Page 1 - A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

Chapter 1 - Our Picture of the Universe

Chapter 2 - Space and Time
Chapter 3 - The Expanding Universe
Chapter 4 - The Uncertainty Principle

Chapter 5 - Elementary Particles and the Forces of Nature

Chapter 6 - Black Holes
Chapter 7 - Black Holes Ain't So Black
Chapter 8 - The Origin and Fate of the Universe

Chapter 9 - The Arrow of Time

Chapter 10 - Wormholes and Time Travel
Chapter 11 - The Unification of Physics
Chapter 12 - Conclusion

Glossary

Acknowledgments & About The Author

FOREWARD

I didn’t write a foreword to the original edition of A Brief History of Time. That was done by Carl Sagan. Instead,
I wrote a short piece titled “Acknowledgments” in which I was advised to thank everyone. Some of the
foundations that had given me support weren’t too pleased to have been mentioned, however, because it led to
a great increase in applications.

I don’t think anyone, my publishers, my agent, or myself, expected the book to do anything like as well as it did.
It was in the London Sunday Times best-seller list for 237 weeks, longer than any other book (apparently, the
Bible and Shakespeare aren’t counted). It has been translated into something like forty languages and has sold
about one copy for every 750 men, women, and children in the world. As Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft (a
former post-doc of mine) remarked: I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

The success of A Brief History indicates that there is widespread interest in the big questions like: Where did
we come from? And why is the universe the way it is?

I have taken the opportunity to update the book and include new theoretical and observational results obtained
since the book was first published (on April Fools’ Day, 1988). I have included a new chapter on wormholes
and time travel. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity seems to offer the possibility that we could create and
maintain wormholes, little tubes that connect different regions of space-time. If so, we might be able to use
them for rapid travel around the galaxy or travel back in time. Of course, we have not seen anyone from the

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