Loud letters
Brief Answers to the Big Questions
Peter Yaacoub
Introduction
Newton gave us answers. Hawking gave us questions. And Hawking’s questions themselves keep on giving, generating breakthroughs decades later.
I finished reading this timeless book by Stephen Hawking exactly 1 year and 1 month ago. However, the time span didn’t remove its impact on my mind. I had never taken so many notes for a single book, but the quantity and the quality of words, sentences, and references were at the same level as the impact of his ideas. That is to say, everything was diligently thought-out.
Abhorent = Inspiring disgust and loathing.
Entropy = Lack of order or predictability.
Eulogy = A tribute to someone who has just died.
Memorialize = Preserve the memory of.
Wow = Impress and excite someone greatly.
Why we must ask the big questions
While there’s life, there is hope.
Atrophy = Waste away as a result of degeneration of cells.
Daft = Silly, foolish.
Fellowship = Status of a fellow of a college or society.
1 - Is there a god?
Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the universe in.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
German-born theoretical physicist, widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time.
Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 BCE – c. 230)
Ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day.
M-theory
Theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory.
Scientific Determinism
Philosophical view that events are completely determined by previously existing causes.
Infinitesimal = Extremely small.
2 - How did it all begin?
God does not play dice.
Anthropic Principle
Hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that the range of possible observations that we could make about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could only happen in a universe capable of developing intelligent life in the first place.
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)
Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath.
Arno Penzias (1933 – )
American physicist, radio astronomer and, Nobel laureate in physics.
Big Crunch
Hypothetical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately causing the cosmic scale factor to reach zero, an event potentially followed by a reformation of the universe starting with another Big Bang.
Bishop Ussher (1581 – 1656)
The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656.
Bumba
The creator god in the religion and mythology of the Kuba people of Central Africa in the area that is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Dialectical materialism
Theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science.
Edwin Hubble (1889 – 1953)
American astronomer.
Evgeny Lifshitz (1915 – 1985)
Leading Soviet physicist and brother of the physicist Ilya Lifshitz.
Fred Hoyle (1915 – 2001)
English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B²FH paper.
General theory of relativity
Geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and the current description of gravitation in modern physics.
Hamlet
Tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601.
Hermann Bondi (1919 – 2005)
Austrian-British mathematician and cosmologist.
Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)
German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.
Inverse square law
Any scientific law stating that a specified physical quantity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity.
Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727)
English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher.
Isaak Khalatnikov (1919 – 2021)
Leading Soviet theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to many areas of theoretical physics, including general relativity, quantum field theory, as well as the theory of quantum liquids.
Jim Hartle (1939 – 2023)
Professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 1966, and was a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.
No-boundary proposal
Proposal in theoretical physics concerning the state of the Universe prior to the Planck epoch.
Prometheus
Best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization.
Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988)
American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model.
Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703)
English polymath active as a scientist, natural philosopher and architect, who is credited to be one of the first two scientists to discover microorganisms in 1665 using a compound microscope that he built himself, the other scientist being Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in 1674.
Robert Wilson (1914 – 2000)
American physicist known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, as a sculptor, and as an architect of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), where he was the first director from 1967 to 1978.
Roger Penrose (1931 – )
British mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics.
Steady-state theory
Alternative to the Big Bang theory of evolution of the universe.
Thomas Gold (1920 – 2004)
Austrian-born American astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London).
Uncertainty principle
Any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy the values for certain related pairs of physical quantities of a particle, such as position, x, and momentum, p, can be predicted from initial conditions appearing a trade-off between them.
Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976)
German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics.
Antinomy = Contradiction between two reasonable conclusions.
Dictum = Short statement that expresses a general truth.
In earnest = To a greater extent.
Retrodict = State a fact about the past based on deduction.
3 - Is there other intelligent life in the universe?
a human is equivalent to about fifty Harry Potter books
Francis Crick (1916 – 2004)
English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist.
James Watson (1928 – )
American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.
Second law of thermodynamics
Physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and energy interconversions.
4 - Can we predict the future?
Erwin Schrödinger (1887 – 1961)
Nobel Prize-winning Austrian and naturalized Irish physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory: the Schrödinger equation provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time.
Hidden variable theory
Proposals to provide explanations of quantum mechanical phenomena through the introduction of (possibly unobservable) hypothetical entities.
John Bell (1928 – 1990)
Physicist from Northern Ireland and the originator of Bell’s theorem, an important theorem in quantum physics regarding hidden-variable theories.
Jurassic Park (1993)
American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen, and starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough.
Max Planck (1858 – 1947)
German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Paul Dirac (1902 – 1984)
English theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827)
French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy.
Proust (1871 – 1922)
French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu; previously translated in English as Remembrance of Things Past), originally in French and published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927.
Quantum mechanics
Fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.
Schrödinger equation
Linear partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a quantum-mechanical system.
Ad hoc = Created or done for a particular purpose as necessary.
Apocryphal = Of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.
Dogma = Set of principles laid down by an authority as inconvertibly true.
Inverterate = Having a particular habit unlikely to change.
5 - What is inside a black hole?
fact is sometimes stranger than fiction
Andy Strominger (1955 – )
American theoretical physicist who is the director of Harvard’s Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature.
Brandon Carter (1942 – )
Australian theoretical physicist, best known for his work on the properties of black holes and for being the first to name and employ the anthropic principle in its contemporary form.
Conservation laws
States that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves over time.
