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\nSTEPHENHAWKING  \nDENNIS BRAUNCOPYWRITE(C)2018  \nDigitized by the Internet Archivein 2021 with funding fromKahle/Austin Foundation  \nhttps://archive.org/details/isbn  \n9781790911424  \n# Summary\n\nOF  \n# Brief Answers to the BigQuestions\n\nBy Stephen Hawking  \nDennis Braun  \nCopywrite(c)2018  \nIt's rare that we find time to step back from our lives and ask life'sbiggest questions:Where did we come from?How did we get here?Why is the universe made this way?  \nLuckily for us,some of the world’s smartest people spend their livesasking these questions,and a rare few even write books answeringthem in language we can all understand.  \nIn his final book,Professor Stephen Hawking displays histrademark ability to tackle the universe's  \nBiggest questions but finds space and time to hypothesize on thefate of humanity.Weaving together social issues with the solarsystem,Hawking lays out both the fundamental laws of theuniverse and his vision for the future of humankind.  \nFORCES GOVERN OUR UNIVERSE-BUTA DIVINECREATOR PROBABLY ISN'T AMONG THEM.  \nWhy are we here?Where did we come from?Why are things thisway?  \nScience and religion both offer answers to these fundamentalquestions,and both come to radically different conclusions.Oneargues there is inherent meaning in human life,the other that ourexistence is little more than accidental.It's no wonder they'reviewed as two conflicting creeds.  \nBut these questions come from a natural human tendency tounderstand and explain our universe-to search for answers andmeaning.At first,these explanations came from religion.Gods wereseen as causes of lightning,storms and eclipses.But now we have amore rational,consistent and verifiable explanation:our universe isa giant machine,governed by a set of unbreakable natural laws.  \nJust think about a simple game of tennis.Here,the ball always endsup exactly where these natural laws-like gravity and motion-predict.No anomalies.No exceptions.There’s variables,of course,like the player's muscle power or the wind speed,but these act asmere data points,processed by these natural laws in an unchangingway to calculate the outcome.  \nAnd these laws aren't just unchanging-they're also universal.  \nThis means that what applies to our tennis ball also applies to thelargest celestial beings.The revolutions of our planet obey theselaws,as does an icy meteor hurtling through interstellar space.What’s more,natural laws can’'t be broken:even God would be  \nsubject to them,which disagrees with theology's insistence of divineomnipotence.  \nYet there might be a way to reconcile modern science with the ideaof God.  \nThis involves defining God as these fundamental laws of naturerather than a conscious being who created them.This is howEinstein referred to God-as a reference term for the observable,unbreakable rules of the cosmos.  \nThis explanation is going to be unsatisfactory to many people.That’s because many of us are used to thinking about God as ahuman-like,sentient being-one with which we can have a  \npersonal relationship.But when you look at the universe in all itsterrifying magnitude and compare it to how small and accidentalhuman life is,the chance of a divine creator is minuscule.  \nBut if our traditional explanation for the creation of the universe isflawed,how did the universe begin?  \n## WE CAN'T LOGICALLY ASK THE QUESTION“WHAT CAMEBEFORE THE BIG BANG?\"\n\nMost of us have heard of the Big Bang-it's the most widely  \naccepted scientific theory for how our universe came into being.Innanoseconds,the universe went from an infinitely dense point,maybe smaller than a proton,to a rapidly expanding body whichcontinues to grow today.  \nIn fact,the discovery that our universe is expanding helped developthe Big Bang theory.It was uncovered by a scientist named EdwinHubble.  \nIn 1929,Hubble carefully analyzed light from distant galaxies.Hisaim was to measure if these galaxies were moving,and if so,where.His findings were some of","cbCaigSFEO9poH0E","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigSFEO9poH0E","pdf",2212692,32,"English","# Summary\n## Forces Govern Our Universe - But a Divine Creator Probably Isn't Among Them\n## We Can’t Logically Ask the Question “What Came Before the Big Bang?”\n## There’s No Easy Answer to the Question of Alien Life","[{\"question\":\"What does the text argue governs the universe?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that natural laws govern the universe, operating consistently without anomalies or exceptions.\"},{\"question\":\"How is the Big Bang theory described in the text?\",\"answer\":\"The universe is said to have expanded rapidly from an initially extremely dense state, with evidence supporting expansion and a hot early beginning.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the text say the question “What came before the Big Bang?” is problematic?\",\"answer\":\"It explains that following cause-and-effect to the earliest point runs into a limit: if time did not exist, there can be no time for a cause to occur.\"}]","Summary - Brief Answers to the Big Questions | PDF",1790682720,49]