Read Online The Theory of Everything The Origin and Fate of the Universe Audible Audio Edition Stephen W Hawking Michael York Phoenix Books Books
Download As PDF : The Theory of Everything The Origin and Fate of the Universe Audible Audio Edition Stephen W Hawking Michael York Phoenix Books Books
In physicist Stephen Hawking's brilliant opus, A Brief History of Time, he presented us with a bold new look at our universe, how it began, and how our old views of physics and tired theories about the creation of the universe were no longer relevant. In other words, Hawking gave us a new look at our world, our universe, and ourselves.
Now, Hawking presents an even more comprehensive look at our universe, its creation, and how we see ourselves within it. Imagine sitting in a comfortable room listening to Hawking discuss his latest theories and place them in historical context with science's other great achievements--it would be like hearing Christopher Columbus deliver the news about the new world.
Hawking presents a series of seven lectures in which he describes, more clearly than ever, the history of the universe as we know it. He begins with the history of ideas about the universe, from Aristotle's idea that the Earth is round to Hubble's discovery two millennium later that our universe is growing.
Using this history as a launching pad, Hawking takes us on a fascinating journey through the telescopic lens of modern physics to gain a new glimpse of the universe--the nature of black holes, the space-time continuum, and new information about the origin of the universe. He uses this scientific basis to come up with a "unified theory of everything" that the author claims will be "the ultimate triumph of human reason."
Read Online The Theory of Everything The Origin and Fate of the Universe Audible Audio Edition Stephen W Hawking Michael York Phoenix Books Books
"Stephen Hawking was a good teacher: he was clear, asked good questions, gave honest answers. And he also had a contagious enthusiasm about tackling complex problems.
Now that he is no longer with us, he remains with us through his writings. This book makes his present and endearing."
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The Theory of Everything The Origin and Fate of the Universe Audible Audio Edition Stephen W Hawking Michael York Phoenix Books Books Reviews :
The Theory of Everything The Origin and Fate of the Universe Audible Audio Edition Stephen W Hawking Michael York Phoenix Books Books Reviews
- This is a magnificent set of lectures moving on from Stephen's previous theories, encompassing new thoughts, new experiments and an even closer study of the reason for everything. Compared to previous explanations Stephen includes God and an earnest look at why does the Universe exist anyway. To attempt to summarise the detail, this is just one book you need to read and then reread, it is his best yet and I have known him now for over 60 years.
- I bought this book and also The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and this one was definitely more like the type of book I was looking for. The Grand Design was basically a physics book that just covered theory after theory but this one really connected the dots and made me realize a lot about our universe. Do yourself a favor and skip The Grand Design and just purchase this one.
- Hawking never disappoints as he takes the most complicated subjects and makes it easy to understand and fun to delve into. A mind like his comes along once in a generation and we were fortunate to have him, as did all the students he touched during his tenure at Cambridge University.
- *Please note the comments in the "update" towards the end of this review as the current version of the book does in fact include illustrations*
As someone who has purchased and read almost every book available by Stephen Hawking, I was excited about this book when I found it on . I have several other "illustrated" versions of Hawking's books and those have become my favorite versions because I love the large format and the illustrations inside are generally really well done and actually help with the text, especially for those people who have a hard time mentally visualizing the theories explained within.
For some reason I picked this book to be my first book by Hawking. Perhaps I thought I just couldn't "wait" for the physical book to arrive.
Big mistake.
***The version of this book has absolutely NO illustrations whatsoever***
Let me repeat that The version of this "Illustrated Theory of Everything" has NO ILLUSTRATIONS. No color illustrations. No greyscale illustrations. No black-and-white illustrations. No line-art. None whatsoever. None on the 3G. None on the Reader for Mac. None on the reader for iPad.
There are not even any LINKS to illustrations.
In summation, do NOT buy this book on . If you want to buy it for , I wouldn't even recommend the non-illustrated version. I suspect most people would be better off with Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, or Brief History of Time. The text only portion of this book is exceedingly short and offers essentially nothing new from those other books.
****Update March 8, 2012****
After the helpful suggestion of another -version reader, I contacted support and was able to get an updated version of the book. This does include illustrations, which add substantially to the book. The illustrations are good quality and appropriate. Reading the book on Reader for iPad works pretty well, with full-color photos which are in-line (two-finger gesture to expand the pictures). On my 3 ( with Keyboard), some of the images have very low contrast. Many of the images also have a light grey text which is somewhat difficult to read, even when expanded.
Other than the presence of illustrations in the updated kindle version, the best update is the presence of highlight boxes (kind of like side-bars but in-line) which break up the text and enhance the experience.
I am updating my rating to 3 stars. I would give it more, but the number of illustrations are rather sparse and for b&w owners, there are certainly limitations. I have other books which are not advertised as "illustrated" which have similar numbers of illustrations (chapter heading pictures, or just other pictures that enhance the content.) - Stephen Hawking was a good teacher he was clear, asked good questions, gave honest answers. And he also had a contagious enthusiasm about tackling complex problems.
Now that he is no longer with us, he remains with us through his writings. This book makes his present and endearing. - This book is a new edition of a book originally published in 1996 based in seven Cambridge lectures, basically describing some of the contributions of the author to cosmology and black holes. Among those the singularity theorems coauthored with Penrose, the Hawking radiation of black holes (of which the author himself claims that it would get him the Nobel Prize if found in nature), the no boundary condition, etc.
Some of the concepts are very clearly explained such as the second law of thermodynamics, the black hole horizon, black hole evaporation, virtual particles, etc, although some others are more difficult to grasp.
There are some small errors, mainly with numbers that should be printed in exponential notation.
Unfortunately these lectures predate the discovery that the universe expansion is accelerating and the detailed results of the Wilkinson probe.
In any case the lectures are excellent reading and contain a lot of very good information. I was specially attracted to the fact that until the 1920's it was almost unthinkable that the universe is expanding, whereas it should have been a logic deduction of Newton's gravitational law and the fact that the universe is not collapsing. - It's always difficult to write about such very complex and dry questions as the physics of the origins of the universe and implications thereof. Usually the result is either too technical and hermetical or too shallow and generic.
In this book, Dr. Hawking manages to provide a very good insight into the kind of questions that scientists are trying to answer in relation to the origins of the universe and the quest for a unified theory of physics, and of the rationale behind the different oprions and behind the "most probable" one.
This he accomplishes in a light and easy to read fashion, yet not simplistic, with even some moments of humor, without getting bogged down by convoluted arguments,
Not everyone will understand 100%, but even if you miss some details that would require some familiarity with mathematics and quantum physics, you will still understand most of it, enjoy it and come out with a solid chunl of new knowledge.
