A gorgeous, thought-provoking book. Combining a lucid explanation of mind-bending theories with an intimate glimpse into a decades-long friendship between intellectuals, ON THE ORIGIN OF TIME is a must-read for fans of Stephen Hawking and for anyone who wants to better understand the cosmos. Mysterious and provocative.

I once used to want to be a scientist. As a child I would read articles in magazines like Popular Science, National Geographic, and Scientific American because the universe we live in is so interesting. Occasionally I revisit those days by reading something to stimulate my sense of wonder.

Hertog gives a history of physics and its advances since its discovery. The book is really about Stephen Hawking’s work on the origins of the universe and the author’s part in that work. A considerable part of the book describes the discoveries that Hawking built upon in his studies.

I rate this book four stars. If you are interested in physics from a lay standpoint, this book will elevate your knowledge. My thanks to Bantam via Netgalley. All opinions are mine and given freely.

#physics #cosmology #stephenhawking #grandunifiedtheory #thefingerofgod #kindlesallthewaydown

First, thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for an eArc for this title in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Second, my PhD is not in science, so I was a little nervous about reading this one... but! I had no reason to be nervous. It's clearly written with a consistent approach that made it easy for me, someone who loves science but is trained in a totally different area, to follow along with. The material was at times difficult, but that's not a book nor an author problem; that's a me thing! However, it was enjoyable, and it's something I look forward to revisiting later on!

This was incredibly well written science. In fact, it's so well written that people without an in-depth understanding of the science of space and time can understand it, which is the goal of most published science like this.

On the Origin of Time is a fitting tribute to the life’s work of Stephen Hawking. Thomas Hertog does an amazing job taking the read on a journey though the evolution of quantum cosmology.
He provides a a trip through the history of physics bringing the reader to the latest theory in a style that many will understand. The concepts can be pretty hard to understand, and will not be something every reader will be able to grasp, but he does a great job of providing examples and visualizations to simply the harder concepts. The physics is interspersed with anecdotes from Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog lives which provides a background of how the theories were developed and gives great insight in the early and late life of Stephen Hawking.

Though this text is may not be for everyone, anyone with a deep interest in physics will enjoy it.

How did the Big Bang create conditions suitable for life? This book proposes that the laws of physics aren't fixed, but rather evolve along with the early universe itself. Written for a non-technical audience, it's dense but accessible.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

This one is for Hawking fans. To be honest, it lost me early on but that's more on me than on Hertog, whose writing is clear and concise. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Over to science fans

What if you could get inside Stephen Hawkings’ mind after he had written a Brief History of Time. What if you could get a sense of all the theories, the struggles, the incredible speculation that came as big data became a thing.

Thomas Hertog started out as Stephen Hawkins’s graduate student, and became his closest friend and collaborator. He gives us a peek into the man and the scientist he knew.

This book is much more than that also. Hertog is skilled at drawing in the history of physics, even from ancient times. An example: it was interesting to me, as one who has lived through a “plague” (the coronavirus pandemic), that Newton wrote most of his Principia while in isolation from a 17th century plague in England. In fact, he draws not just from the history of physics but from biology and human history in general, with examples. This made the book so much more interesting to me, reminiscent of Hawking’s own book, which I think was one of if not the first book on physics for the reading non-scientific public.

Indeed, the genius of this book is that I, a non-scientist, can read and enjoy it. I think Hertog has accomplished a remarkable feat with On the Origin of Time. The parallel accomplishment is that he humanizes physics with stories of encounters between scientists, in the university setting, in conferences, and in other everyday circumstances.

(DAMTP, the acronym used through Hertog’s book, is the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University.)

This is an excellent book for a physics enthusiast - thorough, modern, and fascinating. I hesitate to recommend it for those with only the background of A Brief History of Time, even though it's marketed as a sequel. Hertog's writing is great, but he doesn't have the talent for explaining complex topics to a general audience that Hawking did. This was a great book for where I am in my cosmology journey, with two college physics classes, a textbook to use for references, and background knowledge from a number of other books I've read recently.

This a book that describes a new and very different philosophy on cosmology and physics. . As such, it will take some time to fully comprehend the ideas presented.
The book elaborates on the team of physics students and practitioners led by Stephen Hawking and the process by which they were able come to this new philosophical paradigm for physics. Starting from his very early thoughts on the no boundary theory of the Big Bang, Hawking led the team to think deeper into the topic of black holes and time itself. The ah ha idea that they had was to not look at the universe from a god like perspective of being outside the universe but a view from the perspective of humans and use a variation on the ideas of Richard Feynman to consider all possible histories. The author brings in ideas of other 20th century thinkers that presented ideas consistent with this philosophy. This is a new approach and one pass through the book is not enough to understand this top-down philosophy..
The book will not give an answer to the question on the origin of time but does present a novel approach which provides a new way to think about it.

I l9ve science books. I believe and student or anyone interested in cosmology with eat up this book so fast. This book really makes you stop and think.

I love that Hertog had worked with Hawking.

This book tells a story of how the universe could have began. It covers the big bang, to blackholes, and it propounded Steven Hawking's last big concept of cosmology.

I would recommend buying this book for sure.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this new work! Wow! This was so good. I love science writing as a genre and this is science writing at its very best. I believe that any student of cosmology will eat this up. This book really makes you think. Hertog and Hawking worked together at Cambridge. This book tells the story of how the universe could have began. Learned so much from this! Highly recommend.

Except for the last chapter this is clearly the very best book that I have ever read on the subject of cosmology. It is also one of my favorite books overall. It covers everything from the big bang to blackholes and it propounds Steven Hawkings' last big concept of top-down cosmology. Make certain that you buy and read this book although the last chapter should be considered as optional.