Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. The intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected.;Our picture of the universe -- Space and time -- The expanding universe -- The uncertainty principle -- Elementary particles and the forces of nature -- Black holes -- Black holes ain't so black -- The origin and fate of the universe -- The arrow of time -- Wormholes and time travel -- The unification of physics
