In the years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of
Time has established itself as a landmark volume in scientific writing. It has
become an international publishing phenomenon, translated into forty languages
and selling over nine million copies. The book was on the cutting edge of what
was then known about the nature of the universe, but since that time there have
been extraordinary advances in the technology of macrocosmic worlds. These
observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawkin's theoretical predictions
in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic
Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in