Cosmological Beginnings in Hawking's Brief Answers to Big Questions

Summary: Cosmological beginnings take second place in 10 answered queries that theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking turns into Brief Answers to the Big Questions.

In question two, "How Did It All Begin?," of 10 questions bequeathed by Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist quotes Hamlet: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space . . ."; Stephen Hawking at zero gravity aboard Zero Gravity Corporation's modified Boeing 727 aircraft, with retired NASA Space Shuttle payload specialist Byron Lichtenberg (left) and X Prize Foundation chairman and founder Peter Diamandis (right); April 26, 2007: Jim Campbell, Aero-News Network/NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The second of 10 answers to 10 questions that appear Oct. 15, 2018, posthumously, in the last book by a world-renowned theoretical physicist accepts life as aftermath to Big Bang cosmological beginnings.

Stephen Hawking's (Jan. 8, 1942-March 14, 2018) Brief Answers to the Big Questions broaches cosmological beginnings 13.8 billion years ago in "How Did It All Begin?" The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, England, commences with a quote from the 400-plus-year-old play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. He disengages the statement "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space" from Act 2, Scene 2, line 11.

The National Medal of Freedom recipient Aug. 12, 2009, from Barack Hussein Obama II, 44th U.S. President (Jan. 20, 2009-Jan. 20, 2017), exposes Big Bang-friendly explications.

The fellow-elect of the Royal Society since 1974 finds, "The universe in the past was small and dense and so it is quite like the nutshell."

The research fellow-elect of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, since 1965 gleans empirically and theoretically that "Yet this nut encodes everything that happens in real time." That apparently "the universe goes on in space for ever and is much the same no matter how far it goes on" hints of "infinite space." And yet a universe whose elliptical, irregular and spiral galaxies inspire nearly identical impressions of uniform spatial distribution is not necessarily infinite in space and time.

Hawking juggles cosmological beginnings in finite-time creation myths of the Boshongo people of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo against Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) infinite-time universe.

Bushongo creation myths keep cosmological beginnings to their god Bumba kindling darkness, himself and water with the Sun, land, Moon, stars, leopards, crocodiles, turtles and humankind.

Such finite-time creation myths link slow-changing cosmological beginnings contemporaneously with, or prefatorily to, those of mankind more obviously latching onto more progressive knowledge and updated technology. Aristotle, philosopher and Alexander III of Macedon's (356-323 B.C.) tutor, matched less advanced but eternal humankind to earthquakes, floods and natural disasters destroying and recreating civilization. Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724-Feb. 12, 1804) noted logical contradictions in last-minute-like and thrown-together-like cosmological beginnings and cosmological configurations respectively late in finite-time and infinite-time universes.

The General Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879-April 18, 1955) offered unintentional outs in 1915 with space and time as among expanding-universe occurrences.

Vesto Slipher (Nov. 11, 1875-Nov. 8, 1969) and Edwin Hubble (Nov. 20, 1889-Sept. 28, 1953) respectively proved in 1919 and 1922-1923 galactic redshifts and expanding universes.

Arno Penzias' and Robert Wilson's discovering cosmic microwave background temperatures of minus 518.72 degrees Fahrenheit (270.4 degrees Celsius) May 20, 1964, queues up Big Bang-radiated residue. Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite results from 1993 reveal microwave background differences directionally of one part in 100,000 from the early universe expanding by one octillion. Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe (WMAP) cosmic temperature mapping in 2003 shows a 138-million-year-old universe whose denser spaces gravitationally slow expansion and start up galaxies and stars.

Cosmological beginnings track to a super-dense, super-hot point whose Big Bang terminates respectively below or beyond matter thresholds into Big Crunches backward or Big Rips apart.

Observations made via Mount Wilson Observatory's 100-inch Hooker telescope led to American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble's (Nov. 20, 1889-Sept. 28, 1953) discovery of an expanding universe, described by Stephen Hawking as "one of the great intellectual revolutions of the twentieth century"; San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California; 1989: Andrew Dunn, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

In question two, "How Did It All Begin?," of 10 questions bequeathed by Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist quotes Hamlet: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space . . ."; Stephen Hawking at zero gravity aboard Zero Gravity Corporation's modified Boeing 727 aircraft, with retired NASA Space Shuttle payload specialist Byron Lichtenberg (left) and X Prize Foundation chairman and founder Peter Diamandis (right); April 26, 2007: Jim Campbell, Aero-News Network/NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Physicist_Stephen_Hawking_in_Zero_Gravity_NASA.jpg

Observations made via Mount Wilson Observatory's 100-inch Hooker telescope led to American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble's (Nov. 20, 1889-Sept. 28, 1953) discovery of an expanding universe, described by Stephen Hawking as "one of the great intellectual revolutions of the twentieth century"; San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California; 1989: Andrew Dunn, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:100_inch_Hooker_Telescope_900_px.jpg

For further information:

Hawking, Stephen. 2018. "[Chapter] 2 How Did It All Begin?" Brief Answers to the Big Questions. New York NY: Bantam Books.

Marriner, Derdriu. 25 October 2018. "Brief Answers to Big Questions: Divine Creation, Scientific Creation?" Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/10/brief-answers-to-big-questions-divine.html