New Stephen Hawking Movie in the Works

Simon Behler writes "The Sunday Times is reporting that Stephen Hawking is making a new movie. FTA: 'Professor Stephen Hawking, Britain's world-renowned physicist, is to switch from theories of multidimensional space to the three dimensions of the Imax cinema by starring in a film that sets out his ideas on the origins and fate of the universe. The film, Beyond the Horizon, will tackle some of the most daunting theories espoused by Hawking and other cosmologists, from the idea that space has up to 11 dimensions to the cause of the big bang itself.'"

Comments

3D Imax?

[Wilson_6500]

to the three dimensions of the Imax cinema

So, is the third dimension apparent depth? If Imax shows are still displayed on flat screens...

Re:3D Imax?

[5E-0W2]

Time.

Re:3D Imax?

[__aaclcg7560]

No, no, no... Time is the fourth dimension. Please turn in your Time Lord In Training card!

Re:3D Imax?

[dirtyepic.sk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAX#IMAX_3D

Re:3D Imax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that there is no third dimension in a movie, it wouldn't make sense to call time the 4th.

Re:3D Imax?

[WilliamSChips]

But all the Time Lords were wiped out(except of course for The Doctor)

Re:3D Imax?

[Anonymous Coward]

You get to watch wearing 3D glasses. I went to watch Open Season in 3D on the imax at the SF Metreon last week. The film was utter shite (as expected) but the 3D effect, whilst not always 100 percent in focus, was utterly amazing when it did click. Honestly, i'm the cynical geeky type and it really blew my jaded mind. What I really could't believe though was that there was this amazing invention - really the pinnacle of man's achievement in film presentation - and all of about 25 people in the cinema, on a Saturday afternoon too. In England that place would have been rammed to the gills.

Needless to say, i can't wait to watch something decent on that format by Stephen Hawking, particularly if I have the place to myself again.

Re:3D Imax?

[__aaclcg7560]

You got up-down, left-right, perception of depth, and time as the movie plays. Oh, wait a minute. You're an anonymous coward. Of course, I forgot AC's don't have a perception of depth. :P

Re:3D Imax?

[piper-noiter]

Professor Stephen Hawking, Britain's world-renowned physicist, is to switch from theories of multidimensional space to the three dimensions of the Imax cinema...

I was interested until I read that. I only watch science movies on the OMNImax screens. I don't like to learn unless there's an honest chance of getting sea sick. Thank you very much.

Re:3D Imax?

[kurfu]

Three dimensions is correct:
1-width 2-height 3-time

Re:3D Imax?

[tehshen]

No, time is the 0th dimension. It's easier that way, because the 4D people would have to call time the -fifth- dimension, and the 5D people would have to call it the sixth, and it would all get horribly confusing, more so than usual.

FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

FP? Troll?

Re:FP?

[Winckle]

Well you're half right I guess.

Re:FP?

[Kagura]

Lol

Oh god

[kafka47]

Hear that rumbling? That's the sound of a thousand Slashdot jokes about cybernetic wheelchair pr0n...

Run awayyyy!!!

Re:Oh god

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a fucking idiot.

Re:Oh god

[From A Far Away Land]

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood because my pet just died, but isn't it depressing that all of the medical technology in the world can't give one of the greatest minds in the world a semblence of a healthy body?

Still, it's good that such a smart man is getting all of this media attention. The world could use more role models in movies, instead of relying on the ones that take steroids to break sports records.

Re:Oh god

[RsG]

isn't it depressing that all of the medical technology in the world can't give one of the greatest minds in the world a semblence of a healthy body?

Why single out Hawking? He isn't the only person in the world with ALS. Nor is he the only person who has contributed to our scientific knowledge to suffer or die from an incurable disease.

It's not like the medical technology we have today is miraculous. Advanced, yes, but medicine is still a work in progress, and probably always will be. People still die of all sorts of things we can't cure, and sometimes can't even slow down. That's not likely to change anytime soon, and what advances we do make will inevitably be slow.

I wouldn't call that depressing. I'd call that reality.

Re:Oh god

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood because my pet just died, but isn't it depressing that all of the medical technology in the world can't give one of the greatest minds in the world a semblence of a healthy body?

