doctoral degree. He decided on Cosmology, the study of the nature and origin of the universe. It focused on some fascinating questions about which new theories could be applied. How big was the universe? Why was it growing bigger all the time? How did he universe begin? Would the universe die someday or go on existing forever? Besides questions of the origin of the universe, cosmology also offered Hawking another puzzle. What happens to stars when they die? (Susskind)
             Hawking became fascinated by the idea of singularity. As a physical body, a singularity, or black hole, was expected to have some very strange properties (Gribbin). A black hole would still have most of the mass that it had when it was a full-sized star, b
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