- Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims
- Professor had previously referred to 'mind of God'
Poll: Is Hawking right? [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/
belief/poll/2010/sep/02/religion-hawking]
Adam Gabbatt
Thursday September 2 2010
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator
God did not create the universe, the man who is arguably Britain's
most famous living scientist says in a forthcoming book.
In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues
that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of
a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.
In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to
accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new
text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new
theories showed a creator is "not necessary".
The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets
out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have
been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will
create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the
reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe
exists, why we exist.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and
set the universe going."
In the forthcoming book, published on 9 September, Hawking says that M-
theory, a form of string theory, will achieve this goal: "M-theory is
the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he theorises.
"The fact that we human beings - who are ourselves mere collections of
fundamental particles of nature - have been able to come this close to
an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great
triumph."
Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could
not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet
orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of
our planetary conditions ? the single sun, the lucky combination of
Earth-sun distance and solar mass ? far less remarkable, and far less
compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to
please us human beings," he writes.
Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the
creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of
Time in 1988, he said: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be
the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the
mind of God."
Hawking resigned as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge
University last year after 30 years in the position.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2010
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