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The Unknown Newton
An anonymous reader writes "The unknown Newton -- The genius who gave us three laws of motion wrote even more about the Apocalypse and the Whore of Babylon. Eventually, all of his work -- about 10 million words -- will be on the Web.
Quote from the article:
'Yet if we go by sheer word count, physics was only one of Newton's intellectual priorities. He devoted more time to what we would now regard as non-scientific topics such as theology and alchemy, writing treatise after treatise on early church history and biblical prophecy.' An interesting note on Pythagoras and religion too. Should we consider ourselves 'Natural Philosphers' instead of Scientists?" Neal Stephenson fans may find this article a nice adjunct to Quicksilver.
Newton was writing the stuff throughout several decades (and without any hope of any profit from it). Stephenson produced his two autoerotic tomes - Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver - in 3 years.
I was able to finish "Cryptonomicon" from sheer curiosity (to see if the rest of it is as dreadfull as the first half.) It took some determination.
What's your objection to time travel? Hawking's speculations appear valid to me.
Hawking is not speculating. He actually believes (as does Kip Thorne, his Caltech buddy of wormhole fame) that relativity allows time travel. He is wrong. The spacetime of relativity is frozen from the infinite past to the infinite future, by definition. Everybody who is a true physicist with two neurons between the ears knows that. Nothing can move in spacetime. It is abstract. Hawking is full blown crackpots.