Slashdot Mirror
High Table at Cambridge with Stephen Hawking
bughunter writes "Accomplished astrophysicist and SF author Gregory Benford shares a personal account of his recent conversation with Stephen Hawking at Reason Online. As usual, Benford's style is engaging and informal, and this doesn't read like a typical interview. Although the article is short on jargon, Benford and Hawking share insights on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, as such minds are want to do. We even get a glimpse of Cambridge tunnel hacking. Of course, there's also a plug for Hawking's new book, The Universe in a Nutshell."
you wonk. "As such minds are wont to do"
He was grinning like an idiot just because he had 4 of a kind. Since when are physisists good poker players? They would get eaten alive in a high stakes game. Stick to the formulas, Stephen.
I'm pretty sure a quantum singularity of any size will have a mass a little bit heavier than that of any mountain.
--
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
Okay ... this comment is off-topic, but I think it would be hillariously funny is CmdrTaco's post got downvoted to -1 as a troll.
but is it published by O'Reilly?
He wasn't born that way, Commander Idiot. And most males are physically capable of reproduction at 13 years of age.
Hawking was in his 20's before the disease started to afflict him.
"You can't get there from here."
I was disappointed to find out that it wasn't an O'Reilly book.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Pretty high user number for the guy who wrote this website isn't it? Check again
Einstein is well known for opposing theories of black holes and quantum physics (his famous quote about deities not throwing dice comes immediately to mind), and Hawking has spent the greater part of the second half of the twentieth century and now the twenty first century exploring black holes.
But of course Hawking might be making the same mistake Einstein made in opposing black hole theory, this time regarding gravistar theory. The jury is still out on gravistars, but the potential for undoing all the "discoveries" Hawking has spent his life pursuing is real.
It's a cautionary note, and one Hawking would be loathe to ignore. Certainly, we remember Einstein for his theories of relativity, but how many remember anything he accomplished in the second half of his career? The short answer is he accomplished very little, spending his days sailing his little boat around instead of charting new scientific milestones.
Hawking has the very real potential to be relegated to the dustbin of history as a great scientific mind led astray on fruitless theoretical paths. It'd be a shame, but there it is. Let's hope that unlike Einstein, Hawking is better prepared to adapt to whatever the future holds.
Why did it call it that?
Couldn't he get IDG permission to call it The Univers for Dummies?
silly... cards are just a giant ame of numbers... well for them its not so giant... a physicyst would be the best at cards that i cna think of... counting cards and making estimates on probability is what they are good at...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Never mind.
How much of this actually took place in the conversation, and how much is just the author attempting to summarize current interesting stuff in the world of physics using a conversation with Stephen Hawking as a framing device?
:)
I mean, it really feels like the latter. I find it hard to believe that Hawking, talking to another physisist, would bother, for example, going into detail explaining what planck time is.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, and it was an interesting read. But it was kind of irritating and clumsy the way that the story seemed like nothing more than a framing device to the author (Did anyone else read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?), and everything they discussed seemed smoothed out and dumbed down and simplified to its bare essentials so that people like, well.. so that people like me could understand it. Kind of like the way that the author describes hawking's new book.
I guess i shouldn't complain, since it was better than i could have done, but i wish he'd just repeated stuff and then explained on the side, subtitle style, instead of inserting the layman's explanations into the conversation (assuming, of course, that this was actually what he did..)
Can anyone recommend something i could read if i'm a casual observer curious about what's going on in physics, but who would like a little more depth than this? Like, just so that things aren't so skimmed over that they just seem like crackpot, randomly selected theories with no basis in anything (which of course it seems this way if you don't mention why, mathematically, they came to these conclusions...). I mean, if i want shallow summaries of the physics community, i always have Discover
silly... cards are just a giant ame of numbers... well for them its not so giant... a physicyst would be the best at cards that i cna think of... counting cards and making estimates on probability is what they are good at...
You would be wrong.
...but "wont". As such minds are WONT to do.
want: nt Pronunciation Key (wnt, wônt)
v. wanted, wanting, wants
v. tr.
1.
a.To desire greatly; wish for: They want to leave. She wants a glass of water. See
Synonyms at desire.
b.To desire (someone to do something): I want you to clean your room.
2.
a.To request the presence or assistance of: You are wanted by your office.
b.To seek with intent to capture: The fugitive is wanted by the police.
3.To have an inclination toward; like: Say what you want, but be tactful.
4.Informal. To be obliged (to do something): You want to be careful on the ice.
5.To be without; lack. See Synonyms at lack.
6.To be in need of; require: "'Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter" (Lewis Carroll).
wont: Accustomed or used: "The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world" (Henry
David Thoreau).
2.Likely: chaotic as holidays are wont to be.
At the risk of appearing like a slashdot poster, I will have to correct the original poster's useage of "want." He, of course, should have used "wont."
Tony
Ob. Slashdot question...
Ah, but isn't mankind's (technological) ability to get past these limitations a form of evolution in itself? If intelligence such as is present in Hawking were to be passed on, it could continue to overcome any physical limitations, such as the ones that Dr. Hawking now overcomes.
