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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."
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.
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.
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.
Try The Elegant Universe by Greene and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Smolin (in addition to, of course, Hawking's own books).
I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare came first. (Yes, I know it doesn't invalidate a trademark).
I too hit the book link first, hoping to discover the colophon. Not on O'Reilly book, darn it. It would have looked good in the middle of my collection. "That's for when the *whole* network *really* goes down".
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien