Dec 31, 2016 11:52 AM
1676 Views
(Updated Dec 31, 2016 11:46 AM)
In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite(COBE), which probed back in time to within 300, 000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations, as well as his own recent research, Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and time travel, and updated the chapters throughoutThis 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. Being one of those individuals to whom math came so easily that they couldn't grasp how difficult others found it, the professor had no idea what to cover in such a course.
So, he went to the chair of the department, who told him: "You'll want to start with the real number-line and then progress to inequalities; from there, move on to quadratic equations, then trigonometry and the wrapping function, Cartesian and polar coordinate systems, and, if time permits, conic sections."
The professor thanked the chairperson and went off to meet with his first class. Next week, he was back.
"What should I teach them now?" he said.
A Brief History of Time is like that - Professor Hawking doesn't seem to notice when his treatment progresses from the obvious to the arcane, ending with his concept of "imaginary time"(very nearly incomprehensible in this overly brief presentation).