In any case, I'm not sure if ALS is passed on as a genetic disease. I believe it is, but I could be mistaken. However, some complications have resulted with Dr. Hawking due to a car accident later in life, although ALS seems to be the source of most of his physical limitations.
In any case, I gladly look forward to his new book. "Brief History of Time" is one of the greatest physics books ever written, esp. the 10th Anniversary and Illustrated editions. I'm currently part-way through my second reading, and I am amazed at how clearly Hawking can explain extraordinarily complex topics. I can't wait to see what he has next.
There's nothing you have that they can't take away: Absolute zero, Gentle Jack, bottom line.
After that, it becomes a game of bluffing and applied psychology. Physicists, as a class, do not have the upper hand in a game like that. (Not saying they're handicapped, just that they're not better players simply because they can do math.)
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Ahh - yes - good point.
...
Tis too early in the morning
...he's not the original.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
If you've never heard Hawking's musical efforts (I kid you not), now is the time. Check out www.mchawking.com and prepare to bust a gut laughing. This is not to be missed.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html
Steven Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
"You and your... third dimension."
"Oh, what about it?"
"Oh, nothing. It's cute. We have five."
"...thousand."
"Yes, five thousand!"
"Don't question it!"
Every so often I see Prof. Hawking in the CMS building while running between classes or eating lunch, always with a nurse or "graduate assistant" (more of a student nurse) nearby. Some days I tell myself that he doesn't look so bad, but other days I just can't bring myself to look at him. It's hard to read interviews with him where he seems so vibrant, with his grinning photograph usually nearby, and then jump to seeing him in person - immutable and motionless, and almost falling apart. It's almost like he's a completely different person.
Stephen Hawking seemed slightly worse, as always. It is a miracle that he has clung to life for over 20 years with Lou Gehrig's disease. Each time I see him I feel that this will be the last, that he cannot hold on to such a thin thread for much longer.
Hawking turned 60 in January. Over the course of his brilliant career, he has worked out many of the basics of black hole physics, including, most strikingly, his prediction that black holes aren't entirely black. Instead, if they have masses equivalent to a mountain's, they radiate particles of all kinds. Smaller holes would disappear in a fizz of radiation -- a signature that astronomers have searched for but so far not found.
The enormous success of Hawking's 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, has made him a curious kind of cultural icon. He wonders how many of the starlets and rock stars who mentioned the book on talk shows actually read it.
With his latest book, The Universe in a Nutshell (Bantam), he aims to remedy the situation with a plethora of friendly illustrations to help readers decipher such complex topics as superstring theory and the nature of time. The trick is translating equations into sentences, no mean feat. The pictures help enormously, though purists deplore them as oversimplified. I feel that any device is justified to span such an abyss of incomprehension.
When I entered Stephen's office at the University of Cambridge, his staff was wary of me, plainly suspecting I was a "civilian" harboring a crank theory of the universe. But I'd called beforehand, and then his secretary recognized me from years past. (I am an astrophysicist and have known Stephen since the 1970s.) When I entered the familiar office his shrunken form lolled in his motorized chair as he stared out, rendered goggle-eyed by his thick glasses -- but a strong spirit animated all he said.
Hawking lost his vocal cords years ago, to an emergency tracheotomy. His gnarled, feeble hands could not hold a pen. For a while after the operation he was completely cut off from the world, an unsettling parallel to those mathematical observers who plunge into black holes, their signals to the outside red-shifted and slowed by gravity's grip to dim, whispering oblivion.
A Silicon Valley firm came to the rescue. Engineers devised tailored, user friendly software and a special keyboard for Hawking. Now his frail hand moved across it with crablike speed. The software is deft, and he could build sentences quickly. I watched him flit through the menu of often-used words on his liquid crystal display, which hung before him in his wheelchair. The invention has been such a success that the Silicon Valley folk now supply units to similarly afflicted people worldwide.
"Please excuse my American accent," the speaker mounted behind the wheelchair said with a California inflection. He coded this entire remark with two keystrokes.
Although I had been here before, I was again struck that a man who had suffered such an agonizing physical decline had on his walls several large posters of a person very nearly his opposite: Marilyn Monroe. I mentioned her, and Stephen responded instantly, tapping one-handed on his keyboard, so that soon his transduced voice replied, "Yes, she's wonderful. Cosmological. I wanted to put a picture of her in my latest book, as a celestial object." I remarked that to me the book was like a French Impressionist painting of a cow, meant to give a glancing essence, not the real, smelly animal. Few would care to savor the details. Stephen took off from this to discuss some ideas currently booting around the physics community about the origin of the universe, the moment just after the Big Bang.
Stephen's great politeness paradoxically made me ill at ease; I was acutely aware of the many demands on his time, and, after all, I had just stopped by to talk shop.
"For years my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science," Stephen said. "It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin. The laws would break down at the point of singularity, of infinite density." Mathematics cannot handle physical quantities like density that literally go to infinity. Indeed, the history of 20th century physics was in large measure about how to avoid the infinities that crop up in particle theory and cosmology. The idea of point particles is convenient but leads to profound, puzzling troubles.
I recalled that I had spoken to Stephen about mathematical methods of getting around this problem one evening at a party in King's College. There were analogies to methods in elementary quantum mechanics, methods he was trying to carry over into this surrealistic terrain.
