The Space Age: The Challenges and the Possibilites

I still recall those now distant daydreams of boarding the USS Enterprise and setting off with James T Kirk and his crew on a voyage of exploration, scientific discovery and alien encounters. I created whole adventures in my head that I believed I would experience, living them time after time, each time a little more exciting and glorious than the one before. Obviously - and I very much hope that you believe me! - such fantasies are long since confined to memory but my love of outer space, the infinite mysteries it holds and what is I suppose the romance almost of speculating just exactly what is in fact out there has only grown in me as I have grown older. I do regret to a huge extent not pursuing a career in this field but perhaps by writing about it, I can live those childhood memories again in a different but just as satisfying way, and truly go, "Where no man has gone before."

Footnote: It is not uncommon for young boys to harbour an overwhelming desire to be an Astronaut when they "grow up;" but I am reliably informed that such was only one of three ambitions I professed at this time. My mother assures me that, in addition, I also wanted to be a Church of Scotland Minister, so as I would only have to work for one hour per week, every Sunday morning - honestly! - but also that, far more disturbingly and now forever inexplicably, I wanted to become a burglar...

I hope that particularly any law enforcement officers reading this will take careful note that I never took any formal steps on any of those career paths!

Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the most extraordinary men of our time. Despite being very severely disabled by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, his tireless and extensive work in the fields of cosmology and quantum physics has revolutionised the way in which science perceives particularly the phenomenon colloquially known as "black holes." His bestselling publication, "A Brief History of Time," was first published in 1988 and shattered a whole host of records for a work of its kind.