Stephen Hawking's final theorem turns time and causality inside out

IT WAS communal cognition among students astatine the University of Cambridge that whoever obtained the champion marks successful the last portion of the mathematical tripos exams would beryllium summoned to spot Stephen Hawking. I had conscionable got my results and had travel top. Sure enough, I was invited for a treatment with him.

I made my mode to his bureau heavy successful the labyrinth of the section of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, which was housed successful a creaking Victorian gathering connected the banks of the stream Cam. Stephen’s bureau was conscionable disconnected the main communal room, and adjacent though it was noisy there, helium liked to support his doorway ajar. I knocked, paused and dilatory pushed it open.

I didn’t rather cognize what to expect connected the different broadside of that door. I knew, of course, that Stephen was celebrated for his enactment connected black holes and that helium had adjacent got into occupation for immoderate of his ideas astir what happens erstwhile they explode. But it turned retired that helium was musing connected a antithetic question: wherefore is the beingness conscionable close for beingness to arise?

Pondering this question would crook into a agelong quest for america both. For the adjacent 2 decades, until his death, Stephen and I worked enarthrosis to enarthrosis connected caller ideas that suggest a radically caller knowing of wherefore the beingness is the mode it is. In our conception, the laws of physics themselves have, successful a sense, evolved to beryllium the …