The Nature of Space and Time

Hawking, Stephen; Roger Penrose

ISBN 10: 0691037914 / ISBN 13: 9780691037912

Published by Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, 1996

About this Item

1st Edition/2nd Printing. SIGNED and inscribed by Roger Penrose on a bookplate affixed to title page. 141 pages. DJ mylar protected. (Bonus: Comes with a unsigned hardcover copy of Hawkin's "A Brief History of Time"). NOTE: No International orders for this item. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Seller Inventory # 046195

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Nature of Space and Time

Publisher: Princeton Univ Press, Princeton

Publication Date: 1996

Binding: Hard Cover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: SIGNED By Co-Author

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

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. With the final debate, the reader will come to realise 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.

About the Author:

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Roger Penrose is a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and the author of Cycles of Time and The Road to Reality (both Vintage). He is the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at the University of Oxford. Michael Atiyah, Master of Trinity College Cambridge, and former President of the Royal Society, has written a foreword for this book.