You know, just because technology doesn't give Hawking the body of Arnold Schwarzeneger doesn't mean it didn't help: without technology, Hawking would probably have ended up in a rocking chair, his family taking his motionless, speechless body for that of a gibbering imbecile. Instead of that, his power wheelchair give him a semblance of mobility, and his speech box give him the ability to express himself. So in reality, technology gave us one of the greatest mind in the world.

As for movies, Stephen hawking did play in Star Trek TNG. Granted, it wasn't a Jackie Chan role, but still...

Re:Oh god

[gkhan1]

You should remember that ALS is a horrific disease that kills almost everybody within a couple of years after diagnosis. It's truly a miracle that Hawking is still alive. Let's be grateful for that.

Re:Oh god

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"As for movies, Stephen hawking did play in Star Trek TNG. Granted, it wasn't a Jackie Chan role, but still..."

Well with a little more CG FX, he COULD have had a Jackie Chan role, and I think the world is ready for the full on Stephen Hawking / Jackie Chan experience in "RoadHouse 2, Quantum leaps of fury". "Entropy takes a beating in the summer of 2007"

Re:Oh god

[Walt Dismal]

Just remember, the even-numbered Stephen Hawking movies will be bad, and the odd numbered ones good, and then there's the one where he invents transparent aluminum and saves the whales. That one's awesome, especially where he talks into a mouse.... what? Yes, Mom, I did take my Ritalin today! Go away, I'm busy online.

Re:Oh god

[Zenmonkeycat]

I think you've got that reversed. After all, A Brief History of Time V: The No Hair Theorem was pretty lame. He's one of the greatest minds of the 20th and 21st centuries, but I really felt like his ideas on black holes were cheapened when he was kidnapped by Sybok and taken to Sha Ka Ree.

Re:Oh god

[Naughty Bob]

"Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood because my pet just died, but isn't it depressing that all of the medical technology in the world can't give one of the greatest minds in the world a semblence of a healthy body?" Sorry to hear about your pet, and I am sure you loved it very much, but I'm sure we'd have heard about it before now if it had 'one of the greatest minds in the world'. It's just your grief talking.

Re:Oh god

[From A Far Away Land]

Good point, punctuation can kill. However, you're maybe not aware that my cat's mind was protected from world observation in a way unlike most pets ;-)

Re:Oh god

[kurzweilfreak]

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood because my pet just died

If it was a cat, just stick it in a sealed box with some radioactive material next to it, and you'll have a 50/50 chance of ending up in a good mood. Or a worse mood, since now you've been hanging around some radioactive material.

Excellent

[Night Goat]

This is great news. We need more movies to completely blow stoners' minds! Trippy visuals and ideas that are completely outside the thought patterns of most people make for a great mix.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not nice, man.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you have a lot to learn for someone who prides himself on such "superior" intelligence.

But more important

[rolfwind]

Will he rap in it?

http://www.mchawking.com/

Re:But more important

[Yusaku Godai]

Old meme -_- Like, almost as old the web itself.

Re:But more important

[plopez]

I can't wait to download the sound track. :)

Re:But more important

[Briareos]

Old meme -_- Like, almost as old the web itself.

You mean like Bruce Schneier Facts?

np: Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players - Get Things Strait (Cant Cool)

The real question is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Will he be doing his own stunts?

lol

[mr din]

Proof you don't have to be good-looking to star in a movie.

Re:lol

[davidsyes]

I'm still waiting for the Wonder Woman movie... I wonder if it will really star Linda Carter again.....

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[WilliamSChips]

Chuck Norris facts aren't funny with Chuck Norris and they're not funny with Stephen Hawking.

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[joaommp]

not really funny, ya know?

Why?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Why are they even making a film? The BBC did an excellent TV series about his life, it was not only entertaining but showed his youth which many people arn't aware of.

Re:Why?

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

The film isn't going to be about his life. It's about the scientific theories that he and many others have come up with. I didn't see the BBC series but I'm pretty sure it was primarily a biopic of Hawking, which is nothing like the film described in the article.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is a film (presumably with him at the helm in some form) about his *ideas* - not about his personal challenges in life, which was the focus of the BBC dramatisation.

