covered in the previous chapters. The questions also prompt the reader to look forward to what may just happen (Stephen 2001).
There is no doubt at all that Hawking is one of the greatest astrophysicists that the world has had. He managed to find the scarcity of a book on popular science for the common people, a book that should not have scientific equations, one that explains the complicated theories in a way that easy to be understood. It a very major enthusiastic try effort from him to present the wide scope of content from the extraterrestrial movement of stars to the innermost of small particles that exist in the universe and bring them together into a single form. This just shows how ingenious he was. In general the books tone is narrative and passive to a majority. There are instances where the book is descriptive, with illustrations made by simple drawings to enable one understand the general complex astrophysics, this alone is not enough, the book needs a higher attention level and scientific interest from the reader in order to keep the reader in flow with the book. As it has been illustrated, the book’s contents are well thought out and meticulously placed in chapters to maintain the books pace and flow with the last chapters summarizing man’s nature, God’s greatest accomplishment, it tries to unmask that secrets of the whole universe which is God’s largest creation of them all. Although the author is ailing, crippled by the motor neuron disease, there is no doubt that his insights from his works have helped many to grow an interest in astronomy; it has helped to answer the many wonders that people have. He is still as much in the headlines today as he was in 1988 when the book was topping the bestseller list in the world (Stephen 2001).
Conclusion
With all said and done, the book is excellent especially for those people with a passing interest in the field of physics, in particular, physics on a universal scale, the one that deals with subjects like time, light, and gravity. One can not finish reading this piece of work without noticing the amount of reference that has been made to God. For instance, among the many questions that Hawking asks in the book is this one; did God have control over all that happened in the universe after the Big Bang? This shows clearly that although the author has in some instances suggested there may be no God at, there is still some doubt in him that truly God must have had an influence in all that has happened in the universe. I will not hesitate to recommend this book although I still see it as being too much scientific especially for those with no knowledge of physics at least to the A level standard. Prof. Hawking did a very amazing job by writng and simplifying this part of science that had been feared by many, but to the Layman, there is still a very long way to go.
