"According to the Sunday Times, Prof. Turok has now published research suggesting that the basic maths behind Hawking's views is incorrect and it is back to drawing board on the origins of the universe." http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/steven-hawk...friend-1627731

Not just the math - Stephen Hawking's basic ideas are wrong. So he believes and teaches that the Michelson-Morley experiment has gloriously confirmed the constancy of the speed of light:

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Chapter 2: "The special theory of relativity was very successful in explaining that the speed of light appears the same to all observers (as shown by the Michelson-Morley experiment) and in describing what happens when things move at speeds close to the speed of light." http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-.../dp/0553380168

Actually in 1887 (prior to FitzGerald and Lorentz advancing the ad hoc length contraction hypothesis) the Michelson-Morley experiment was compatible with the variable (dependent on the speed of the light source) speed of light predicted by Newton's emission theory of light, and accordingly incompatible with the constant (independent of the speed of the source) speed of light predicted by the ether theory and later adopted by Einstein as his 1905 second postulate:

"Emission theory, also called emitter theory or ballistic theory of light, was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity, explaining the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887. [...] The name most often associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his corpuscular theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object, and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed of the distant emitter (c ± v)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory

Banesh Hoffmann, Relativity and Its Roots, p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether. If it was so obvious, though, why did he need to state it as a principle? Because, having taken from the idea of light waves in the ether the one aspect that he needed, he declared early in his paper, to quote his own words, that "the introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous." https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-It.../dp/0486406768

That is, in 1887 the Michelson-Morley experiment DISPROVED the constancy of the speed of light so Neil Turok and brothers Einsteinians should go back to drawing board on relativity, not on the origins of the universe.

Pentcho Valev