Black Holes and Baby Universes. A Cosmic Journey through Space and Time

The lecture titled "Black Holes and Baby Universes" was first delivered at the University of California, Berkeley. Complemented by Stephen Hawking's reflections on this and related topics, it became part of this collection, consisting of 13 essays and a detailed interview. On these pages, the most well-known astrophysicist of our time interprets the most likely models of the structure of the Universe. This is a continuation of the dialogue with the reader, initiated in the book "A Brief History of Time." The author discusses imaginary time, how black holes can give rise to young universes, and the attempts by scientists, started by Albert Einstein, to find a unified field theory that could make the macrocosm predictable.