LONDON, FEB 22: The Universe may have started as no bigger than a pea before the Big Bang which created the Universe 12 billion years ago, according to a new theory from British scientist Stephen Hawking.Hawking, the wheelchair-bound mathematician and author of the best-selling A Brief History of Time, believes the pea-like universe only existed for a fraction of a second before the Big Bang.
The new theory, called ``Open Inflation'', also postulates that the Universe will expand forever to infinity, explains how matter was created and resolves Einstein's equations of gravity. Hawking and Cambridge mathematical physicist Neil Turok will present their theory at the California Institute of Technology next month. Turok told The Sunday Times he believed the theory would be accepted by the scientific community.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