"It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time," Stephen said. We discussed this a bit. Stephen had been using a mathematical device in which time is replaced, as a notational convenience, by something called imaginary time. This changes the nature of the equations, so he could use some ideas from the tiny quantum world. In the new equations, a kind of tunneling occurs in which the universe, before the Big Bang, has many different ways to pass through the singularity. With imaginary time, one can calculate the chances for a given tunneling path into our early universe after the beginning of time as we know it.
"Sure, the equations can be interpreted that way," I argued, "but it's really a trick, isn't it?"
Stephen said, "Yes, but perhaps an insightful trick."
"We don't have a truly deep understanding of time," I replied, "so replacing real time with imaginary time doesn't mean much to us."
"Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time," Stephen explained. "Along this axis, if the universe satisfies the 'no boundary' condition, we can do our calculations. This condition says that the universe has no singularities or boundaries in the imaginary direction of time. With the 'no boundary' condition, there will be no beginning or end to imaginary time, just as there is no beginning or end to a path on the surface of the Earth."
"If the path goes all the way around the Earth," I said. "But of course, we don't know that in imaginary time there won't be a boundary."
"My intuition says there will be no blocking in that special coordinate, so our calculations make sense."
"Sense is just the problem, isn't it? Imaginary time is just a mathematical convenience." I shrugged in exasperation at the span between cool mathematical spaces and the immediacy of the raw world; this is a common tension in doing physics. "It's unrelated to how we feel time. The seconds sliding by. Birth and death."
"True. Our minds work in real time, which begins at the Big Bang and will end, if there is a Big Crunch -- which seems unlikely, now, from the latest data showing accelerating expansion. Consciousness would come to an end at a singularity."
"Not a great consolation," I said.
He grinned. "No, but I like the 'no boundary' condition. It seems to imply that the universe will be in a state of high order at one end of real time but will be disordered at the other end of time, so that disorder increases in one direction of time. We define this to be the direction of increasing time. When we record something in our memory, the disorder of the universe will increase. This explains why we remember events only in what we call the past, and not in the future."
"Remember what you predicted in 1980 about final theories like this?" I chided him.
"I suggested we might find a complete unified theory by the end of the century." Stephen made the transponder laugh dryly. "OK, I was wrong. At that time, the best candidate seemed to be N=8 supergravity. Now it appears that this theory may be an approximation to a more fundamental theory, of superstrings. I was a bit optimistic to hope that we would have solved the problem by the end of the century. But I still think there's a 50-50 chance that we will find a complete unified theory in the next 20 years."
"I've always suspected that the structure never ends as we look to smaller and smaller scales -- and neither will the theories," I offered.
"It is possible that there is no ultimate theory of physics at all. Instead, we will keep on discovering new layers of structure. But it seems that physics gets simpler, and more unified, the smaller the scale on which we look. There is an ultimate length scale, the Planck length, below which space-time may just not be defined. So I think there will be a limit to the number of layers of structure, and there will be some ultimate theory, which we will discover if we are smart enough."
"Does it seem likely that we are smart enough?" I asked.
Another grin. "You will have to get your faith elsewhere."
"I can't keep up with the torrent of work on superstrings." Mathematical physics is like music, which a young and zesty spirit can best seize and use, as did Mozart.
"I try," he said modestly.
We began discussing recent work on "baby universes" -- bubbles in space-time. To us large creatures, space-time is like the sea seen from an ocean liner, smooth and serene. Up close, though, on tiny scales, it's waves and bubbles. At extremely fine scales, pockets and bubbles of space-time can form at random, sputtering into being, then dissolving. Arcane details of particle physics suggest that sometimes -- rarely, but inevitably -- these bubbles could grow into a full-fledged universe.
This might have happened a lot at the instant just immediately after the Big Bang. Indeed, some properties of our universe may have been created by the space-time foam that roiled through those infinitesimally split seconds. Studying this possibility uses the "wormhole calculus," which samples the myriad possible frothing bubbles (and their connections, called wormholes).
Averaging over this foam in a mathematical sense, smoothing its properties a bit, Hawking and others have tried to find out whether a final, rather benign universe like ours was an inevitable outcome of that early turbulence. The jury isn't in on this point, and it may be out forever -- the calculations are tough, guided by intuition rather than facts. Deciding whether they meaningfully predict anything is a matter of taste. This recalls Oscar Wilde's aphorism that in matters of great import, style is always more important than substance.
If this picture of the first split second is remotely right, much depends on the energy content of the foam. The energy to blow up these bubbles would be countered by an opposite, negative energy, which comes from the gravitational attraction of all the matter in the bubble. If the outward pressure just balances the inward attraction (a pressure, really) of the mass, then you could get a universe much like ours: rather mild, with space-time not suffering any severe curvature -- what astronomers call "flat." This seems to be so on such relatively tiny scales as our solar system, and flatness prevails even on the size range of our galaxy. Indeed, flatness holds on immense scales, as far as we can yet see.
It turns out that such bubbles could even form right now. An entirely separate space-time could pop into existence in your living room, say. It would start unimaginably small, then balloon to the size of a cantaloupe -- but not before your very eyes, because, for quite fundamental reasons, you couldn't see it.
