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In the years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's
A Brief History of Time has established itself as a landmark volume in
scientific writing. It has become an international publishing phenomenon, translated
into forty languages and selling over nine million copies. The book was on the
cutting edge of what was then known about the nature of the universe, but since
that time there have been extraordinary advances in the technology of observing
both the micro- and 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 spacetime that he had projected.
Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed
by these many observations, as well as his most recent research, for this expanded
edition Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written
an entirely new chapter on the fascinating subject of wormholes and time travel,
and updated the original chapters. In addition, to
heighten understanding of complex concepts that readers may have found difficult
to grasp despite the clarity and wit of Professor Hawking's writing, this edition
is enhanced throughout with more than 240 full-color illustrations, including
satellite images, photographs made possible by spectacular technological advances
such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and computer-generated images of three- and
four-dimensional realities. Detailed Captions clarify these illustrations, enabling
readers to experience the vastness of intergalactic space, the nature of black
holes, and the microcosmic world of particle physics in which matter and antimatter
collide. A classic work that now brings to the reader
the latest understanding of cosmology, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time
is the story of the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of
time and space. Stephen Hawking, who was born on
the anniversary of Galileo's death in 1942, holds Isaac Newton's chair as Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Widely regarded as the
most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein, he is also the author of
Black Holes and Baby Universes, a collection of essays published in 1993,
as well as numerous scientific papers and books. |
