“A brief History of Time”

Stephen Hawking 


Read a wonderful book by Stephen Hawking “A brief History of Time”. Also Saw a lovely movie “The Theory of Everything”, on life of Stephen Hawking.

The book brings together an excellent account of great work of various physicists like Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Einstein, Max Planck, Herzberg, Chandrashekhar, and many more.

It took me back by about 34+ years and rekindled the lost physicist in me. The inquisitiveness about mysteries of universe and of self persists in me even today. When we try to seek answers or query more about this unknown universe and about self, the learned ones tell us: “Those who know, will not tell you; and those who tell you, do not actually know”.

Many a times, I feel that Spirituality and Science have some connection and probably go hand in hand. There is a Sanskrit Shloka:

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते । पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥

It means, “The outer world is full with divine consciousness and so is the inner world. From fullness, manifests fullness and taking out fullness from fullness, fullness indeed remains”.

And the other concept is everything is hollow and empty, everything manifests from this hollow and finishes in the same hollowness.

To me, there is no contradiction between above concepts as hollowness and fullness are same, as even hollowness is complete in itself. Even the physicists also say that the total Energy of the universe is Zero.

While going through the book, I found an interesting concept that some “____” advised astrophysicists to not go for research beyond the Big Bang, as it signified the birth of the Universe, created by God. But then from where the God who has created the universe has come?

When I was a young kid, I would ask my parents, from where I have come and from where everyone else has come? I would get a reply that the God has sent everyone including me on this earth. Then, I would ask from where does God come? He /She too, must have parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so forth. So, from where the first God arrived? They would always change the topic of conversation, as these are the very questions all of us are trying to answer from time immemorial.

The book has nicely covered man’s scientific pursuit in this direction and covers astrophysics discoveries and their theorizations till recent times. The book covers many theories/concepts like gravitational concept, theory of general relativity, singularity theory, concept of time, space, gravity, mass and energy, Principle of uncertainty, quantum theory, super-gravity, string theory, Big Bang, expansion of universe, formation of black holes, and so forth.

Stephen states that “When we combine quantum mechanics with general relativity, there seems to be a new possibility that did not arise before: that space and time together might form a finite, four-dimensional space without singularities or boundaries, like the surface of the earth but with more dimensions. It seems that this idea could explain many of the observed features of the universe, such as its large-scale uniformity and also the smaller-scale departures from homogeneity, like galaxies, stars, and even human beings. It could even account for the arrow of time that we observe. But if the universe is completely self-contained, with no singularities or boundaries, and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as Creator.”

He also quotes Einstein who once asked the question: “How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?” If the no boundary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions. He would, of course, still have had the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. This, however, may not really have been all that much of a choice; there may well be only one, or a small number, of complete unified theories, such as the heterotic string theory, that are self-consistent and allow the existence of structures as complicated as human beings who can investigate the laws of the universe and ask about the nature of God.”

I often feel that in the space or emptiness of universe, if everything is programmed would be like a blip (switch on) and a blop (switch off) i.e. like 0 & 1 – the binary concept, where the blip and blops could change into each other or merge or demerge. For instance, the stars are created and get destroyed, low mass stars merge in each other, Black holes are formed and inhale even other stars, life is formed and gets destroyed. But then, in case there is this blip and blop, from where this blip & blop are generated is again a question mark.

Even the existence of an empty space before the so called Big Bang is a mystery. There are so many known galaxies and so many unknown universes. The Pursuit of unknown will go on. But how this finite mind will be able to solve the mysteries of the infinite shall remain interesting and intrigue the mental faculties. And if we are all part of the God, how can we find the God? How can a wave find a ocean being its part (Ashtavakra Gita). I have been always fascinated by one of Albert Einstein's most famous quotes - "God does not play dice with the universe”.