In March, the world lost of its most remarkable scientists, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
Hawking lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, but it didn't stop him from making significant contributions to science and change the way we look at Earth and the entire universe.
Even after his death, there's still so much we can learn from the brilliant mastermind. In fact, the 76-year-old was working on a book at the time of his death and his family has since completed it.
Brief Answers to the Big Questions hit the shelves this week, and in it, Hawking provided answers to the questions he was most often asked.
"There is no God. No one directs the universe."
He dropped some big bombshells about extraterrestrial life, artificial intelligence, time travel, and his stance on God.
Hawking revealed that he did not believe in a higher power because it's the "laws of nature," not a diety, that dictates what happens.
"There is no God. No one directs the universe," he wrote. "For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God," he adds. "I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature."
Hawking added that there was nothing before the Big Bang, not even God was around to be able to create the universe. He concluded that there is also no reliable evidence of an afterlife.
"I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing according to the laws of science. "There is no time for a creator to have existed in."
He argued that God doesn't exist because he would have to interfere in the workings of the universe and that would contradict the laws of nature
"These laws may or may not have been decreed by God, but he cannot intervene to break the laws or they would not be laws."
Aliens & time travel
While Hawking considers believing in God a bit far-fetched, he doesn't think that we should dismiss the possibility of the existence of alien life forms.
"There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further."
Hawking also said that time travel is a real possibility in the future, and predicted that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."
"Rapid space travel and travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding," he writes. "Science fiction fans need not lose heart: there's hope in M theory."
Hawking's daughter, Lucy, told CNN that this book is more important than ever because her father's message about the future needs to be heard.
"He's asking us not to go into the future blindly," she said. "How good is the track record of the human race in using advances in technology for the good of ordinary people?"
Hawking was concerned about how "divided" humans have become. Lucy explained that her father often brought up "how we seem to have lost the ability to look outward, and we are increasingly looking inward to ourselves."
Prior to his death, the scientist also made a prediction about doomsday, according to Geekwire.
Hawking believed that the Earth won't be able to survive much longer and humans must make it a mission to find other planets to live on before the planet we've been calling home is destroyed.
"This exponential growth cannot continue into the next millennium," the beloved scientist said in late 2017. "By the year 2600, the world's population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot."
However, he never lost hope that the future could still be a good place if humans do things the right way.
Hawking's final message on how we can shape the future is that we should "Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet."
In addition to the new book, Hawking's final paper, "A Smooth Exit From Eternal Inflation," was published shortly after he died.
If you'd like a copy of Hawking's final book, it's now available on Amazon.
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