A Peek Back At Stephen Hawking's Famous Work, A Brief History Of Time

JAKARTA - Today, July 2, 28 years ago or in 1992, physicist Stephen Hawking managed to break the sales record for the book A Brief History of Time. Quoting History, his book dominated the sales of the non-fiction book category for three and a half years. More than three million copies sold in 22 languages. What's in it like?

This book was made into a documentary in 1992. Most of the focus of the story is on Hawking's own story.

Apart from his extraordinary intelligence, Hawking's life story is indeed quite interesting to lift. Because since the age of 20 he has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Hawking was told that he only had two years to live.

But under such conditions, Hawking continued his studies in the field of pure physics. He then married until he had a son.

His illness paralyzed him except for his left hand. At that time he was still able to speak, even though his speech was difficult to understand. After that he had to rely on communication tools controlled by the mouse.

In the midst of such conditions Hawking continues to be productive. His thoughts continue to uncover the secrets of the universe. One of them is A Brief History of Time which was mentioned earlier. Hawking wrote it in 2005. So what did Hawking write in the book?

A Brief History of Time is one of Hawking's most famous works. In his book he tries to answer big questions such as: how did the universe start and what started it? What is time? Is he always moving forward? Then does the universe have an end? Until what happens when the universe ends?

In this book Hawking initially describes a brief history of human efforts to understand nature. Starting from the Greek era, namely Aristotle and Ptolemy, then some renaissance scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Copernicus and Newton until the 20th century.

In the era of Albert Einstein and Heissenberg, our understanding of the universe and science changed. Time is no longer absolute, it is relative, can be influenced by space and time. In addition, the universe is considered to have a set of laws that are predictive and deterministic - assuming every event or action is a consequence of previous events.

Then Hawking also discussed one of his greatest theorems about the singularity. Namely a state in which an object that is counted becomes infinite.

He worked with Roger Penrose, the British mathematician who accompanied Hawking on some of his first important discoveries. Research on the singularity is Hawking's first attempt to find evidence for the creation of universal life. Hawking and Penrose even managed to show that Einstein's theory was flawed. Thus paving the way for scientists to continue to search for the real truth.

Then he also discussed another big theory about black holes. He explained that black holes are not really jet black but still emit a particle that can be detected by distant observation.