As someone lucky enough to attend one of his lectures on his cosmological theories a few years ago I think it is an interesting idea. The principle feeling I was left with after the hour and a half was that there were some very intriguing thoughts he was attempting to convey, but the visualisation of such thoughts was very difficult. Hopefully some moviefx render farms, graphical artists etc may be able to make the ideas come alive on the big screen in a way that they never could in a lecture presentation.

Real Physics?

[sammyo]

IANAP but I happened to chat with a real string theory
theorist recently, he did not seem at all impressed with
Hawking.

Anything that sparks the interest of a student or anyone
to enter science is a fine thing. I'm looking forward to
it even though the artists rendition of 11 dimensions will
likely be more psycadelic than mathematically accurate.

Re:Real Physics?

[The_Wilschon]

I am a (experimental) particle physicist, and I also am not particularly enamored of Stephen Hawking. He has done some excellent work on black holes, and he has done some excellent work to keep himself in the media limelight since then.

Re:Real Physics?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLWHAT

Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems?
Hawking radiation in semiclassical quantum gravity?
Gibbons-Hawking ansatz for gravitational multi-instantons?
Hawking-Hartle no-boundary proposal?
Hawking-Turok inflation?
First calculation of 5-dimensional Kerr metrics in AdS backgrounds (which is VERY important for string theory via AdS/CFT)?
Euclidean quantum gravity and black hole information loss?(admitedly this one is slightly dubious)

He has done more important work in M-theory than most "professional" string theorists, but even without this he is without doubt one of the top ten theoretical physicists alive. Coupled with his disability this is incredible. Snide losers like you and your alleged "string theory friend" (if they even exist, no doubt studying some sort of crappy landscapey second-quantization pseudoscience with superiority complex to match) should maybe learn the basic tenets of research before saying someone elses work is worthless.

Re:Real Physics?

[The_Wilschon]

As I said elsewhere in this thread, I am a physicist, and I am not particularly impressed with Hawking. Many other physicists that I know feel similarly. The physics world is certainly not in awe of him, as the science-for-the-layman reading crowd generally is. He is fairly widely viewed as a decent theorist, but his fame certainly outstrips his accomplishments. My fiancee is a linguist, and according to her, many linguists feel roughly the same way about Noam Chomsky.

Re:Real Physics?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is fairly widely viewed as a decent theorist, but his fame certainly outstrips his accomplishments.

The latter is true, but speaking as an ex-gravitational physicist, IMHO he ranks rather higher up than merely "decent". There are several active gravity theorists I'd put above him, though.

Good News

[School Bully2]

This is good news. Too many "science" programmes on TV tell the story of the discovery (or theory), rather than try to explain the theory itself.

Re:Good News

[The_Wilschon]

My experience with physics classes has been that the best explanations of theory are generally (almost) explanations of discovery. An emphasis on why something was thought tends to make it much easier to understand what was thought.

11 dimensions?

[should_be_linear]

So, what he suggests is that we are someone's 3 dimensional screen-saver in otherwise 11 dimensional space?

Re:11 dimensions?

[Mikachu]

If that's the case, a programmer with that much time on his hands probably posts here at slashdot.

Re:11 dimensions?

[neurostar]

Going to lower dimensions can't be too hard though

--------------

^^^ There's a 1D screensaver.

:D

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[__aaclcg7560]

What's wrong with Chuck Norris facts?

Simpsons, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The infamous phrase: "There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I read that book by that wheelchair guy." need no longer apply.

Get a bloody sense of humor mods

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not redundant because noone else made the jokes. Mod it off-topic, even though it's funny.

I'm disappointed...

[__aaclcg7560]

I thought it was a new Stephen King movie coming out for Halloween.

Unfortunately...

[coupland]

The part of Hawking will be played by Tom Cruise, as a rogue astrophysicist who only has 24 hours to develop a unified field theory, and prevent terrorists from opening a black hole in downtown Manhattan!

Re:Unfortunately...

[chris_eineke]

Sounds like a John Grisham novel to me. :P

Re:Unfortunately...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Cruise would never agree to be in that movie - he would have to have some scientology cult crap in it, eg. Travolta & Battlefield Earth.