Cosmic censorship conjecture
Mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities arising in general relativity.
Einstein equations
Equations that relate the geometry of spacetime to the distribution of matter within it.
George Volkoff (1914 – 2000)
Russian-Canadian physicist and academic who helped, with J. Robert Oppenheimer, predict the existence of neutron stars before they were discovered.
Hartland Snyder (1913 – 1962)
American physicist who, together with Robert Oppenheimer, showed how large stars would collapse to form black holes.
Jacob Bekenstein (1947 – 2015)
Mexican, USA and Israeli theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of the connections between information and gravitation.
Jim Bardeen (1939 – 2022)
American physicist, well known for his work in general relativity, particularly his role in formulating the laws of black hole mechanics.
John Michell (1724 – 1793)
English natural philosopher and clergyman who provided pioneering insights into a wide range of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, optics, and gravitation.
John Wheeler (1911 – 2008)
American theoretical physicist.
Lamb shift
Anomalous difference in energy between two electron orbitals in a hydrogen atom.
Lev Landau (1908 – 1968)
Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.
Malcolm Perry (1951 – )
British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor of theoretical physics at University of Cambridge and professor of theoretical physics at Queen Mary University of London.
Rainer K. Sachs (1932 – )
German-American mathematical physicist, with interests in general relativistic cosmology and astrophysics, as well as a computational radiation biologist.
Robert Oppenheimer (1904 – 1967)
American theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
Rotational symmetry
The property a shape has when it looks the same after some rotation by a partial turn.
Sasha Haco (1992 or 1993 – )
English theoretical physicist, entrepreneur and Chief Executive Officer of Unitary, an online content moderation company.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910 – 1995)
Indian-American theoretical physicist who spent his professional life in the United States.
Translation symmetry
The invariance of a system of equations under any translation.
Quasar = Massive and extremely remote celestial object.
6 - Is time travel possible?
today’s science fiction is often tomorrow’s science fact.
Bernhard Riemann (1826 – 1866)
German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry.
Casimir effect
Physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space which arises from the quantum fluctuations of a field.
Classical laws
Physical theory describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies.
Chronology Protection Conjecture
Hypothesis first proposed by Stephen Hawking that laws of physics beyond those of standard general relativity prevent time travel on all but microscopic scales - even when the latter theory states that it should be possible.
David Deutsch (1953 – )
British physicist at the University of Oxford.
Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978)
Logician, mathematician, and philosopher.
Space-time
Any mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four dimensional continuum.
String theory
Theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings.
Benighted = In a state of moral ignorance.
Crank = Excentric person obsessed by a particular subjet.
Inextricably = In a way impossible to seperate.
Limerick = Humorous five-line poem with a rhyme scheme aabba.
Nought = Zero.
7 - Will we survive on Earth?
‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’
Bhagavad-Gita
700-verse Hindu scripture, which is part of the epic Mahabharata.
Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology.
Moore’s law
Observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
Lincoln Steffens (1866 – 1936)
American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century.
Planck length
Extremely small unit of length.
Centigrade = Celsius.
8 - Should we colonise space?
Alpha Centauri
Triple star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus.
Buzz Aldrin (1930 – )
American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot.
Catastrophe theory
Branch of bifurcation theory in the study of dynamical systems.
Claudius Gros (1961 – )
German physicist.
Goldilocks zone
Circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the habitable zone, is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure.
Metamaterial
Any material engineered to have a property that is rarely observed in naturally occurring materials.
Neil Armstrong (1930 – 2012)
American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who in 1969 became the first person to walk on the Moon.
Panspermia
Hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th century BCE by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms.
Proxima b
Exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to the Sun and part of the larger triple star system Alpha Centauri.
Proxima Centauri
Small, low-mass star located 4.2465 light-years (1.3020 pc) away from the Sun in the southern constellation of Centaurus.
René Thom (1923 – 2002)
French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958.
Yuri Milner (1961 – )
Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist, and scientist.
9 - Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?
Our universe has now awoken
Bill Gates (1955 – )
American billionaire business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.
Daniel Kraft ( – )
Stanford and Harvard trained Physician-Scientist, innovator entrepreneur and investor with over 25 years of clinical, research, biotechnology, and entrepreneurial experience.
Elon Musk (1971 – )
Business magnate and investor.
Irving Good (1916 – 2009)
British mathematician who worked as a cryptologist at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing.
Lorna Brazell ( – )
Retired, now Secretary of the Cambrian Mountains Society and in her spare time developing an arboretum in mid-Wales.
Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999)
American film director, producer, screenwriter and photographer.
Steve Wozniak (1950 – )
American technology entrepreneur, electronics engineer, computer scientist, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor.
Technological singularity
Hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization.
Vernor Vinge (1944 – )
American science fiction author and retired professor.
10 - How do we shape the future?
Dikran Tahta (1928 – 2006)
British mathematician, teacher and author.
Higgs boson
Elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory.
Theory of special relativity
Scientific theory of the relationship between space and time.
Endeavour = Attempt to achieve a goal.
Ingenuity = The quality of being clever, original, and inventive.
Insular = Ignorant or uninterested in cultures, ideas.
Rote = Habitual repetition of something to be learned.
Snoozing = Have a short light sleep during the day.
Afterword
Aloft = Up in or into the air.
Indignation = Annoyance provoked by unfair treatment.
Inter = Place in a grave or tomb.
Vicar = Incumbant of a parish.