135 - Thomas Hertog: Stephen Hawking, Cosmology, and the Origin of Time

Thomas Hertog is Professor and Head of Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at KU Leuven in Belgium. He was a doctoral student and close collaborator of Stephen Hawking. In this episode, Robinson and Thomas discuss his recent book, On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory. More particularly they discuss his collaboration with Stephen Hawking Hawking’s work on black holes, and the three stages of his cosmological research, which culminated in his final theory, which Thomas worked on with him, called Top-Down Cosmology. 

On the Origin of Time: https://a.co/d/ihrMoCZ

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:53 Introduction

04:19 Thomas’s Entry into Physics

05:49 What Was It Like to Work with Stephen Hawking?

09:46 Stephen Hawking and the Death of Philosophy

16:42 What is Cosmological Inflation

23:28 The Big Bang, Fine-Tuning, and the Anthropic Principle

41:15 On Penrose, Hawking, Black Holes, and the Big Bang

01:01:27 Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory of Top-Down Cosmology

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.