The man who could see the invisible universe

Whence is this creation?

Gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.

Whence all creation had its origin,

the creator, whether he fashioned it or not,

the creator, who surveys it all from the highest heaven,

He knows — or maybe even he does not know. Rigveda Nasadiya Sukta 10.129.

The origin of the universe and humanity’s role within it are fundamental questions. While philosophers have long pondered them, science claims to offer correct answers. As Einstein noted, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

Stephen Hawking, the most brilliant cosmologist since Einstein, revealed the secrets of the universe in his scientific writings, including A Brief History of Time, The Theory of Everything, Black Holes and Baby Universe etc. Kitty Fergusson brilliantly portrays the life and contribution of Hawking in enriching human knowledge in the book Stephen Hawking: A Life Well Lived. Stephen W. Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Britain. In 1962, he was diagnosed with an incurable Motor Neuron disease, which gradually deteriorates the nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain, and disables every voluntary muscle of his body, whereby movements of the body become impossible, and speech is lost. But it does not affect the heart, sexual organs, and the brain remains lucid. He fell in love with Jane Wilde, an undergraduate student, and wanted to marry her. Jane’s father gave his consent to the marriage on the condition that she complete her education. It was thought that Hawking might not live until their wedding date! He proved everybody wrong by living up to 76 years. He died on 14 March 2018, survived by his wife, two sons, and one daughter.

He disproved time travel into the past or future by demonstrating that time has three arrows, namely, the thermodynamic arrow, the direction of time in which disorder increases; the psychological arrow, the direction of time in which we remember the past and not the future; and the cosmological arrow, the direction of time in which the universe expands rather than contracts. All these arrows of time direct from the past to the future. In the contracting phase of the Universe, no intelligent life is possible. Furthermore, the cosmological limit that nothing travels faster than light prohibits anything from travelling into the future, as it would have to travel faster than light.

Hawking’s most profound contributions are that Einstein’s general theory of relativity meant space and time (the universe) had a beginning in the Big Bang, which occurred approximately 13.787 billion years ago; the universe has no boundaries since its inception; black holes are not so black, and they radiate. His endearing scientific quality was his willingness to overturn his own previous assertions in the light of new evidence.

Hawking waged a bet with another scientist that it would be impossible to observe the Higgs boson particles, which impart mass to all particles. The Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to two scientists in 2013 for proving how fundamental particles acquire mass through the Higgs Boson particles, which were found in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Hawking challenged the assertions of Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar about the steady-state theory of the universe, which states that the universe is neither expanding nor contracting but remains the same, in 1963, and proposed an ever-expanding universe.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three scientists for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, which means the universe had a beginning with a big bang when space and time started, but it has no end!

Hawking said that for him, asking if God exists is a valid question for science and answered, “I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science…Laws of nature are fixed…So God would have no freedom at all.” Regarding the place of mankind in the universe, he said, “We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. So, it is difficult to believe in a God that would care about us or even notice our existence. On the question of what happened before the Big Bang, he says that there was no time before the Big Bang, as time started from it. The universe doesn’t have a cause because there was no cause to exist before time. Hawking’s advice to us, “to look up atthe stars and not down at your feet. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”