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TStephen Hawking did not believe in life after death, but he still has one. He has appeared as co-author of two posthumous research articles since his death in March. We cast a new look at the problem of the possible complexity of the universe beyond our horizon; the other returns to the insoluble but apparently not entirely insoluble problem of what happens to the information once it falls into a black hole. This second article is a response to a paradox that concerns only theoretical physicists, but the first deals with the mechanism of creation that seems to have needed no creator.
Not surprisingly, he comes back to both themes and much more in what his publishers call his last thoughts. Pioneer thinkers leave their name on their science. Hawking and Roger Penrose proved mathematically in 1965 that time, space, and matter had to begin at an infinitely small and dense point. Radioastronomers have separately identified the enticing evidence of creation inscribed in the cosmos that year. Hawking also pursued another unknowable object to establish the theoretical reality of an elusive entity, called instantly Hawking radiation, within the forbidden boundaries of a black hole.
There is no way to physically demonstrate the reality of universal self-fabrication or Hawking's radiation, but his scientific peers embrace his reasoning. His latest book, however, is a test of what is known in the publishing world as the Hawking effect. A brief history of time joined the bestseller lists as soon as it was released in 1988 and remained there over the next decade. It has sold over 20 million copies in 40 languages and turned an astronomer into a star, famous enough to sparkle in appearances Star Trek and The simpsons. This has helped to revive the appetite for popular science books, especially those that have space for time, wonder, extraterrestrial intelligence, superhumanity and God.
Short answers is one of his latest projects, completed for him after his death. It is based on about half a million words, kept over decades in the form of essays, lectures, keynote speeches and – since A brief history of time has made him a celebrity, and his long struggle with the disease has made him an icon – this answers some of the questions that many people have often asked him over the decades.
Those who followed the writer Hawking after 1988 will find many things that seem familiar. For readers who have invested in A brief story and perhaps never quite finished, there is good news: almost everything in Short answers is effortlessly instructive, absorbing, up to the minute and – where it matters – spiritual. There is a gracious preface by Eddie Redmayne, who played Hawking in The theory of everything, the 2014 film of his life; his colleague and friend Kip Thorne, the Californian scientist, thought about introducing, in 2016, the identification of the gravitational waves generated by the collision of two black holes; there is a touching afterword from her daughter Lucy Hawking. Between the two, there are personal answers to the question of God, to the question of the colonization of space, to the question of artificial intelligence, to the question of the survival of the planet, and even to his records, Desert Island.
The observable universe is fashioned without cause and has a net energy of zero. "If the universe gives nothing, then you do not need God to create it. The universe is the ultimate free meal, "he writes.
It would be, he says, "our worst mistake of all time" to reject the notion of very intelligent machines as pure science fiction. "Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let wisdom win. He warns that human aggression and new technologies – nuclear warheads, AI, genetic engineering, global warming – could destroy the entire human race and much of the rest of life on Earth. And he wants more space exploration inhabited. "If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in the boldness where no one has gone before."
People who advocate for a good education for all, a well financed NHS and a serious investment in research will find him as a friend. He does not think much about the anti-immigration ideologies of Brexit or Trump, but says it briefly.
And he admits that, despite all the astonishing advances in cosmological physics during his lifetime, the ultimate theory that defines why the universe is such, the theory of everything, seems as far apart as it is. 1988. That does not bother him. . In the next 50 years, he said, "We will find out what happened at the big bang. We will understand how life began on the earth. We can even discover if life exists elsewhere in the universe. "
As he has said more than once, he prefers optimism to pessimism. "At one point, I thought I would see the end of physics as we know it, but now I think the wonders of discovery will continue long after I leave."
• Brief Answers to Big Questions is published by John Murray. To order a copy for £ 12.89 (RRP £ 14.99), go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p & p from £ 10, online orders only. Minimum telephone orders of £ 1.99.
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