Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking: Physics Leaves No Room For God

From The Times:
Modern physics leaves no place for God in the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded.

Just as Darwinism removed the need for a creator in the sphere of biology, Britain's most eminent scientist argues that a new series of theories have rendered redundant the role of a creator for the Universe.

In his forthcoming book, an extract from which is published exclusively in Eureka, published today with The Times, Professor Hawking sets out to answer the question: "Did the Universe need a creator?" The answer he gives is a resounding "no".

Far from being a once-in-a-million event that could only be accounted for by extraordinary serendipity or a divine hand, the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, Hawking says.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist," he writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going," he finds.

Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe

Stephen Hawking is the most famous scientist on the planet. In his post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, he counts Sir Isaac Newton (1642--1727) amongst his predecessors. And he was born 300 years to the day after the avant-garde astronomer, Galileo Galilei (1564--1642).

Following a devastating diagnosis of motor neurone disease in 1963, Hawking was given two years to live. Yet 44 years later, he still hopes to solve the big problem of physics, that of unifying quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity. Doing so will produce a set of laws that will explain everything in the universe, including how it all began - a breakthrough aptly dubbed the 'Theory of Everything'.

Hawking felt that he was on the brink of this breakthrough a long time ago. When he published his surprising best-seller 'A Brief History of Time' in 1988, he expressed a certainty that the Theory of Everything was imminent. However, twenty years later, it still eludes Hawking and the scientific community.

Frustratingly, Hawking's condition is worsening. His only way of communicating now is through one cheek muscle. Will he find the theory before it is too late?

This two-episode documentary from the UK's Channel 4 is both a portrait of Hawking and an attempt to explain his work to non-scientific types. It conveys the basics of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity in an easy-to-understand manner and does very well to acquaint viewers with Hawking's extraordinary life and character. A thoroughly enjoyable, inspiring and enlightening series!

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Origin of the Universe - Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking gives a lecture on the Hawking-Hartle no boundary universe.

Lecture given to a sold out crowd at the Berkeley on March 13 2007.

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Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe

BBC Horizon - The Hawking Paradox

Stephen Hawking is the most famous scientist on the planet. His popular science book 'A Brief History of Time' was a publishing sensation, staying at the top of the bestseller lists longer than any other book in recent history. But behind the public face lies an argument that has been raging for almost 30 years.

Hawking shot to fame in the world of physics when he provided a mathematical proof for the Big Bang theory. This theory showed that the entire universe exploded from a singularity, an infinitely small point with infinite density and infinite gravity. Hawking was able to come to his proof using mathematical techniques that had been developed by Roger Penrose. These techniques were however developed to deal not with the beginning of the Universe but with black holes.

Science had long predicted that if a sufficiently large star collapsed at the end of its life, all the matter left in the star would be crushed into an infinitely small point with infinite gravity and infinite density -- a singularity. Hawking realised that the Universe was, in effect, a black hole in reverse.

Instead of matter being crushed into a singularity, the Universe began when a singularity expanded to form everything we see around us today, from stars to planets to people. Hawking realised that to come to a complete understanding of the Universe he would have to unravel the mysteries of the black hole.

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