The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton Science Library) - Softcover

Stephen Hawking; Roger Penrose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691145709 ISBN 13: 9780691145709

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Roger Penrose is the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0691145709
• ISBN 13: 9780691145709
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 156