Books are always a source to extinguish our curiosity, questions, and temptation that bother us at night when we gaze into the sky. They make us restless when we hit the bed and force us to zone out in our classroom. To address such things, we are formally kickstarting our book review series in which we are going to discuss the very last book of Stephen Hawking, which was published after his death. This book, named Brief Answers to the Big Questions, was compiled by different scientists from multiple interviews, research articles, and talks given by Hawking to address ten major questions that were frequently asked of him.
Before we get into the book, for the sake of introduction, you should know that Stephen Hawking was a renowned physicist known for his work on black holes and the nature of time. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is a fatal motor neuron disease, at the age of 21. Doctors thought that he had very few years to survive; however, despite such a critical disease, he defied the odds and made groundbreaking contributions to understanding the universe.

1 - Is there a God?

Starting with our first question, Is there a God?, I literally have no idea why I'm bothering myself—or you—by daring to address this question, which remained unanswered from Aristotle to Nietzsche and all the way to Manto and contemporary authors and philosophers like Harari. All of this is because of one fact: the existence of God is something subjective, and we can't deal with it using objective facts. However, since Hawking was an atheist, he believed that science can give us more pragmatic explanations in contrast to religion. So, there is no need for a creator to explain the universe. He endorsed the fact that the laws of physics, especially gravity and quantum mechanics, can explain how the universe could have created itself. Another escape he found, when someone asked him about the possibility of some divine existence before the Big Bang, was by saying that the universe we are aware of is four-dimensional—length, width, breadth, and time. Nothing can exist beyond this. And since there was nothing before the Big Bang—not even the space-time fabric—we can't argue about it either because time in space is the only scale that legitimizes our existence.

2 - How did it all begin?

To be honest, it’s humanity's biggest mystery: to understand where each and everything was kickstarted. I'm not just talking about abiogenesis, where we study how we became living organisms from non-living matter, but also about every second of the epoch after the Big Bang, because it is the only reliable theory to understand how everything in our universe actually started. For instance, scientists observed that the wavelengths of galaxies we are receiving are getting different, and from this we conclude that the galaxies are moving away from us and the universe is continuously expanding. And if we reverse time, we will find the same galaxies coming nearer and nearer, and if we travel almost 13.8 billion years back, we will eventually stop at a singularity, which is called the Big Bang. Also, quantum mechanics allows the universe to appear from nothing because even in a vacuum, there is some seething form of energy where particles can spontaneously appear and disappear—and the Big Bang could be a result of such a fluctuation.

3 - Is there any other intelligent species?

Why can't there be? This universe in which we are currently living is comprehensively vast, and there is always a possibility of having alien life. However, we can argue about their level of intelligence, but it isn’t rare to have living microbes that can replicate themselves. And we humans are investing millions and billions of dollars to find water on other planets because where there is water, there is life.

4 - Can we predict the future?

Theoretically, yes—by using the scientific laws of physics and mathematics. However, practically, no—because the universe is chaotic, and small changes can have large consequences. For example, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics. Here, I do want to add some personal thoughts: learning about history has helped me understand the present much better and gives me a general idea of the future we are heading toward.

5 - What is inside a black hole?

A black hole is a region of space-time where gravity is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape. Inside it, matter is crushed into a singularity, which is also called a point of infinite density. The boundary of the black hole from where nothing can escape is called the event horizon. This—meaning the black hole—was the actual and most prominent work of Stephen Hawking, for which he was famous, because he was the one who discovered Hawking radiation, which suggests that black holes gradually evaporate over time. He proposed that information is not lost in black holes, which means that it might be stored on the event horizon or escape in some unknown way about which we are unaware yet. This concept actually endorses the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can't be created or destroyed—it just changes from one form to another.

6 - Is time travel possible?

You might be wondering if these questions are more science fiction myths than reality, but wait—theoretically, time travel is possible if we consider Einstein's theory of relativity, which is E = mc². It states that time is not an absolute quantity but relative to the observer’s frame of reference and gravitational potential. This means that if we travel faster than the speed of light, time is going to slow down for us because time is a relative quantity. However, time travel into the past is far more complicated because of a lot of paradoxes. For instance, the grandfather paradox states that if we travel into the past and stop our grandfather from getting married, then there will be no existence of you, and if there is no you in the future, how could you travel into the past to stop him?
That is why Stephen Hawking introduced a new concept: the Chronology Protection Conjecture, which suggests that nature prevents time travel to the past to avoid any kind of potential paradoxes.

7 - Will we survive on Earth?

He was not really optimistic about our future on this planet because of multiple reasons such as climate change, global warming, and AI. And it’s a fact that we, Homo sapiens, are one of the most destructive forces that have ever evolved on planet Earth. However, at the same time, our existence is extremely absurd and insignificant—so better not to worry about our existence.

8 - Should we colonize space?

Absolutely yes! We should not stop exploring new things in our lives, no matter which domain they belong to. And we know that space exploration isn’t just about survival—it also leads to scientific breakthroughs and a new era of humanity. In this book, the direction he proposed was Mars, because the Moon is not that suitable to sustain life. Then gradually, to Europa (Jupiter’s moon) or Titan (Saturn’s moon).

9 - Will AI outperform humans?

At this time, he was really concerned about this and actually acknowledged its potential. Since the dawn of Generative AI, the whole world has been revolutionized, and we are in desperate need to integrate AI into our lives. But one thing we need to understand here is that not everything we invent is inherently bad. It’s the use case. For instance, nuclear enrichment can help us make nuclear bombs or can provide us with cheap energy. Now it’s up to us to use it for what purpose. But yes, maybe we are going to become Homo Deus in the near future.

10 - How do we shape the future?

The answer to this question is just one word—Ingenuity. It means solving our problems using science, collaboration, and innovation, because no divine entity is going to come and save us—we have to save ourselves. Also, our whole life should be dedicated to the pursuit of science, where we always stay curious and seek the answers to the big questions.

Conclusion

There are a lot of things we can learn from Hawking's end—like how he dedicated his whole life to searching for answers to the biggest questions of our existence. Yet he left us with something even greater: the ability or temptation to keep asking questions.
He showed us that the universe is not something to fear but something to explore. The knowledge we consume or seek is not a destination but a journey. And our greatest power is not what we already know, but our curiosity to know more. So, we should seek truth, not fairy tales, because the truth will set you free. And as long as we keep asking big questions, we will continue to improve ourselves and our time—because life is a gradual process of inner change that leads from ignorance to enlightenment through personal exposure.

Author and Researcher: Mohsin Ramzan