"On the Origin of Time" by Thomas Hertog
Subtitled " Stephen Hawking 's final theory", this is a 2023 book by his collaborator Thomas Hertog , a Belgian cosmologist, on the theory of everything they developed together before Hawking's death in 2018. I'm not intending to give a proper review, I'll just say that from a reviewer's perspective it's a curate's egg, the parts dealing with known cosmological theories are good, the parts dealing with the final theory in question are rather hand-wavy, the parts about the process of coming up with scientific theories are interesting, the insights into Stephen Hawking's life are sparse but interesting, and some of the comments on "what it all means" are rather over-excited and new agey (all in my humble opinion, of course). But what I'm interested in is the eponymous theory, and in (perhaps) getting a better grasp on it, should anyone knowledgeable happen upon my comments and care to respond. (I do have a degree in astrophysics, b...