in the ten years since its publication in 1988 stephen hawkings classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide that edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe but 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 hawkings 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 300000 years of the universes beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of spacetime that he had projected eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations as well as his own recent research professor hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and time travel and updated the chapters throughout