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From his office at Cambridge University and beyond, Stephen Hawking has plunged his mind into the depths of black holes, radiating through the endless cosmos and tracing back billions of years to witness the first breath of time. He considered creation as a scientist and when he was called to discuss the greatest puzzles of creation: where do we come from? What is our goal? Are we alone? – he answered as a scientist, often to the chagrin of religious critics.
In his latest book "Short Answers to Big Questions" by Stephen Hawking, published on Tuesday, October 16 by Bantam Books, the professor begins a series of 10 intergalactic essays addressing the world's oldest and most religious issue: he a God?
Hawking's response – compiled from previous interviews, essays and speeches with the help of his family, colleagues and Steven Hawking's estate – should not surprise readers who followed his work, uh, religiously.
"I think the universe was created spontaneously from scratch, in accordance with the laws of science," wrote Hawking, who died in March. "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, it will not take long to ask: what is the role of God?"
In life, Hawking was a strong advocate of the Big Bang theory – the idea that the universe began to explode suddenly from an ultradense singularity smaller than an atom. From this point emerged all the matter, energy and empty space that the universe would contain, and all this raw material evolved into the cosmos that we perceive today by respecting a strict set of scientific laws. For Hawking and many like-minded scientists, the combined laws of gravity, relativity, quantum physics and some other rules could explain everything that has happened or will happen in our known universe.
"If you want, you can say that the laws are the work of God, but it's more a definition of God than a proof of its existence," wrote Hawking.
With the universe operating on a scientifically guided autopilot, the only role of an all-powerful deity could be to set the initial conditions of the universe so that these laws can take shape – a divine creator who provoked the Big Bang and then moved away. see his work.
"Did God create the quantum laws that allowed the Big Bang to occur?" Hawking wrote. "I have no desire to offend anyone of faith, but I think science has a more convincing explanation than a divine creator."
The explanation of Hawking begins with quantum mechanics, which explains the behavior of subatomic particles. In quantum studies, it is common to see subatomic particles such as protons and electrons appear from nowhere, stay for a moment and then disappear to a completely different place. Because the universe once had the size of a subatomic particle, it is likely that it behaved the same way during the Big Bang, wrote Hawking.
"The universe itself, in all its breathtaking expanse and complexity, could simply have emerged without breaking the known laws of nature," he writes.
This still does not explain the possibility that God created this proton-size singularity, and then reversed the quantum mechanics switch that allowed him to appear. But Hawking says science has an explanation here too. To illustrate his point, he emphasizes the physics of black holes: collapsed stars that are so dense that nothing, including light, can escape their attraction.
Black holes, like the universe before the Big Bang, condense into a singularity. In this ultra-compacted mass point, gravity is so strong that it distorts time, light, and space. In simple terms, in the depths of a black hole, time does not exist.
Because the universe also began as a singularity, time itself could not have existed before the Big Bang. Hawking's answer to what happened before the Big Bang is: "There was no time before the Big Bang. "
"We finally found something that had no cause, because there was no time for a cause," wrote Hawking. "For me, this means that there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed."
This argument will do little to persuade the theistic believers, but it was never Hawking 's intention. As a scientist passionate about understanding the cosmos, Hawking sought to "know the spirit of God" by learning everything he could about the self-sufficient universe around us. Although his vision of the universe may make a divine creator and the laws of nature inconsistent, it nevertheless leaves a wide space for faith, hope, miracle and above all gratitude.
"We have this life to appreciate the grand design of the universe," concludes the first chapter of his latest book, "Hawking," and I am extremely grateful to him. "
Originally posted on Live Science.
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