Stephen Hawking's final research paper could help astronomers find evidence that our universe is just one among many in a larger "multiverse," according to media reports.
The famed cosmologist, who died last week at the age of 76, is lead author of a study called "A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?" which was originally submitted to an unnamed journal last July. On March 4 — just 10 days before Hawking's death — his co-author, Thomas Hertog, a professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven University in Belgium, submitted a revised version of the manuscript for further review, according to British newspaper The Sunday Times.
The inflation referenced in the paper's title is the incredible expansion of space-time theorized to have occurred in the first few moments after the Big Bang, which created the universe. Many physicists believe that this dramatic ballooning wasn't limited to our neck of the cosmic woods but rather happened repeatedly, spawning multiple universes — perhaps an infinite number of them.
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