Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking

[Airbrush]

This is a fantastic DVD, about 3 hours of Stephen Hawking narrating 3 episodes. One about ETIs, an episode about Time Travel, and a longer episode, The History of Everything. There is also about 15 minutes of questions and answers, even what he likes on TV. He likes crime dramas. This has fantastic graphics and is excellent for the novice. However I have a few questions. Can anyone confirm the following statements Mr. Hawking makes in these episodes?

 

1. One Trillionth of a second after the Big Bang happened, the universe (I assume he means observable universe) grew from smaller than an atom to the size of an orange, after inflation.

 

2. After 100 seconds the universe grew to the size of our solar system.

 

3. After 10 minutes the universe reached thousands of light years across.

 

4. Our Milky Way is a very old galaxy, which formed about 13 Billion years ago.

 

5. A stellar mass black hole, of 4 solar masses, is about 15 miles in diameter.

 

6. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is over 4 Million solar masses and has a diameter of about 11 Million miles.

 

Does everyone agree with all of these?

 

I only rented this DVD from Netflix. I watched it twice and I think I need to own a copy of it, so I can see it over and over.

Edited July 26, 2011 by Airbrush

[Realitycheck]

Stellar mass black holes are probably comparable in size and density to neutron stars, as described. Everything else seems reasonable enough, though I wouldn't bet my life on the exactness of anything, err

,

except for the first part. I personally don't believe in the concept of singularities as anything other than mathematical centers of gravity. Fitting all of the matter of the universe into a little dot is really inconceivable. I would probably sooner believe in spontaneous generation of quantum particles.

Edited July 27, 2011 by Realitycheck