"They don't form in space, of course," Stephen said. "It doesn't mean anything to ask where in space these things occur." They don't take up room in our universe but rather are their own universes, expanding into spaces that did not exist before.
"They're cut off from us after we make them," I said. "No relics, no fossil?"
"I do not think there could be."
"Like an ungrateful child who doesn't write home." When talking about immensities, I sometimes grasp for something human.
"It would not form in our space, but rather as another space-time."
We discussed for a while some speculations about this that I had put into two novels, Cosm and Timescape. I had used Cambridge and the British scientific style in Timescape, published in 1980, before these ideas became current. I had arrived at them in part from some wide-ranging talks I had enjoyed with Stephen -- all suitably disguised in the books, of course. Such enclosed space-times I had termed "onion universes," since in principle they could have further locked-away space-times inside them, and so on. It is an odd sensation when a guess turns out to have some substance -- as much as anything as gossamer as these ideas can be said to be substantial.
"So they form and go," I mused. "Vanish. Between us and these other universes lies absolute nothingness, in the exact sense -- no space or time, no matter, no energy."
"There can be no way to reach them," his flat voice said. "The gulf between us and them is unbridgeable. It is beyond physics because it is truly nothing, not physical at all."
The mechanical laugh resounded. Stephen likes the tug of the philosophical, and he seemed amused by the notion that universes are simply one of those things that happen from time to time.
His nurse appeared for a bit of physical cleanup, and I left him. Inert confinement to a wheelchair exacts a demeaning toll on one's dignity, but he showed no reaction to the daily round of being cared for by another in the most intimate way. Perhaps for him, it even helps the mind to slip free of the world's rub.
I sat in the common room outside his office, having tea and talking to some of his post-doctoral students. They were working on similarly wild ideas and were quick, witty, and keenly observant as they sipped their strong, dark Ceylonese tea. A sharp crew, perhaps a bit jealous of Stephen's time. They were no doubt wondering who this guy was, nobody they had ever heard of, a Californian with an accent tainted by Southern nuances, somebody who worked in astrophysics and plasma physics -- which, in our age of remorseless specialization, is a province quite remote from theirs. I didn't explain; after all, I really had no formal reason to be there, except that Stephen and I were friends.
Stephen's secretary quietly came out and asked if I would join Stephen for dinner at Caius College. I had intended to eat in my favorite Indian restaurant, where the chicken vindaloo is a purging experience, and then simply rove the walks of Cambridge alone, because I love the atmosphere -- but I instantly assented. Dinner at college high table is one of the legendary experiences of England. I could remember keenly each one I had attended; the repartee is sharper than the cutlery.
We made our way through the cool, atmospheric turns of the colleges, the worn wood and gray stones reflecting the piping of voices and squeaks of rusty bicycles. In misty twilight, student shouts echoing, Stephen's wheelchair jouncing over cobbled streets. He insisted on steering it himself, though his nurse hovered rather nervously. It had never occurred to me just how much of a strain on everyone there can be in round-the-clock care. A few people drifted along behind us, just watching him. "Take no notice," his mechanical voice said. "Many of them come here just to stare at me."
We wound among the ancient stone and manicured gardens, into Caius College. Students entering the dining hall made an eager rumpus. Stephen took the elevator, and I ascended the creaking stairs. The faculty entered after the students, me following with the nurse.
The high table is literally so. They carefully placed Stephen with his back to the long, broad tables of undergraduates. I soon realized that this is because watching him eat, with virtually no lip control, is not appetizing. He follows a set diet that requires no chewing. His nurse must chop up his food and spoon-feed him.
The dinner was noisy, with the year's new undergraduates staring at the famous Hawking's back. Stephen carried on a matter-of-fact, steady flow of conversation through his keyboard.
He had concerns about the physicists' Holy Grail, a unified theory of everything. Even if we could thrash our way through a thicket of mathematics to glimpse its outlines, it might not be specific enough -- that is, we would still have a range of choices. Physics could end up dithering over arcane points, undecided, perhaps far from our particular primate experience. Here is where aesthetics might enter.
"If such a theory is not unique," he said, "one would have to appeal to some outside principle, which one might call God."
I frowned. "Not as the Creator, but as a referee?"
"He would decide which theory was more than just a set of equations, but described a universe that actually exists."
"This one."
"Or maybe all possible theories describe universes that exist!" he said with glee. "It is unclear what it means to say that something exists. In questions like, 'Does there exist a man with two left feet in Cambridge?,' one can answer this by examining every man in Cambridge. But there is no way that one can decide if a universe exists, if one is not inside it."
"The space-time Catch-22."
"So it is not easy to see what meaning can be given to the question, 'Why does the universe exist?' But it is a question that one can't help asking."
As usual, the ability to pose a question simply and clearly in no way implied a similar answer -- or that an answer even existed.
After the dining hall, high table moved to the senior common room upstairs. We relaxed along a long, polished table in comfortable padded chairs, enjoying the traditional crisp walnuts and ancient aromatic port, Cuban cigars, and arch conversation, occasionally skewered by a witty interjection from Stephen.
