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Stephen Hawking's phenomenal, multimillion-copy bestseller,
A Brief History of Time, introduced the ideas of this brilliant theoretical
physicist to readers all over the world. Now, in a major publishing event, Hawking
returns with a lavishly illustrated sequel that unravels the mysteries of the
major breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since the release of his acclaimed
first book. One of the most influential thinkers of our
time, Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness
of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them. In this
new book Hawking takes us to the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth
is often stranger than fiction, to explain in laymen's terms the principles that
control our universe. Like many in the community of
theoretical physicists, Professor Hawking is seeking to uncover the grail of science
-- the elusive Theory of Everything that lies at the heart of the cosmos. In his
accessible and often playful style, he guides us on his search to uncover the
secrets of the universe -- from supergravity to supersymmetry, from quantum theory
to M-theory, from holography to duality. He takes us to the wild frontiers of
science, where superstring theory and p-branes may hold the final clue to the
puzzle. And he lets us behind the scenes of one of his most exciting intellectual
adventures as he seeks "to combine Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
and Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory
that will describe everything that happens in the universe." With
characteristic exuberance, Professor Hawking invites us to be fellow travellers
on this extraordinary voyage through spacetime. Copious four-color illustrations
help clarify this journey into a surreal wonderland where particles, sheets, and
strings move in eleven dimensions; where black holes evaporate and disappear,
taking their secret with them; and where the original cosmic seed from which our
own universe sprang was a tiny nut. The Universe
in a Nutshell is essential reading for all of us who want to understand the
universe in which we live. Like its companion volume, A Brief History of Time,
it conveys the excitement felt within the scientific community as the secrets
of the cosmos reveal themselves. Stephen Hawking
is Lucasian Professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge and is regarded
as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein. |
