Review: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you want to know how the world and the universe works then this book is certainly the one to read. From Quantum Mechanics, providing key sight into extremely small particles and matter that makes up the universe, to relativity (general and special) which describes how space and time works is what this book is all about. What I liked most was Hawking’s writing style where he inserts both humour where required (he opens with the Turtle challenge by a member of the audience) as well as plain and easy language to explain concepts about complex topics. Whilst the detail went a little over my head it was nice to go through and pick out areas that made sense. Then again I was able to read a GetAbstract summary on this book and get more out of it. It really depends on what you want to learn and how much.
Three key takeaways from the book:
1. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!
2. The universe is expanding by between 5 – 10% every thousand million years.
3. The police make use of the Doppler effect to measure the speed of cars by measuring the wavelength of pulses of radio waves reflected off them.