Someone mentioned American physicist Stephen Weinberg's statement, in The First Three Minutes, that the more we comprehend the universe, the more meaningless it seems. Stephen doesn't agree, and neither do I, but he has a better reason. "I think it is not meaningful in the first place to say that the universe is pointless, or that it is designed for some purpose."
I asked, "No meaning, then, to the pursuit of meaning?"
"To do that would require one to stand outside the universe, which is not possible."
Again the image of the gulf between the observer and the object of study. "Still," I persisted, "there is amazing structure we can see from inside."
"The overwhelming impression is of order. The more we discover about the universe, the more we find that it is governed by rational laws. If one liked, one could say that this order was the work of God. Einstein thought so."
One of the college fellows asked, "Rational faith?"
Stephen tapped quickly. "We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life. We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics."
Walnuts eaten, port drunk, cigars smoked, it was time to go. When we left, Stephen guided his wheelchair through the shadowy reaches of the college, indulging my curiosity about a time-honored undergraduate sport: climbing Cambridge.
At night, young men sometimes scramble among the upper reaches of the steepled old buildings, scaling the most difficult points. They risk their necks for the glory of it. Quite out of bounds, of course. Part of the thrill is eluding the proctors who scan the rooftops late at night, listening for the scrape of heels. There is even a booklet about roof climbing, describing its triumphs and centuries-long history.
Stephen took me to a passageway I had been through many times, a shortcut to the Cam River between high, peaked buildings of undergraduate rooms. He said that it was one of the tough events, jumping across that and then scaling a steep, often slick roof beyond.
The passage looked to be about three meters across. I couldn't imagine leaping that gap from the slate-dark roofs. And at night, too. "All that distance?" I asked. My voice echoed in the fog.
"Yes," he said.
"Anybody ever miss?"
"Yes."
"Injured?"
"Yes."
"Killed?"
His eyes twinkled and he gave us a broad smile. "Yes." These Cambridge sorts have the real stuff, all right.
In the cool night Stephen recalled some of his favorite science fiction stories. He rarely read any fiction other than science fiction past the age of 12, he said. "It's really the only fiction that is realistic about our true position in the universe as a whole."
And how much stranger the universe was turning out than even those writers had imagined. Even when they discussed the next billion years, they could not guess the odd theories that would spring up within the next generation of physicists. Now there are speculations that our universe might have 11 dimensions, all told, all but three of space and one of time rolled up to tiny sizes. Will this change cosmology? So far, nobody knows. But the ideas are fun in and of themselves.
A week after my evening at Cambridge, I got from Stephen's secretary a transcript of all his remarks. I have used it here to reproduce his style of conversation. Printed out on his wheelchair computer, his sole link with us, the lines seem to come from a great distance. Across an abyss.
Portraying the flinty faces of science -- daunting complexity twinned with numbing wonder -- demands both craft and art. Some of us paint with fiction. Stephen paints with his impressionistic views of vast, cool mathematical landscapes. To knit together our fraying times, to span the cultural abyss, demands all these approaches -- and more, if we can but invent them.
Stephen has faced daunting physical constrictions with a renewed attack on the large issues, on great sweeps of space and time. Daily he struggles without much fuss against the narrowing that is perhaps the worst element of infirmity. I recalled him rapt with Marilyn, still deeply engaged with life, holding firmly against tides of entropy.
I had learned a good deal from those few days, I realized, and most of it was not at all about cosmology.
I've tried to read 4 Slashdot-linked articles today and am 0 for 4. Somethings got to give
"What are you doing?"
"Adjusting your breasts. You fainted and they shifted all out of whack."
A very interesting read. I have read A Brief history of Time on a flight from Perth to Sydney once and I found it very interesting, although my mind drifted alot as it did get a bit hard for me to understand specially when he went into some detail of his theories. I wonder how the Universe in a Nutshell compares to A Brief History of Time.
None-the-less, I think Hawkins is an amazing person. (does anyone know if he's knighted?) To be afflicted like him, survive this long and be such an influential person is an inspiration. I wonder what he thinks of euthanasia.
hawking.org.uk to learn more on the interviewee
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling!
" In the cool night Stephen recalled some of his favorite science fiction stories."
It's a shame he doesn't mention specific science fiction titles that Stephen Hawking liked. I would love to join his book of the month club! Ever since Oprah's club closed, i've been lost at Border's... Anyone know any cool SciFi book discussion web sites?
Pity about the pop-ups, overs, unders, and throughs, though.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
The only time I've been around Hawking in recent memory was at Penrose's 65th birthday party (wow, was that really 5 years ago already?). He seemed pleasant, and thanked Roger for the nice party at the end of the evening.
I will have to agree with Taco's comments though on the fragility of his exterior, but at the same time I feel that it plays into the character that Hawking has become. I can only imagine what being forced to develop one's theories on the world for 30+ years can do to someone's perception of reality. Some of the ideas that Hawking has contributed to the math world couldn't have come from anyone else, and I wonder how much of a result this is from his condition.
Now if only twistor theory would win over super string theory. But that's another issue.
...can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of those?
"I remarked that to me the book was like a French Impressionist painting of a cow, meant to give a glancing essence, not the real, smelly animal. Few would care to savor the details."
