'A wonderful book about Stephen Hawking's biggest legacy' Spectator'Truly mind-stretching...
Immensely rewarding' The Times'This superbly written book offers insight into an extraordinary
individual the creative process and the scope and limits of our current understanding of the
cosmos' Sir Martin ReesStephen Hawking's closest collaborator offers the intellectual
superstar's final thoughts on the universe. Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried
to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so
perfectly hospitable to life. In order to solve this mystery Hawking studied the big bang
origin of the universe but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big
bangs producing a multiverse - countless different universes most of which would be far too
bizarre to harbour life. Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambridge Stephen
Hawking and his friend and collaborator Thomas Hertog worked on this problem for twenty years
developing a new theory of the cosmos that could account for the emergence of life. Peering
into the extreme quantum physics of cosmic holograms and venturing far back in time they were
startled to find a deeper level of evolution in which the physical laws themselves transform
and simplify until particles forces and even time itself fades away. This discovery led them
to a revolutionary idea: The laws of physics are not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as
the universe they govern takes shape. As Hawking's final days drew near the two collaborators
published their theory which proposed a radical new Darwinian perspective on the origins of
our universe. On the Origin of Time offers a striking new vision of the universe's birth that
will profoundly transform the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may
ultimately prove to be Hawking's greatest legacy. Instant Sunday Times bestseller April 2023
