Source: Chicago Sun-Times Date: January 30 1999 Headline: Hawking Links Man, Universe By Brenda Warner Rotzoll French philosopher Rene Descartes said in the 17th century ``Cogito, ergo sum''--I think, therefore I am. British physicist Stephen Hawking, described by some as the most intelligent man in the world today, carries that idea to the boundaries of space when he says ``we have to invoke the anthropic principle'' to understand the creation and subsequent expansion of the universe. That theory means the universe has to be one in which man can live, or there would be no one to ask questions about the universe, said Professor Michael Turner, chairman of the astronomy and astrophysics department at the University of Chicago. Turner is co-chairman of the three-day Pritzker Symposium on the status of inflationary cosmology now being held at the university. Hawking discussed his theories of how the world came to be in one of the opening speeches Friday. Hawking says the ``big bang'' theory of creation, that a soup of subatomic particles exploded in a zillionth of a second 14 billion years ago and expanded instantly to become the universe, doesn't go far enough. He said scientists also have to consider the boundaries of the universe, and he believes ``it has no boundary.'' He also disputes theories of up to 11 dimensions, saying if there were more than the four dimensions of height, depth, breadth and time, ``planets would not have stable orbits around their stars or electrons around the nucleus of an atom.'' Turner said scientists at the symposium ``find very controversial'' Hawking's insistence on the anthropic principle. But, he said, ``Most of us are just trying to understand how the universe evolved. Stephen goes us one farther and tries to understand how it began and why it began.'' There's a lot of talk at the symposium about ``is the universe flat? '' Not really, Turner said. It's just that in the last two years, scientists have been able to look at microwave radiation dating to about 300,000 years after the big bang. And because it shows such a tiny part of the universe, it appears flat, just as the Earth appears flat to someone standing on Michigan Avenue but can clearly be seen to be spherical when viewed from the moon. Hawking is paralyzed and speechless as a result of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He composed his speech on a computer he controls through a hand-held, mouselike device called a ``possum switch'' because he does not have enough hand strength to use a conventional keyboard. His assistant, Chris Burgoyne, said the device lets him pick out one word at a time while scrolling through an on-screen dictionary. A voice synthesizer then ``speaks'' the words he selects.