Now that's the author's way of saying he had a cosmorgasm during the conversation.
Serious though, nice to see Benford having a sense of humor.
"Benford and Hawking share insights on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything."
Um we knoe the answer to this question alredy it is 42!
Mirror of conversation with Stephen Hawking
ALS only affects muscles, and a certain appendage is powered hydraulically, not by muscles. There is, though, a muscle called Musculus levator penis or some such, but it is not essential.
You spout the "Amazon sucks" rhetoric for their one-click patent technology, and then give them free advertising in the story headline? Congrats.
As far as many, if not all, of my teachers have been concerned I've been on imaginary time since day one.
What, if anything, distinguishes conclusions we might arrive at while passing thru a process from those we might arrive at after having mapped the process. Gregory Bateson in his work 'Mind and Nature' played with the zig zag interplay of process and mapping. Whenever I face the wording of the more recent theories of Physics I'm tugged back to a passage from Robert Graves book the 'White Goddess' wherein he states true insight comes only by way of a skewered glance at the world of facts. Bertrand Russell once commented that to the best of his knowledge there had never been a philosopher-poet, perhaps this is the amalgam we wait upon. The few mathematician-poet's I've read have been obviously deficient in one practise or the other.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
haha totally outrageous dude!! What will they say next!! Impossible as it seems, singing it makes it even funnier!!!
They cut it out! Damn, that's the weirdest thing I've seen for awile.
An Amazon link?
Together in Electric Dreams
The thing I don't get about this guy is that he divorced his wife and then got a girlfriend. Jesus Christ! The man's nearly a vegetable and he still picks up! Just remember that all you lonely programmers - a guy in a wheelchair who can barely chew his own food gets more tail than you!
"Benford and Hawking share insights on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything..."
I know it's not always easy to come up with all new topics for an interview, but I think we already know Hawking's views on the meaning of life. His philosphy is revealed fairly clearly:
"I'm just chillin' yo, no place to be.
I take another pull off my 40z.
I'm thinking about spinning a fatass tree, a B to the L to the U-N-T."
Or perhaps:
"Fuck the damn creationists I say it with authority, because kicking their punk asses be my paramount priority.
Them wackass bitches say evolution's just a theory. They best step off, them brainless fools, I'll give them cause to fear me."
All your meaning of life are be thought of by us.
For great justice, take off every Zig.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I pissed my pants. I'm not ashamed.
so it can go up and down but not side to side.
An argument for or against natural selection?
You mean should it happen or does it?
Keep in mind, if he dosen't have any kids if he has relatives and passes a few million dollars ( or fame or whatever) on to them then they can be more reproductivly successful. Of course, on average, more intelligent people (or at least those with advanced degrees anyways) have fewer kids. Intelligence is not evolutionarily evolutionarily beneficial in modern society, it seems.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
My first Hawking book was "A Brief History of Time". After reading that one book, i knew that Hawking would be my favorite science non-fiction writer of all time, mainly because of his ability to state in simple, plain words explanations to the complexities of the physical universe we live in and the laws that make the universe tick. I'm no math wizard, but that book gave me a good understanding of the laws of physics without my having to break out a mental sweat over complex math. For those who haven't read that book, i highly recommend it.
Wont is the word you wanted, not want. Look it up!
Edith Keeler Must Die
Hey, I thought of the same joke, but just because I was at a Nocat meeting at O'Reilly, and just got home to read /., I don't get to be the first to post it. If I did, it would be mod'ed down -1 Redundant. If only I had one chance to travel back in time, I would post it first. Or no, I would pay my phone bill on time. No, I would travel back to when I was in college and not change my major from math to CS.
It does not "beg the question" it "raises the question." "Begging the question" denotes implicit assumptions in a statement.
Think before you speak.
I've often wondered what I would do if I were given the opportunity to spend some time with a person like Hawking. I suspect that I would feel the same, and would end up just slinking quietly out of his office, embarrassed that I had wasted a moment of the time he might have spent moving human knowledge a bit further ahead.
i'm not trying to be confrontational here, i would just like to know what the point of theorizing about bubbling sub-universes which are unobservable (?) and form completely isolated space-time. surely there are some observable consequences of these things for people (scientists) to talk about them? anybody conversant in quantum GR care to elaborate?
-- p
Photoshop in a Nutshell
WebMaster in a Nutshell, Deluxe Edition
Java in a Nutshell
Windows 95 in a Nutshell
I love these "Nutshell" books!
Stephen Hawking seemed slightly worse, as always. You are a fuck. That bastard is a miracle that he has clung to life for over 20 years with Lou Gehrig's disease. Each time I see that bastard I feel that this bullshit will be the fucking last, that he cannot hold on to fuckin' such a motherfucking thin thread for much longer.
Hawking turned 60 in January. You are a fuckmonster. Over the fucking course of that bastard's brilliant career, he has worked out many of the fucking basics of black hole physics, including, most strikingly, that bastard's prediction that black holes aren't entirely black. Which is deeper, your burning anus or your bloody asscrack? Instead, if them queefs have masses equivalent to a goddamn mountain's, them poo pirates radiate particles of all kinds. You are a smoked fuck. Smaller holes would disappear in a fuckin' fizz of radiation -- a signature that astronomers have searched for but so god-damn far not found.
