The Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking

Publisher: Amfora, 2010.
Hardcover, 231 pages.
Book on Ozon.ru Having

looked at the translation of the clip “Richard Feynman: Magnets and Questions“ Why? ”, I remembered the equally famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his works.
And he remembered for a reason. Richard Feynman in the video tries to explain a seemingly simple thing - why magnets repel and attract each other. And most of the video explains that without special knowledge it’s impossible to understand some things, and the more we simplify the model, the further we get away from the truth. It may be so, but for me, who knows only the school physics course, Steven Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time”, which explains this and many other questions, became a revelation. Despite the fact that the book is very popular, on Habré found only a few references to it.

The book was first published in 1988. The author in a simple and understandable language, without using formulas (except for E = mc ²), tells us about the nature of the Universe, space and time, black holes and relevant scientific theories to explain them.

Logically, the book can be divided into 3 parts:
1. What came before Einstein's theories of relativity;
2. General theory of relativity (large-scale structure of the Universe);
3. Quantum mechanics (phenomena on an extremely small scale, like one millionth of one millionth of a centimeter).

Reading, you find yourself at the forefront of science and understand the problems that researchers face. Stephen Hawking himself is looking for a "quantum theory of gravity," which combines the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Here's how Stephen Hawking explains the formula known from school E = mc ²(where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light):
“In fact, the speed of an object can never reach the speed of light, since then its mass would become infinitely large, and since the mass is equivalent to energy, it took to achieve this speed would be infinitely large energy ... Only light and other waves that do not have an "own" mass can move at the speed of light. "

A few more quotes:
“Einstein made a revolutionary assumption: gravity is not an ordinary force, but a consequence of the fact that space-time is not flat, as previously thought; it is curved by the mass and energy distributed in it. Bodies such as the Earth are not forced to move at all in curved orbits by gravitational force; they move along lines that in curved space most closely correspond to straight lines in ordinary space and are called geodesics ... According to the general theory of relativity, bodies always move along straight lines in four-dimensional space-time, but we see that in our three-dimensional space they move along curved trajectories ... The mass of the Sun so bends space-time that, although the Earth moves in a straight line in four-dimensional space, we see

“Near a massive body such as the Earth, time should flow more slowly ... It should seem to an observer located at a high altitude that everything happens slower below. This prediction was verified in 1962 with the help of two very accurate clocks: one at the very top of the water tower, and the second at its foot. It turned out that the lower clock, which was closer to the Earth, in exact accordance with the general theory of relativity, was going slower. ”

PS IMHO, the book is worth reading for basic knowledge. If something interests you, you can delve into the work of the scientists named in the book. Perhaps if I read this book at school, I would have a very different attitude to physics.
PPS In 2005, The Shortest Time History was released, where the discoveries of recent years are taken into account. I haven’t read it myself, so I can’t recommend it. Who read - write in the comments how it is.

Update 04.24.2010. Thanks for the karma, transferred to the "Reading Room".