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 theory of everything (TOE), final theory, ultimate theory, unified field theory or master theory is a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all aspects of the universe. Finding a theory of everything is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.
Black Holes and Baby Universes and other Essays is a 1993 popular science book by English physicist Stephen Hawking.
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.
Leonard Susskind is an American theoretical physicist, Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests are string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.
The chronology protection conjecture is a hypothesis first proposed by Stephen Hawking that laws of physics beyond those of standard general relativity prevent time travel on all but microscopic scales - even when the latter theory states that it should be possible. The permissibility of time travel is represented mathematically by the existence of closed timelike curves in some solutions to the field equations of general relativity. The chronology protection conjecture should be distinguished from chronological censorship under which every closed timelike curve passes through an event horizon, which might prevent an observer from detecting the causal violation.
James Burkett Hartle was an American theoretical physicist. He joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1966, and was a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. Hartle is known for his work in general relativity, astrophysics, and interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Quantum cosmology is the attempt in theoretical physics to develop a quantum theory of the universe. This approach attempts to answer open questions of classical physical cosmology, particularly those related to the first phases of the universe.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2004) is the second book on theoretical physics, cosmology, and string theory written by Brian Greene, professor and co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP).
A physical paradox is an apparent contradiction in physical descriptions of the universe. While many physical paradoxes have accepted resolutions, others defy resolution and may indicate flaws in theory. In physics as in all of science, contradictions and paradoxes are generally assumed to be artifacts of error and incompleteness because reality is assumed to be completely consistent, although this is itself a philosophical assumption. When, as in fields such as quantum physics and relativity theory, existing assumptions about reality have been shown to break down, this has usually been dealt with by changing our understanding of reality to a new one which remains self-consistent in the presence of the new evidence.
The Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet was a public bet on the outcome of the black hole information paradox made in 1997 by physics theorists Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking on the one side, and John Preskill on the other, according to the document they signed 6 February 1997, as shown in Hawking's 2001 book The Universe in a Nutshell.
Imaginary time is a mathematical representation of time that appears in some approaches to special relativity and quantum mechanics. It finds uses in connecting quantum mechanics with statistical mechanics and in certain cosmological theories.
Anthony Zee is a Chinese-American physicist, writer, and a professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and the physics department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Robert M. Wald is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. He studies general relativity, black holes, and quantum gravity and has written textbooks on these subjects.
Gravitation is a widely adopted textbook on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, written by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler. It was originally published by W. H. Freeman and Company in 1973 and reprinted by Princeton University Press in 2017. It is frequently abbreviated MTW. The cover illustration, drawn by Kenneth Gwin, is a line drawing of an apple with cuts in the skin to show the geodesics on its surface.
Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos is a popular science book by Michio Kaku first published in 2004.
Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who 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.
On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy is a compilation of scientific texts edited and with commentary by the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. The book was published by Running Press in 2002.
Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics is a 2008 popular science book by American theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind. The book covers the black hole information paradox, and the related scientific dispute between Stephen Hawking and Susskind. Susskind is known for his work on string theory and wrote a previous popular science book, The Cosmic Landscape, in 2005.