The fucking enormous success of Hawking's 1988 book, a goddamn Brief That bastard'story of Time, has made that bastard a motherfucking curious kind of cultural icon. You are a has-been total fuck. He wonders how in the hell many of the fucking starlets and rock stars who mentioned the fucking book on talk shows actually read that shit.
With that bastard's latest book, The fucking Universe in a Nutshell (Bantam), he aims to fuckin' remedy the fucking situation with a plethora of friendly illustrations to help readers decipher such complex topics as superstring theory and the fucking nature of time. The fucking trick is translating equations into sentences, no motherfucking mean feat. The fucking pictures help enormously, though purists deplore them piece of shits as oversimplified. I should wallop your porkhole. I feel that any device is justified to span such a goddamn abyss of incomprehension.
When I entered Stephen's office at the fucking University of Cambridge, that bastard's staff was wary of my stupid ass, plainly suspecting I was a goddamn "civilian" harboring a crank theory of the fucking universe. But I'd called beforehand, and then, piece of shit, that bastard's secretary recognized my stupid ass from years past. (I am a goddamn astrophysicist and have known Stephen since the fucking 1970s.) When I entered the fucking familiar office that bastard's shrunken form lolled in that bastard's motorized chair as he stared out, rendered goggle-eyed by that bastard's thick glasses -- but a fuckin' strong spirit animated all he said.
Hawking lost that bastard's vocal cords years ago, to a fuckin' emergency tracheotomy. You are a cock.
My father had Lou Gehrig's Disease, and died in 1975. I remember that while my dad was still alive there was mention of this ultra-genius scientist who was still alive, although unwell, and had been struggling with the disease since 1963, the year I was born.
He's had ALS for longer than I have been alive. Frankly it's miraculous that he's lived so long. It seems like Whatever's Out There still has big plans for him. His best work might not be behind him yet.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Stephen Hawking spends his life trying to come up with a history of everything that makes sense to his mind. He purports that other universes exist, but that there is no way to prove their existance--and he even admits that there is no scientific way to prove these theories.
I say now that Hawking does not practice science, but rather the religion of science. Be he priest, prophet, or simple thelogian, he is no more a scientist than I am.
Any imaginative author or deluded "holy man" can define the universe and then find details and create a history that is logically consistent, and can adapt such a theory to any and all data that might refute it. I say that Hawking and his theories are no more scientific than religion, and the fact that his work inspires true, falsifiable science is nothing more than a happy coincidence.
If you do not agree with what I say, then please formulate a reply and refute me. Science--real science--is not bound by a chosen notion of God's existance or nonexistance and does not deal with things that cannot be tested in reality.
I say that Science says nothing that is not proven fact, and that to brand one ascetic dream "science" and another "religion" is a disservice to both and an obstruction to the search of Reality that real Science seeks.
All replies are welcome, and replies with answers are asked for.
There's a funny bit on Hawking's site where he describes his speech synthesizer.
He says, "One's voice is very important. If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient: Does he take sugar? This synthesiser is by far the best I have heard, because it varies the intonation, and doesn't speak like a Dalek. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent."
http://www.talknerdy.org
I've never understood how anyone could be at a loss for something to read. It seems like every one book I read leads to three more that I want to. Right now i'm in the middle of:
Joseph Campbell "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"
Jeremy Yudkin "Music in medieval europe"
The complete poems of Emily Dickenson
RH Blyth, Haiku (4 volumes)
The complete fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson
Sklansky, "The theory of poker"
Just finished:
Hunter S Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
Warhol, "The philosophy of Andy Warhol" (a hoot!)
Cordingly, "Under the Black Flag" A (really engaging) history of real pirates, you know the ones who loot, pillage and murder (as opposed to the ones who click and drag a mouse).
Can't wait to start:
Hemingway, "A farewell to arms"
Nabokov, "Lolita"
Burgess, "A Clockwork Orange"
Russian Fairy Tales (Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, aw yeah)
that William Gibson one (Neuromancer, is it?)
Stephen King's "The Stand" (and The Shining while i'm at it)
of course, Hawking's books!
I have to note, I adamantly (snikt?) refuse to read any more (I read the first two) Harry Potter books until I get a British language edition.
And will probably reread soon:
all my Salinger
Raymond Chandler, "The Big Sleep"
Hammett, "The Maltese Falcon"
all my Raymond Carver
some Douglas Adams
Okay, i kinda got carried away, but you get my point. I wish I had more sci-fi to recommend, but it generally tends to be less engaging for me (though I remember absolutely loving "Dune" when I read it years ago, and I'm sure you're aware of Stephenson). Oh, almost forgot about Robert Anton Wilson's "Prometheus Rising." Not so much sci-fi as philosophy, but amazing nonetheless. I guess I have to echo your statement--It'd be nice to see a list of sci-fi recommendations by Hawking (or anyone else for that matter), but my wallet is glad there isn't one. The only thing I'm at a loss for when I go into Borders is information about how I'm going to pay for all the books I picked up. But I definitely gotta recommend those hard-boiled dective novels (Chandler or Hammett); they're damn fun to read and amazingly well-written too.
c-hack.com |
This brings to mind a recent article on the radio here in the UK about encouraging families to discuss 'deep shit' over supper, while on holidays, and at every conceivable opportunity.