Re:Unfortunately...

[caitsith01]

Sounds like a John Grisham novel to me. :P

Sounds more like a movie about goatse to me...

meh

[Karma Sucks]

I'd be way more interested in a movie on that Hubert Farnsworth guy. It's amazing to me that the professor is still putting out new inventions at his age.

I'm Rich Biatch

[schabot]

"Now that I am a movie star, 'tell your wife to come over to my place if she wants a little boom-shaka-laka boom-shaka-laka boom-shaka-laka boom'"

Re:I'm Rich Biatch

[aplusjimages]

Since Stephen Hawkins makes appearences on the Simpsons and Family Guy, do you think they will make an appearance in his movie.

"Spit in my mouth."

Re:British??

[jrmiller84]

It got corrupted ;)

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

I question the legitimacy of these 'facts'. Stephen Hawking doesn't have a beard.

String Theory?

[Hemogoblin]

"... from the idea that space has up to 11 dimensions ... "

Does this mean the movie will cover String Theory? I wasn't aware that Stephen Hawking worked in this area. Does anyone know what his position is on String Theory? I remember reading recently that some people thought it was all rubbish.

If you're interested in learning a little about string theory, "The Elegant Universe" by Briane Greene is a great place to start. Its more of a popular-science type book, using simple and interesting example. NOVA also made a good tv series under the same name, hosted by Briane Green. Its good stuff, you should check it out. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/ Cheers, Jim

Re:String Theory?

[flawedconceptions]

Hawking has been working in string theory lately. He gave a public lecture at the Strings 06 conference in China this past summer, and his recent-ish work on the entropy of black holes (reported here maybe last year) was done in the framework of string theory.

I should be careful, though: it's a pretty large field. By some reckonings strings are everything in theoretical high-energy physics *except* the theories that are explicitly not string theory (loop gravity, the field of recent Slashdot-ee Lee Smolin, Roger Penrose's twistors, various discretized spacetime theories, and so forth).

Re:String Theory?

[anubi]

Finally, a serious thread in this story...

I would love to see Hawking's reply to String Theory.

After trying to read the "Elegant Universe", I became more convinced than ever that String Theory as really grasping at straws, but when surrounded by darkness, a straw is better than empty space.

I haven't the foggiest idea where the truth really lies. Maybe Hawking does. In any event, there are not many more illustrative ways of communicating one's ideas than a good animated presentation.

Dont ya know Einstein was riding on the same confusion regarding gravity being nothing more than our perception of a time warp which is influenced by the presence of mass? And we still apparently don't know why.

I have seen much discussion involving the "graviton", relating it to the photon. Apparently I can stop a photonic flux with a photonic shield ( aka "sunshade" )... anyone been able to shade matter from the "graviton flux" yet? I haven't seen it.

It may be a long time before I can really accept any of the theory as fact, but nevertheless, I would love to see their concept of what they think happened.

Re:String Theory?

[flawedconceptions]

I would love to see Hawking's reply to String Theory.

I think that he's actually working *in* string theory, as far as it goes.

I have seen much discussion involving the "graviton", relating it to the photon. Apparently I can stop a photonic flux with a photonic shield ( aka "sunshade" )... anyone been able to shade matter from the "graviton flux" yet? I haven't seen it.

Can your subshade stop radio waves? X-rays? It's hard to say how gravitons work since no-one has ever seen one, but it's probably something similar to photons. Photons are associated with electric charge, gravitons with mass. Thus, gravitons would be blocked by an appropriately-large block of matter.

Re:String Theory?

[kurzweilfreak]

That doesn't seem to make much sense; the appropriately-large block of matter would then itself be generating gravitons, not blocking pull of two masses but adding to it. The whole concept of a "graviton" has never made any sense to me. I see gravity as the curve in space-time; why need a particle to account for it? How could a particle that is being expelled by something work to pull something else closer? Unless the graviton harbored some kind of negative force, when being expelled from one mass and then striking another, normally you get equal but opposite reactions (expelling would push the expelling object away, striking would likewise do the same for the struck object).

