The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form. These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The overall uniformity of the Universe, known as the flatness problem, is explained through cosmic inflation: a sudden and very rapid expansion of space during the earliest moments. However, physics currently lacks a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity that can successfully model the earliest conditions of the Big Bang.
Leon Max Lederman was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982, along with Martin Lewis Perl, for research on quarks and leptons. Lederman was director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, where he was resident scholar emeritus from 2012 until his death in 2018.
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of all universes. Together, these universes are presumed to comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", or "many worlds". One common assumption is that the multiverse is a "patchwork quilt of separate universes all bound by the same laws of physics."
Sir Roger Penrose is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and an honorary fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and University College London.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a book on theoretical cosmology by English physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who had no prior knowledge of physics.
In the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist, activist, futurologist, and popular-science writer. He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kaku is the author of several books about physics and related topics and has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film. He is also a regular contributor to his own blog, as well as other popular media outlets. For his efforts to bridge science and science fiction, he is a 2021 Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Awardee.
The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that values different from the observed ones are more probable. If the values of any of certain free parameters in contemporary physical theories had differed only slightly from those observed, the evolution of the universe would have proceeded very differently, and "life as we know it" might not have been possible.
Leonard Mlodinow is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, screenwriter and author. In physics, he is known for his work on the large N expansion, a method of approximating the spectrum of atoms based on the consideration of an infinite-dimensional version of the problem, and for his work on the quantum theory of light inside dielectrics.
Stephen Hawking's Universe is an astronomical documentary from 1997 made for the Public Broadcasting Service featuring the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. The six-episode series discusses the history of astronomy as well as black holes and dark matter.
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? is a 1993 popular science book by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi.
Wrinkles in Time is a book on cosmology by the Nobel laureate physicist George Smoot and Keay Davidson, a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. It was published in 1994 by William Morrow in hardback.
Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who, at the time of his death, was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world.
The zero-energy universe hypothesis proposes that the total amount of energy in the universe is exactly zero: its amount of positive energy in the form of matter is exactly canceled out by its negative energy in the form of gravity. Some physicists, such as Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking or Alexander Vilenkin, call or called this state "a universe from nothingness", although the zero-energy universe model requires both a matter field with positive energy and a gravitational field with negative energy to exist. The hypothesis is broadly discussed in popular sources. Other cancellation examples include the expected symmetric prevalence of right- and left-handed angular momenta of objects, the observed flatness of the universe, the equal prevalence of positive and negative charges, opposing particle spin in quantum mechanics, as well as the crests and troughs of electromagnetic waves, among other possible examples in nature.
The Grand Design is a popular-science book written by physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow and published by Bantam Books in 2010. The book examines the history of scientific knowledge about the universe and explains eleven-dimensional M-theory. The authors of the book point out that a Unified Field Theory may not exist.
The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe is a book by American physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg.
Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe is a documentary television series produced by the television broadcaster Channel 4. The subject of the series is British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, known for his work on black holes, who is also the presenter of the series. The series includes interviews with astrophysicist Kim Weaver, Bernard Carr, a student of Hawking's, and three theoretical physicists: Michio Kaku, Edward Witten, known for his work on superstring theory, and Lisa Randall. The first episode premiered in 2008, twenty years after the publication of Hawking's bestselling popular science book A Brief History of Time. The title is derived from a Newsweek cover.
"Why is there anything at all?" is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger, the last of whom called it "the fundamental question of metaphysics".
Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time is a 1996 book by Huw Price, on the physics and philosophy of the Arrow of Time. It explores the problem of the direction of time, looking at issues in thermodynamics, cosmology, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics. Price argues that it is fruitful to think about time from a hypothetical Archimedean Point - a viewpoint outside of time. In later chapters, Price argues that retrocausality can resolve many of the philosophical issues facing quantum mechanics and along these lines proposes an interpretation involving what he calls 'advanced action'.
On the Origin of Time is a 2023 book by physicist Thomas Hertog about the theories of Stephen Hawking. Thomas Hertog is a Belgian cosmologist working at KU Leuven university. He was a key collaborator of Professor Stephen Hawking. This book was written by Thomas Hertog at the request of Stephen Hawking at the end of his life in order to popularize the cosmological theory that they developed together.
