In 2002, Thomas Hertog, then a theoretical physics graduate student, stepped inside Stephen Hawking's office at the University of Cambridge and saw his supervisor's eyes filled with emotion.
Ben Turner: When you met Stephen Hawking, he was beginning to think that the picture of the universe's origins he had previously presented in"A Brief History of Time" was flawed, and he wanted to look for a new theory. For readers who might not know, what is the standard conception of how our universe began?
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Sadly, Hawking's model didn't produce a habitable universe. It was, instead, an empty universe — without stars, without galaxies and without life. So, as you say, by the late '90s, Hawking realized there was a problem with his model.
BT: So how did you and Hawking meet and begin to collaborate? You met him when you were a master's student. What was that like? He was already a legend by this time. BT: Past theories of the Big Bang have framed the universe as if they're looking at it from an"objective," godlike perspective. The theory you and Hawking began working on shifted that perspective to one more like our own — an observer somewhere in the universe. That made you take quantum mechanics, as well as string theory, as your starting point.
That structure, encoded in the laws of physics, begins to disappear until ultimately — and this is the crux of our hypothesis — even the distinction between time and space blurs. The laws of our universe's evolution, the standard laws of physics, close themselves; they cease to be. Physics itself disappears.
Even a single photon can perform an act of observation in quantum mechanics. It can convert a range of possible histories into a tangible, concrete reality. When Stephen and I ran the evolution of the universe backwards, we did it in a quantum mechanical way. This agrees with Einstein until you reach the earlier stages where our picture is very, very different. The laws of physics never really break down ; they just gradually disappear. I think Einstein would be OK with that.