Stephen Hawking and The Grand Design creates stir before Sept. 7 release

Physicist Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, is bound to create a buzz since he writes about the laws of nature and physics in an attempt to provide answers to life’s ultimate questions. The book is due out Sept. 7. It is co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist at Caltech.

The questions in the book

How could the universe be created out of nothing? Do we have free will? Why are we here? And, perhaps most intriguing, according to publisher Random House, “What is the “grand design” that made it possible for us to have found a home in the one universe, out of zillions, where human life is possible?”

Random House points out that according to Hawking, “we are very close to an understanding not just of the workings of our universe but of its very existence.”

Hawking and Mlodinow write about the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, in everyday language. For example, the publisher notes that in The Grand Design, they explain “that according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously.

The 208-page work includes a total of 49 pieces of four-color art and some black and white art.

Hawking and Mlodinow

Hawking and his theories are well-known and he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years. He is the man that made black holes a household word with his book Black Holes and Baby Universes and other Essays and A Brief History of Time.

Mlodinow is the author of The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives, Euclid’s Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace and Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life. He also was involved in writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. He lives in South Pasadena, Calif.