“The universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. As any economist could have predicted, the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe.”

—  Stephen Hawking

The Beginning of Time (1996)

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Stephen Hawking122
British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942–2018

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