Page 2 - A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
future (or have we?) but I discuss a possible explanation for this.

I also describe the progress that has been made recently in finding “dualities” or correspondences between
apparently different theories of physics. These correspondences are a strong indication that there is a complete
unified theory of physics, but they also suggest that it may not be possible to express this theory in a single
fundamental formulation. Instead, we may have to use different reflections of the underlying theory in different
situations. It might be like our being unable to represent the surface of the earth on a single map and having to
use different maps in different regions. This would be a revolution in our view of the unification of the laws of
science but it would not change the most important point: that the universe is governed by a set of rational laws
that we can discover and understand.

On the observational side, by far the most important development has been the measurement of fluctuations in
the cosmic microwave background radiation by COBE (the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite) and other
collaborations. These fluctuations are the finger-prints of creation, tiny initial irregularities in the otherwise
smooth and uniform early universe that later grew into galaxies, stars, and all the structures we see around us.
Their form agrees with the predictions of the proposal that the universe has no boundaries or edges in the
imaginary time direction; but further observations will be necessary to distinguish this proposal from other
possible explanations for the fluctuations in the background. However, within a few years we should know
whether we can believe that we live in a universe that is completely self-contained and without beginning or
end.

Stephen Hawking

file:///C|/WINDOWS/Desktop/blahh/Stephen Hawking - A brief history of time/A Brief History in Time.html (2 of 2) [2/20/2001 3:13:58 AM]