Lifeboat Foundation

It all started with a Big Bang. But then what?

Renowned theoretical astrophysicist Stephen Hawking had been trying to answer that and other questions about the universe right up until his death. But in his final paper, submitted just eight days before he died on March 14, at age 76, Hawking and co-author Thomas Hertog proposed that the universe is actually simpler than what’s been suggested in other theories.

Yes, they say, the massive explosion known as the Big Bang did create multiple universes — but not as many as the current theory predicts. The number of multiverses is finite, not infinite, according to them.