The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow is Nathan’s March Non-Fiction Read.

• The Grand Design is a book that is epic in scope but can be broken into three fundamental questions:
• Why is there something instead of nothing?
• Why do we exist?

Why does this particular set of laws govern our universe and not some other set of laws entirely?

Physicists Stephen Hawking, and Leonard Mlodinow form a concise, intriguing and mind-opening book discussing some of the most complex questions facing human understanding.

They initially discuss the properties of quantum mechanics (which is the behavior of things on the sub-atomic level) and how it relates to the lives of cells and molecules.   From that they introduce relativity (which is our best explanation of gravity) and its correlation to the progression of life itself, and how it forms around objects and affects space-time.

When it comes to presentation of arguments regarding the chance of life happening anywhere in the universe, a group of theories called “M-Theories” is given thorough discussion.  This group of theories predicts that there is not one single infinite or finite universe, but we are just experiencing one upon billions of other universes.

The Grand Design is a great book that gets to some deep and complex questions without the introduction of a single equation, making it more accessible to more readers who will not get bogged down in technical science terminology.  The book really points to the idea of all the possible universes in our lives occurring so if the same laws of the universe exist in some degree in this universe and in others then life must be possible in other areas as well.