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Stephen Hawking's final book offers brief answers to big questions


Son and daughter of British scientist Stephen Hawking, Timothy and Lucy Hawking, answer questions during an interview at the global launch of Stephen Hawking's final book at the Science Museum in London. on Oct 15, 2018. PHOTO: AFP

OCT 16, 2018, 12:24 AM SGT

LONDON (AFP) - Stephen Hawking's final work, which tackles issues from the existence of God to the potential for time travel, was launched on Monday (Oct 15) by his children, who helped complete the book after the British astrophysics giant's death.

Hawking was forever being asked the same things and started work on Brief Answers to the Big Questions last year - but did not finish it before he died in March, aged 76.

It has been completed by the theoretical physicist's family and academic colleagues, with material drawn from his vast personal archive.

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The cosmologist was propelled to stardom by his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, an unlikely worldwide bestseller.

It won over fans from far beyond the rarefied world of astrophysics and prompted people into asking the mastermind his thoughts on broader topics, answered in his final work.

MULTIPLE CHALLENGES

In his book, Hawking says humans have no option but to leave Earth, risking being "annihilated" if they do not.

He says computers will overtake humans in intelligence during the next 100 years, but "we will need to ensure that the computers have goals aligned with ours".

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He says that in the next 50 years, we will come to understand how life began and possibly discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe.

"He was deeply worried that at a time when the challenges are global, we were becoming increasingly local in our thinking," Lucy Hawking said.

"It's a call to unity, to humanity, to bring ourselves back together and really face up to the challenges in front of us."

In his final academic paper, Hawking shed new light on black holes and the information paradox, with new work calculating the entropy of black holes.

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