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Stephen Hawking's Science: Even more fantastic than the best fantasy novel



As a Foreign Language and Linguistics major, I spent most of my time in college studying the Humanities. And that's great, I enjoy the arts, but I do sometimes wish I could've studied more science. Since graduating I've tried to fill in some of those gaps by reading books on scientific subjects, mostly related to space, physics, and environmental biology. I got my hands on a copy of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time this summer, and it was a great read.




Hawking does his best to help out those of us who were Humanities majors by starting from the basics: he talks about theories of the universe going back as far as the Greeks, Galileo and Newton. It's easy to follow at first, and even as things get more complex, Hawking's explanations are clear and well-phrased. I admit I had to re-read some things a couple times to let the information sink in, but over all it wasn't a difficult read.

Given the subject matter, that's quite a feat. Like I said in the title of this post, the reality of our universe is even more fantastic than what my favorite fantasy novelists can dream up. Reading Hawking's book really left me in awe of the world we live in. 

A Brief History of Time is one of Hawking's older books, and there are a number of newer releases which I'm looking forward to reading in the future. Reading one of the more recent releases is probably best; even so, I found this book a really wonderful and fascinating look at the universe. I highly recommend it!


What happens when a particle and an anti-particle meet... 
Comic from the science museum in Odaiba, Tokyo
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Comments

  1. ArikaAugust 25, 2011 at 4:04 PM

    So cute! Science comics who knew.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MauraAugust 25, 2011 at 6:27 PM

    Ah, the science comic was actually from a museum in Japan, not from Hawking's book. Oops! I should go back and clarify that.

    But yeah, the comic was awesome. Cute science FTW!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ArikaAugust 29, 2011 at 11:16 AM

    And here I was hoping Stephen Hawking had a notorious cute factor that I previously knew nothing about

    ReplyDelete
  4. MauraAugust 29, 2011 at 5:49 PM

    Actually, I think he might. I know he and his wife teamed up to write a kids' book about science, which looked pretty cute.

    This is the book:
    http://www.amazon.com/Georges-Secret-Universe-Stephen-Hawking/dp/1416954627

    ReplyDelete

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