Reversing the "polarity" of the force (make it so, number one) of the graviton to be opposite everything else would do it in the maths, but in reality? Granted, we do find some very strange stuff in the universe, but this just doesn't seem to work for me. Unless I'm just not wrapping my head around this at all, can anyone explain how a graviton would be supposed to work? (I understand that if anyone really could, there would probably be a Nobel prize and a gaggle of physicists waiting to talk to them. ;)

Re:String Theory?

[anubi]

My sentiments too.

I also need to supply energy to a photonic source to get it to emit.

I don't see graviton sources weakening as their energy depletes.

Nor do I see matter "evaporate", except in instances where the mass converts to energy.

I am not saying it does not exist, rather I am stating my complete lack of any knowledge I can use to say that it does exist.

This is where Science becomes like Religion. Lots of speculation and search for what is true - and what is not.

Each camp has their priests and holy books, but as far as I can see, only our perserverance for the truth by diligent research has any chance of yielding it.

And when the truth is found, it will be there for everybody, demonstrable.

Re:String Theory?

[flawedconceptions]

Gravity and Electromagnetism are definitely quite different. One of the big differences is that there are negatively-charged particles but there does not seem to be any matter with negative mass. If you play with pith balls (postively-charged objects) in a vacuum, say, you can do all the stuff that gravity does by using the Colulomb force rather than Newtonian gravity.

In the example of the sun-screen, it is the presence of negative and positive charges together that allow the screen to effectively block photons. If you just had a tank of free protons in front of a lamp, the light would excite the protons, causing them to emit radiation in all directions, just like what happens in the gravity-screen picture.

The last thing is that, although gravitons carry the gravitational force, they are exchanged in most circumstances. So the earth sends the sun a graviton for every graviton the sun sends the earth. The same thing happens with photons in a hydrogen atom: the electron and nucleus exchange photons. Now, there is an analogy to free photons (light, etc) in the gravity picture: gravity waves. Gravity waves are similar to electromagnetic waves except that they have MUCH smaller amplitudes. These guys haven't been detected directly yet, but there's a lot of evidence for them and the experiments (LIGO, Hulse-Taylor, etc) have made all the right noises so far...

IF gravitons exist.

Re:String Theory?

[tehcyder]

Does anyone know what his position is on String Theory? I remember reading recently that some people thought it was all rubbish.

That's a pretty detailed and serious accusation. Oh, no it's not.

Re:String Theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't seem to make much sense; the appropriately-large block of matter would then itself be generating gravitons, not blocking pull of two masses but adding to it

You can't block out gravitons (contrary to the original poster) for a similar reason; gravity is universally attractive, so you can't have the attraction + repulsion that combines to screen a force out like in electromagnetism.

The whole concept of a "graviton" has never made any sense to me. I see gravity as the curve in space-time; why need a particle to account for it?

Consistency between relativity and quantum theory in the form of quantum field theory requires that any gravitational theory behave like graviton particles in the weak-field limit. This is true even in quantum gravity theories which are described fundamentally in terms of quantum spacetime, not particles: gravitons will still emerge as an approximation. (e.g., in loop quantum gravity, "gravitons" should correspond to a particular propagating pattern of distortion in the spin networks that make up quantum spacetime. In string theory, gravitons are particular vibrational modes of closed loops of string.)

How could a particle that is being expelled by something work to pull something else closer?

That is not an objection to gravitons; you could say the same about the photons which attract oppositely charged particles in quantum electrodynamics. See this FAQ.

Unless I'm just not wrapping my head around this at all, can anyone explain how a graviton would be supposed to work? (I understand that if anyone really could, there would probably be a Nobel prize and a gaggle of physicists waiting to talk to them. ;)

Physicists do know exactly how gravitons work at low energies; there is a unique theory of them. At high energies, when gravitons interact with each other, the nonlinearities cause the theory to break down, and it needs to be replaced by a full blown theory of quantum gravity.

Re:String Theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also need to supply energy to a photonic source to get it to emit. I don't see graviton sources weakening as their energy depletes.

