Author of A Brief History of Time hopes his theories reach a wider audience

I first saw the complete version in Los Angeles in February. I must confess, I was quite apprehensive as to how it would turn out. I was afraid that, on the one hand, it might leave out or trivialise the science, and on the other, that people might be confused or bored. I hope the finished product avoids both dangers.

Of course, the film does not explain the science in the detail the book did. That was inevitable. But I think it gets across two of the key ideas in my book: first, that the universe had a beginning in time. And second, that there is another kind of time, called imaginary time, in which the universe need have no boundary, no beginning or end.

The discovery of ripples in the microwave background reported last week is consistent with this idea,...