BOOK OF OCTOBER

                                                     

Title         : The Grand Design

Author     : Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow

Publisher : Bantam Press
Pages       : 208
ISBN        : 0593058305
Price        : $ 28

In the last thirty years of his life Albert Einstein searched for a unified theory - a theory which could describe all the forces of nature in a single framework. But the time was not right for such a discovery in Einstein's day. Neither was the time right when, in 1988, Professor Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time. Now, in this ground-breaking new work The Grand Design, Professor Hawking and renowned science writer Leonard Mlodinow have drawn on forty years of  Hawking's own research and a recent series of extraordinary astronomical observations and theoretical breakthroughs to reveal the long sought truths.

The authors convincingly argue that scientific obsession with formulating a single new model may be misplaced, and that, instead, by synthesising existing theories we may discover the key to finally understanding the universe's deepest mysteries. Written with the clarity and lively style for which Hawking is famous, The Grand Design is an account of Hawking's quest to fuse these different strands of scientific theory. It examines the differences between past and future, explains the nature of reality and asks an all-important question: How far can we go in our search for understanding and knowledge?

The authors write: Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.  The book concludes with the statement that only some universes of the multiple universes (or multiverse) support life forms. We, of course, are located in one of those universes. The laws of nature that are required for life forms to exist appear in some universes by pure chance, Hawking and Mlodinow explain.

Chapters: 1. The Mystery of Being 2. The Rule of Law 3. What is Reality 4. Alternative Histories 5. The Theory of Everything 6. Choosing Our Universe 7. The Apparent Miracle  8. The Grand Design. About the Authors: Professor Hawking is now Director of Research for the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. His books include the bestselling A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell and A Briefer History of Time. Leonard Mlodinow has taught at Cal Tech, written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and is the author of Euclid's Window, Feynman s Rainbow and Some Time with Feynman.

Review text Courtesy: www.ft.com  http://www.reuters.com, www.qbd.com.au, www. wikipedia.com.