Gravitons are no different from photons in this respect. An accelerating charge emits photons; an accelerating mass emits gravitons. (There are some subtleties regarding dipolar vs. quadrupolar radiation and what "accelerating" means, but that's the gist.) A static charge doesn't emit photons, and a static mass doesn't emit gravitons. At least, not real particles. A static electric field is mediated by virtual photons which do not carry energy away from the charge, and a static gravitational field is similarly mediated by virtual gravitons.

Each camp has their priests and holy books, [...]

Oh give me a break. Go learn something about quantum physics before you criticize it. In particular, learn why your arguments against the existence of gravitons apply equally to photons, and are therefore invalid.

Re:String Theory?

[kurzweilfreak]

Very informative post, that FAQ definitely helped me understand it better. Kudos to you, sir.

Re:String Theory?

[anubi]

You have an interesting explanation.

I must disclose my background - engineer - so I fall pretty hard into the "experimental physicist's" camp.

It took me quite some time to accept Einstein's explanation of gravity as the truth. I have to admit it took some actual data I saw from some spaceborne Efratom rubidium atomic clocks that convinced me Einstein had it nailed a bit more precisely than Newton had.

I do think we get the most fun puzzles to solve. The complexities, yet the elegance, of the laws we run under are so fundamentally beautiful when we finally get to the core of it... and this one we are still peeling trying to see what makes it work.

Another one that amazes me to no end is DNA coding and the hardware it runs in.

I note your moniker, flawedconceptions, aptly describes the circumstance of an adventurer in an uncharted world.

Re:String Theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

I must disclose my background - engineer - so I fall pretty hard into the "experimental physicist's" camp.

It took me quite some time to accept Einstein's explanation of gravity as the truth. I have to admit it took some actual data I saw from some spaceborne Efratom rubidium atomic clocks that convinced me Einstein had it nailed a bit more precisely than Newton had.

Well, duh. Even the most theoretical of physicists won't accept a theory as "the truth" unless there's a lot of evidence in its favor. (And of course, general relativity can't be "the" truth, since it's not a quantum theory; it's only an approximation.)

Re:String Theory?

[anubi]

Good point. I should have said I believe Einstein has the best explanation for the physical phenomena I observe.

While Einstein's explanation works really well for the "macro" physics I work in, I understand his explanation doesn't work so well in the world of "micro" physics at the subatomic level. Quantum theory has the best correlation of observed to predicted results there.

Our Efratom atomic clocks used RF to step-up energy levels of rubidium gas in the bulbs - a process governed entirely by quantum physics. We get a really nice indicator when we are exactly on frequency - a frequency determined solely by the quantum aspects of the rubidium atom - extremely stable.

However, we sent people to the moon on Newton's equations. [Lederman - "The God Particle"]

I admit that the "Calabi-Yau" shapes talked about in "The Elegant Universe" require quite a stretch of my imagination to consider it a fact. I cannot discount it though, as I have seen the messiest of equations simplify down to such elegant forms when understood - such is the beauty of the symmetry of nature.

My bad - I should never regard *any* theory as "the truth". If I do that, I am no better than those very folks I occasionally rail about.

Re:String Theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit that the "Calabi-Yau" shapes talked about in "The Elegant Universe" require quite a stretch of my imagination to consider it a fact.

And well you should: even string theorists admit that the physical existence of Calabi-Yau spaces is very far from being experimentally established.

Re:String Theory?

[Hemogoblin]

I'm sorry, the meaning was ambiguous. What I MEANT to say was: "I remember reading recently that certain scientists thought that string theory, in general, was rubbish." I wasn't refering to Stephen Hawking's position on string theory. Also, I didn't make any accusations. I was merely repeating the opinion that I thought I had heard.

Re:String Theory?

[anubi]

I know this is a bit late in this thread to post, but I have a question to ask...

Do you know what likelihood we have that we can "see" the entire universe? Or is there still a strong liklihood that the observeable universe is a subset of the Universe?

And, do you know if there is any way of ascertaining if the universe, as a whole, is rotating?

( The reasoning being if gravitation is cancelling out centrifugal force, we will be in position where every point appears to be rotating around any given reference point, with the radial velocity proportional to the distance to it, possibly giving the illusion of expansion.).

