Book Review: The Illustrated Theory of Everything by Stephen W. Hawking

The first lecture describes:

• Aristotle’s (384 B.C.E. – 322 B.C.E.) and Ptolemy’s (A.D. 90 – A.D. 168) Earth-centered universe;
• Nicolaus Copernicus’s (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543), Johannes Kepler’s (December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630), and Galileo Galilei’s (February 15, 1564 – January 8, 1642) sun-centered universe; and
• Sir Isaac Newton’s gravity-tethered planets.

The second lecture elaborates:

• Alexander Friedmann’s (June 16, 1888 – September 16, 1925) big-banged, big-crunched, big-ripped universes;
• Edwin Hubble’s (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) far-off, fast-moving, red-shifted galaxies; and
• Arno Penzias’s (born April 26, 1933) and Robert Wilson’s (born January 10, 1936) background-radiating, omni-directional microwaves varying 1 part in 10,000.
  .

The third and fourth lectures follow Stephen’s and Sir Roger Penrose’s (born August 8, 1931) black hole big-banging an expanding universe. 

The fifth lecture guides readers through the life cycles and expectancies of a 10,000,000,000- to 20,000,000,000-year-old universe:

• containing such collapsed and collapsing non-planets as black dwarfdom-headed white dwarfs, energy-leaking black holes, pulsating neutron stars, and radio wave-emitting quasi-stars;
• expanding by 5 – 10% every 1,000,000,000 years; and
• representing 1/10 and 1/100 the mass necessary to stop expansion if firstly dark plus visible matter and secondly only observable matter respectively are considered.

The sixth lecture handles the problem of imaginary time in the universe and real time among Earthlings. Imaginary time is amenable to movements backward (particularly near black hole horizons) and forward whereas the real time supportive of one-dimension time, three-dimension space runs only from past, through present, into future. 

The seventh lecture judges as critical in theory unification:

• dark/visible matter;
• gravity-tethered bodies;
• line-/wave-strings;
• particles.

It keeps under consideration 10 or 26-dimensional space-time. String theory leads the way. Stephen manages thinking along 11 dimensions! 

So The Illustrated Theory of Everything nurtures culturally enriching, educationally entertaining, geo-spatially enthralling insights into the origin and fate of the universe with:

• Greg Bacon, Dana Berry, Wolfgang Brandner, S. Brown, K. Cordes, Simon Driver, Don Figer, Karl Gebhardt, Eva K. Grebel, Bill Keel, Jon Lomberg, H. Richer, Sheila Terry, D. Wang, Rogier Windhorst, photographers;
• Kerry DeAngelis, KL Design book designer;
• Aimee Dow, project editor;
• Stephen Edelman, cover designer;
• Rob Fiore, illustration ideator;
• Stephen Hawking, author;
• New Millennium Press, publisher; and
• A. Schaller, artist. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

In geocentric universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy, orbits of Moon, Sun and five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) circle Earth:
Outermost text reads: celum empireum habitaculum dei et omnium electorum (heavenly empire, dwelling of God and all the selected).
"Figura dos Corpos Celestes"; Bartolomeu Velho, Principio da verdadeira cosmographia e geographia unniversal de todas as terras (Paris, 1568): Joaquim Alves Gaspar (Alvesgaspar), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg

Collaboration between Stephen Hawking and Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) has transformed modern understanding of the universe, especially of black holes.
black hole in front of Large Magellanic Cloud, with Cloud's image distorted by gravitational lensing, known as the Einstein Ring
simulation of black hole in front of Large Magellanic Cloud: Alain r, CC BY SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BH_LMC.png

Multiplicity of dimensions may baffle imaginations: Stephen Hawking easily conceives of 11 dimensions.
image of a two-dimensional hypersurface of the quintic Calabi-Yau three-fold: Jbourjai, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calabi_yau.jpg

Stephen Hawking enjoys zero gravity during flight onboard Boeing 727 aircraft owned by Zero Gravity Corporation.
Peter Diamandis (right), Zero G Corp founder, and Byron Lichtenberg (left), formerly shuttle payload specialist, now Zero G Corp president, aerially rotate Stephen Hawking, while Stephen's aide Nicola O'Brien spells.
image credit Jim Campbell, Aero-News Network (NASA); for release on 04/26/2007: NASA Kennedy Media Archive, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Physicist_Stephen_Hawking_in_Zero_Gravity_NASA.jpg

Stephen Hawking enjoys zero gravity during flight onboard Boeing 727 aircraft owned by Zero Gravity Corporation.
Peter Diamandis (right), Zero G Corp founder, and Byron Lichtenberg (left), formerly shuttle payload specialist, now Zero G Corp president, aerially rotate Stephen Hawking, while Stephen's aide Nicola O'Brien spells.
image credit Jim Campbell, Aero-News Network; for release on 04/26/2007: NASA Kennedy Media Archive, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Physicist_Stephen_Hawking_in_Zero_Gravity_NASA.jpg

Black holes have beguiled such astrophysical geniuses as Albert Einstein and Stephen W. Hawking.
Visualization of Einstein's general theory of relativity: Simulation of three-dimensional merging black holes by crunching Einstein's theory into NASA supercomputer constitutes largest astrophysical calculation ever performed on NASA supercomputer.
Columbia supercomputer, NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Santa Clara County, San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California: Christopher Henze/NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:This_visualization_shows_what_Einstein_envisioned.jpg; via NASA Goddard Space Flight Center @ https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/universe/gwave.html

Hawking, Stephen W. 2003. The Illustrated Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe. Beverly Hills, CA: New Millennium Press.