
Show notes
Most cosmologists agree that our universe had a beginning. But the finer details about the Big Bang remain a mystery. A history of everything would explain all, or so theoretical physicists hoped. In his final years, Stephen Hawking working with Thomas Hertog proposed a striking idea: The laws of physics were not precisely determined before the Big Bang; they evolved as the universe evolved.
Highlighted moments
The Question of Origin Hides the Origin of the Question.
“the Big Bang, the origin of time, would also become the origin of law. The laws themselves would sort of evaporate, going all the way backwards.”
“we are not angels who view the universe from the outside.”
“the birth of our universe is very much a purely spatial affair, which then gradually morphs in a geometry in which a clear time dimension gradually emerges.”
Transcript
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