The Grand Design

The Grand Design

ALSO BY STEPHEN HAWKING A Brief History of Time A Briefer History of Time Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays The Illustrated A Brief History of Time The Universe in a Nutshell
FOR CHILDREN

George’s Secret Key to the Universe (with Lucy Hawking) George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt (with Lucy Hawking) ALSO BY LEONARD MLODINOW A Briefer History of Time The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Euclid’s Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
FOR CHILDREN

The Last Dinosaur (with Matt Costello) Titanic Cat (with Matt Costello)

The Grand Design

The Grand Design

The Grand Design

The Grand Design

Copyright © 2010 by Stephen W. Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow Original art copyright © 2010 by Peter Bollinger All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Cartoons by Sidney Harris, copyright © Sciencecartoonsplus.com BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. eISBN: 978-0-553-90707-0 www.bantamdell.com v3.0

The Grand Design

The Grand Design

The Grand Design

The Grand Design

E EACH EXIST FOR BUT A SHORT TIME,

and in that time explore but a small part of the

whole universe. But humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time. Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy...