Our lonely position in the Universe: The Illustrated Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkin

Book Review
The Illustrated Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkin Published in 1996 by Bantam Books

It was Charles Darwin who first grasped the concept of evolution and its implication for man: like all existing life-forms, we evolved from other species. Thus, we were in essence no different from any other life form. Today, we know that all life on Earth shares a common DNA that has been evolving for billions of years. Indeed, we are just one out of millions of species and have only been on Earth one hundredth of one percent of the time life has existed on Earth.

While DNA binds all life on Earth, what properties bind life and the Earth at large to the Universe? Stephen Hawkins, the world-renowned Cambridge University mathematician and physicist, takes us on a spell-bounding journey of the universe that puts perspective into (the) matter. As we learn from this well-written and illustrated book, man’s understanding of the universe has changed over time. Aristotle was perhaps the first to think that the Earth was round, but it wasn’t until Copernicus’ discovery that we realized that the Earth evolves around the Sun, not the other way around.

Today we know that everything in the universe, including light and gravity, is made up of sub-atomic particles, and all particles are waves. From a macro perspective, our planet evolves around a star of which there are approximately a hundred billion in our galaxy in a (probably) self-contained yet never-ending and expanding universe made up of a hundred billion galaxies!

Hawkins discusses many such mind-blowing yet fundamental and at times difficult-to-understand properties and theories of the universe such as relative time and space, quarks and anti-quarks, black holes and wormholes. Despite the numerous challenging concepts, Hawkin’s well-written style and usage of picturesque illustrations make this book a worthwhile read. After all, if we don’t know what we’re made of, where we came from and were we’re heading, we don’t really know that much.