The Universe In A Nutshell: the beautifully illustrated follow up to Professor Stephen Hawking's bestselling masterpiece A Brief

Description

One of the most influential thinkers of our time, Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them. His bestseller "A Brief History of Time" introduced the fascinating world of theoretical physics to readers all over the world. Now, Hawking turns to the major breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since the release of his first book. He brings to us the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth is often stranger than fiction, and explains in layman's terms the principles that control our universe. Like many in the international scientific community, Professor Hawking is seeking to uncover the grail of science - the elusive "Theory of Everything" that lies at the heart of the cosmos. In "The Universe in a Nutshell", he guides us on his search to uncover the secrets of the universe - from supergravity to supersymmetry, from quantum theory to M-theory, from holography to duality. In this exciting intellectual adventure he seeks "to combine Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe". He takes us to the wild frontiers of science where superstring theory and p-branes may hold the final clue to the puzzle.

In 1963, Stephen Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. For thirty years he held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science.

A Brief History of Time has now sold an estimated nine million copies worldwide - something of a hard act for its author to follow. In what is being promoted as the 'sequel' to that book, Professor Hawking gives an account of his attempt to combine Einstein's Theory of Relativity with Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories, in order to reach the grail of a Theory of Everything - or big TOE, as it's charmingly named. This is a book about superstrings and p-branes, holography and supergravity, about how the 'cosmic seed' from which our universe derived was as small as a nut. The publishers are not yet releasing much text, but enough to see that it will be a fascinating (if challenging) read. And one enhanced throughout with 200 striking full colour illustrations and jazzed-up diagrams.