God, Stephen Hawking and the Multiverse by Hutchings, David -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

God, Stephen Hawking and the Multiverse Dedication Contents List of plates Acknowledgements 1

Project Shangri-La The icon The book Big Questions Where do we go from here?

Tunguska Elementary, my dear Aristotle It’s all Greek to me This most beautiful system Force fields and the art of science Light and momentary troubles A space-, time- and mind-bending solution Hawking, relativity and those Big Questions

Canoe man A case for the defence The beginning of the end Hooke versus Newton revisited But together they do Young strikes again Weirdness, weirdness, everywhere A matter of interpretation Heisenberg, histories and Hawking Closing argument

Gingerich’s quest All that nonsense The book nobody read Holding the universe still The 1920s’ Copernicus #1 The 1920s’ Copernicus #2 Redshifting opinions The discarded image A cooling-off period The small matter of nucleosynthesis Digging the cosmological heels in Brainwaves and microwaves Cosmology and salvation

Batman Forever? The clash of the titans Why can’t you two just get along?! Separation anxiety The dark star Where QM and GR meet Hawking destroys the universe QM versus GR – the infinite battleground Hawking the hero

6 Part 1

Akira Yoshida Unification The grand unified theory Putting the heat on Just how far can we take this? A new hope Black holes ain’t so black Hawking radiation Securing a legacy Trouble in Paradise

6 Part 2

Mathematical dogfights Imagine that Waves, particles, probabilities, histories Hawking goes big A disclaimer Extraordinary measures Extraordinary times A theory of (almost) everything Multiverses, metaphysics and myths

Tyres and anchors Counter-punches Crossing the divide Is philosophy dead? You Kant be serious!? Being critical about realism A rose by any other name One foot in each camp Introducing the multiverse Creating history Hawking and God Switching the spotlight

The Test of Solomon What about singularities? What about Hawking radiation? What about the no-boundary proposal? No rescue What about model-dependent realism? What about the multiverse? Infinite death What about God? Different universes Big Answers

Appendix 1 A note on M-theory Appendix 2 A universe from nothing Notes Acknowledgements Index