/.ers ponder these issues? Are we more likely to delve deeper where it matters - not just when legislation threatens the wares trade. A poll??
Apparently relatively few people have any form of deep thought during the average week. For instance - with all the middle east conflict at the moment the majority response is along the lines of "I wish they'd just stop" rather than "I can understand why a Jewish state is an important thing post-holocaust, but there has to be something wrong with bombing the palestinians in the 21st Century - or ever".
Or at easter. "OOOhhhh Chocolate" rather than "How am I supposed to accespt that the baby Jeesus was resurected"
Question: How often, and how deeply, do
[Teddy KGB]: Hawkeng, you're einto me for 30 deimes. The juice hias bieen running iat 5 points a veek for a month. I miake thiat over 36 large. I'm going to hiave to break your legs.
[Hawking]: Okay.
[Teddy KGB]: Errr, I'm going to break your thumbs then.
[Hawking]: Go ahead.
[Teddy KGB]: Eahhh! (scuttles off in frustration)
c-hack.com |
You know, it isn't really all that easy for Hawking to hold conversations with people. Couple that with the fact that he's constantly bombarded by cranks and "fans", and you shouldn't be surprised that he's not eager to hold conversations with random people. Not to mention that he might just be an introverted guy -- not everybody likes being approached by strangers wanting to strike up a conversation while waiting for a bus. It hardly makes him an "arrogant asshole". Sheesh.
Hawking didn't exactly dump his wife for another woman, though he did get involved with someone else afterwards. There were plenty of other tensions in the marriage; quite notably, his wife had a hard time dealing with his atheism. I really don't know the details of their personal lives, and neither do you, so perhaps you should mind your own business. I would at least propose that she had reasons of her own for wanting a divorce, as opposed to "getting dumped".
Hawking's theories on singularities in classical GR and Hawking radiation are well-grounded, by the way. His quantum gravity work is far more speculative.
If you haven't heard David Cross' comedy routine (impression actually) of Stephen Hawking with a prostitute, you should check it out. It's pretty dang funny...
It's not for the easily offended though....
I studied as an undergrad 10ish years ago in DAMTP (Dept of Applied Maths & Theoretical Physics) at Cambridge. Stephen was often seen trundling around in his wheelchair. He was lethal in it (& probably still is) - you had to get out of the way quick or you got run-over!!
From going to one or two of his lectures, the one question that always got asked at the end is whether he believes in God. His answers were usually rather ambiguous, but the impression he gave was probably not. After reading this article, it looks like nothings changed. It is obviously a question he has thought about deeply, and whether his works allows us to see into the mind of God (if such a being exists).
He is, without doubt, a brilliant man and has achieved an unbelieveable level of fame for a mathematician. However, most of that fame seems to derive from a book that a lot of people bought but few actually read, his physical condition, and that he works in a trendy area of mathematics. I think this sometimes obscures the real quality of his academic work.
What on earth is this? I admit i didn't read every word of the article, but I didn't see anything about this.
And he has been on The Simpsons And Futurama. I there is some mention about it on his homepage but I'n not sure
I had learned a good deal from those few days, I realized, and most of it was not at all about cosmology.
The real story here isn't all the math and science. It's about life and living it fully people. Gregory Benford stated pretty clearly there. Thought I mention that in case anyone skimmed or didn't read the article.
It was worth reading because it's really a story about how two people who live half way around the world can enjoy each other's company. They're both scientists, but it's no different than "they are wearing pants."
D00d, I'm deep like the ocean! I mean, check this out. So I'm chillin' @ easter with the
'rents and the super 'rents (thats grandparents to you un-initiated) and we're giving Roman catholicism a right bashing (thats what we roman catholics do!) while having some banging shrimp coctail, then the discussion turns to personality/game theory with specific applications to one's boss; how to placate and stroke and read 'em to get what you want.
And then I bust it out:
"Hey guys, what if C-A-T, really spelled DOG?"
A hush fell over the table. Genius has that effect on people.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It very much seems like all this is based on Faith. Makes you wonder if the Unified thoery is Faith altogether. Faith in ourselves, Faith in God, Faith in the Big Bang, Faith in thoeries.
Faith that the plane wont crash. Simply put, it seems that this universe is based on FAITH.
No this is not a "religious" statement, but a Faith observation.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Benford and Hawking share insights on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, as such minds are want to do.
Too bad all their mind are belong to us.
4-bit adder: A snake made of 1's and 0's
That should be "wont to do"
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Hemos needs a grammar checker.
The word is "wont."
... as such minds are wont to do.
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=wont
Careful, you're talking about border collies. They could read your comment, track you down, and herd your into busy traffic.
And he has been on The Simpsons And Futurama
and don't forget about the Dilbert TV show.
Wow, thanks. You certainly opened my eyes.
All technology is inherently evil.
I'm going to torch my computer right no
Try K5 or other real discussion boards.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Bloody geeks.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...