Stephen Hawking Quotes

To understand the universe in the state that it began in, the so-called Big Bang, we need laws of physics that work better than our current set of rules and procedures, which break down when we try to push them back to the beginning.

Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny* - a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang" - approximately 1.3-2 x 10^10 years ago. *Typo: "destiny" should read "density.

The big bang theory requires a recent origin of the Universe that openly invites the concept of creation.

For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.

Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties.

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time.

According to the standard model billions of years ago some little quantum fluctuation, perhaps a slightly lower density of matter, maybe right where we're sitting right now, caused our galaxy to start collapsing around here.

Radio Astronomy has added greatly to our understanding of the structure and dynamics of the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation, considered a relic of the explosion at the beginning of the universe some 18 billion years ago, is one of the most powerful aids in determining these features of the universe.

If you consider the universe one second after the Big Bang, the expansion rate would have to have been just right to an accuracy of 15 decimal places, or else the universe would really not work.

I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it’s no wonder. We’re storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?

On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much less the palatable of the two. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms. . . . On philosophical grounds too I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation.

They say the Universe started with a big bang. I hope everybody stood well back.

The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe

Of course the Devil is laughing at folks for believing it [Big Bang, etc.]. But hey, it works, it sends 'em to Hell, so he'll use it.

By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.

The main efforts of investigators have been in papering over contradictions in the big bang theory, to build up an idea which has become ever more complex and cumbersome.

There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.

The recent developments in cosmology strongly suggest that the universe may be the ultimate free lunch.

We can trace things back to the earlier stages of the Big Bang, but we still don't know what banged and why it banged. That's a challenge for 21st-century science.

Physicists explain creation by telling us that the universe began with the Big Bang, an intense energy singularity that continued expanding. But who created the singularity?