[MUSIC]
STEPHEN HAWKING: It is a great
pleasure to be here at this
Google Zeitgeist meeting.
Some time ago, I wrote
a popular book, A
Brief History of Time.
The book described my picture of
the universe, but it left a
number of issues unresolved.
I have therefore written a new
book, The Grand Design, with
Leonard Mlodinow to try to
answer questions like: how can
we understand the world in
which we find ourselves?
What is the nature of reality?
How does the universe behave
and why does it exist?
Does it need a creator?
Most of us don't worry
about these
questions most of the time.
But almost all of us
must sometimes
wonder why are we here.
Where do we come from?
Traditionally, these are
questions for philosophy, but
philosophy is dead.
Philosophers have not kept up
with modern developments in
science, particularly physics.
Scientists have become the
bearers of the torch of
discovery in our quest
for knowledge.
The purpose of The Grand Design
is to give the answers
that are suggested by
recent discoveries.
Inflation has successfully
matched all the key data to
date, but it makes some other
truly remarkable predictions.
Simple inflation predicts that
the primordial irregularities
have Gaussian or purely
random statistics to
one part in a million.
That is, their distribution very
accurately follows the
so-called bell curve.
Many cosmologists today spend
their time investigating this
random hypothesis, looking for
strange, non-random feature
[? circular ?]
relations in the data.
We are using this new data
to measure cosmological
parameters to [? sell ?]
percent accuracy.
And we are on the way to testing
the random hypothesis
to nearly one part in 100,000.
This is the most stringent test
of inflation to date.
I will let you know
when it passes.
M-theory is the unified theory
Einstein was hoping to find.
The fact that we humans, who are
ourselves mere collections
of fundamental particles of
nature, have been able to come
this close to an understanding
of the laws governing us and
our universe, is a
great triumph.
But perhaps the true miracle
is that abstract
considerations of logic lead
to a unique theory that
predicts and describes a vast
universe full of the amazing
variety that we see.
If the theory is confirmed by
observation, it will be the
successful conclusion of a
search going back more than
3,000 years.
We will have found
the Grand Design.
[MUSIC]
