The Nature of Space and Time (1996)
Contents
Foreword by Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci FAA, HonFREng
Lecture 1 - Classical Theory {Hawking}
Lecture 2 - Structure of Spacetime Singularities {Penrose}
Lecture 3 - Quantum Black Holes {Hawking}
Lecture 4 - Quantum Theory and Spacetime {Penrose}
Lecture 5 - Quantum Cosmology {Hawking}
Lecture 6 - The Twistor View of Spacetime {Penrose}
Chapter 7 - The Debate {Hawking and Penrose}
Foreword by Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci FAA, HonFREng
Lecture 1 - Classical Theory {Hawking}
Lecture 2 - Structure of Spacetime Singularities {Penrose}
Lecture 3 - Quantum Black Holes {Hawking}
Lecture 4 - Quantum Theory and Spacetime {Penrose}
Lecture 5 - Quantum Cosmology {Hawking}
Lecture 6 - The Twistor View of Spacetime {Penrose}
Chapter 7 - The Debate {Hawking and Penrose}
Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the
universe is that it is comprehensible. But was he right? Can the quantum theory
of fields and Einstein's general theory of relativity, the two most accurate
and successful theories in all of physics, be united in a single quantum theory
of gravity? Can quantum and cosmos ever be combined? On this issue, two of the
world's most famous physicists--Stephen Hawking ("A Brief History of
Time") and Roger Penrose ("The Emperor's New Mind" and
"Shadows of the Mind")--disagree. Here they explain their positions
in a work based on six lectures with a final debate, all originally presented
at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of
Cambridge.
How could quantum gravity, a theory that could explain the
earlier moments of the big bang and the physics of the enigmatic objects known
as black holes, be constructed? Why does our patch of the universe look just as
Einstein predicted, with no hint of quantum effects in sight? What strange
quantum processes can cause black holes to evaporate, and what happens to all
the information that they swallow? Why does time go forward, not backward?
In this book, the two opponents touch on all these questions.
Penrose, like Einstein, refuses to believe that quantum mechanics is a final
theory. Hawking thinks otherwise, and argues that general relativity simply
cannot account for how the universe began. Only a quantum theory of gravity,
coupled with the no-boundary hypothesis, can ever hope to explain adequately
what little we can observe about our universe. Penrose, playing the realist to
Hawking's positivist, thinks that the universe is unbounded and will expand
forever. The universe can be understood, he argues, in terms of the geometry of
light cones, the compression and distortion of spacetime, and by the use of
twistor theory. With the final debate, the reader will come to realize how much
Hawking and Penrose diverge in their opinions of the ultimate quest to combine
quantum mechanics and relativity, and how differently they have tried to
comprehend the incomprehensible.
The Nature of Space and Time is a book that documents a
debate on physics and the philosophy of physics between the British theoretical
physicists Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking. The book was published by Princeton
University Press in 1996. The event that is featured in the book took place in
1994 at the University of Cambridge's Isaac Newton Institute. The debate was
modeled on the series of debates between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.
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