Review: Brief Answers to the Big Questions

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my first book of 2019. As a thought-provoking book from one of the leading thinkers till recent times, a good way to start the year. I have previously read his “A brief history of time” and “The grand design” both of which I liked for presenting serious science in a very readable form. This book released after Stephen Hawking’s death does not disappoint, and is a great compilation of the most important topics Hawking dealt with in his lifetime – and these topics are also those most of us are extremely curious about. There are a couple of good forewords from Eddie Redmayne who played him in the movie “The theory of everything” and scientist Kip Thorne, who writes of his inspiration from Stephen Hawking’s life on his work on gravitational waves. The afterword by his daughter Lucy is touching including mentioning the impact he had on people as could be seen by the large crowds which quietly lined the street on his passing.

The first topic in the is – “Is there a God?”. Hawking’s views on this are already public, and also included in the movie based on his life. The point he makes is that religion describes God as some kind of a superhuman whom we can discuss/debate with and be judged by (some traditions such as Advaita Vedanta do not do that though). He goes on to discuss how time itself started with the big bang and the universe, and well-defined laws of nature mean there is nothing for a God to do. You may agree, partly agree or disagree with his views, but he certainly offers a lot of food for thought. The next topic is on how it all started with the big bang. While all the answers are yet not there, Hawking is confident that physics will crack the puzzle of how the universe sprang from nothing. There is already a lot of progress made such as with M-theory.

The section on black holes is probably the most detailed and it is also a bit dense in parts. This is probably the area Stephen Hawking has contributed the most, and I suppose that explains the level of detail. The discussion is fascinating – do black holes retain context and information of what goes in? How do they come about, and how can study them?

In the discussions around climate change, and in fleeting references in other sections as well, Hawking stresses that we are being very irresponsible with respect to Planet Earth, and people in power had better pay attention to this. The other sections on space travel, AI make for interesting reading as well.

This book is certainly a tribute to Stephen Hawking’s curiosity, passion for science and intellectual genius. A great book to start the year – very intellectually stimulating.

My rating: 4.5 / 5.

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