Top 10 Facts about WilliamSChips

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Guns don't kill people. WilliamSChips kills People.
   
2. There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals WilliamSChips allows to live.
   
3. WilliamSChips does not sleep. He waits.
   
4. The chief export of WilliamSChips is Pain.
   
5. There is no chin under WilliamSChips Beard. There is only another fist.
   
6. WilliamSChips has two speeds. Slow, and Kill.
   
7. The leading causes of death in the United States are: 1. WilliamSChips 2. Stephen Hawking 3. Chuck Norris
   
8. WilliamSChips drives a smart car covered in human skulls.
   
9. WilliamSChips is my Homeboy.
   
10. WilliamSChips doesn't go hunting.... WILLIAMSCHIPS GOES KILLING

Re:Top 10 Facts about WilliamSChips

[WilliamSChips]

If that were true then you would be dead right now.

Re:British?

[slavelayer]

He talks through a voice synthisizer.
He could choose 'any' voice he wants but since he has been using the one he has for so long he said he has become attached to it.

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[Anonymous Coward]

makes it funnier

Ultimate Force

[Doomstalk]

I'm reminded of a joke on The Critic. I wonder if the real film will be at all similar.

Captain Kirk Would Kick Your Sorry Keister...

[CheeseburgerBrown]

...if this were a battle in the murky depths of the Mutura Nebula.

Will this be . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

an action movie?

Re:Will this be . . .

[east coast]

You think you're cute, bitch, but you'll be thinking otherwise when you see MC Hawking roll up with Samuel L Jackson and Ice Cube in their '64 and bust a few caps in your ass with their A-Ks.

My God...

[BadEvilYoda]

... it's full of wheelchairs?
/obligatory

rented car

[Magic Fingers]

Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best. -- P.J. O'Rourke

Re:British??

[j-min]

He has a machine that talks for him. Apparently the British accent wasn't designed into the machine.

But he was born in Oxford

Re:British??

[mgabrys_sf]

In reality, after getting the first - of several - voice systems, he remarked that it gave him a California accent. True story - I'm too lazy to google the link at the moment.

Promotional video and music clip available here

[syousef]

http://www.mchawking.com/

my mod points ran out yesterday!

[YesIAmAScript]

Always at the wrong time.

The title will be...

[TempeTerra]

...Snakes on a Hyperplane!

<HawkingVoice>Who let these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking hyperplane?</HawkingVoice>

they should...

[Anonymous Coward]

throw stephen colbert as main protagonist though he probably be laughing his ass off at stephen hawking

Duh.. where do you keep your

[popeye44]

Nuclear Wessels?
HERE! The USS Enterprise was the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, having eight reactor powering four shafts, two of those reactors reactors powering each shaft. With nuclear power came the ability for aircraft carries to sustain operations longer, have more endurance themselves, and the many other capabilities and innovations now common to the Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carriers. And if memory serves me.. when I was on this ship it was the fastest in the fleet. They could outrun any other carrier.

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[WilliamSChips]

They stopped being funny years before they were even called Chuck Norris facts.

Re:British??

[erroneus]

I don't know, but I was sorta hoping they'd get James Earl Jones to do the voice-over work... he does a lot of voice over work...

One step ahead of you

[xixax]

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood because my pet just died, but isn't it depressing that all of the medical technology in the world can't give one of the greatest minds in the world a semblence of a healthy body?

Some time ago Dr. Robert J. White http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/06/29fe aturea.html>proposed exactly that. Since non-nerve stuff is mostly mechanical, perhaps Futurama is closer than we think...

Xix.

Re:Real Physics? - string theory?

[fahrbot-bot]

I happened to chat with a real string theory theorist recently...

Umm... Don't you read? The phrase "real string theory theorist" is an oxymoron :-)
Is String Theory Really a Scientific Theory?

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[zero_offset]

I have mod points, but I can't seem to find "poster is a humorless cocksmoker" in the drop-down list.

Re:British??

[Kuxman]

Oh...yes...oh...yes...it feels...so...good

Re:Oh god... Oh God deux?

[davidsyes]

Well, nevermind Jackie Chan... He's passe... Pair Hawking up with some kewl F/X, and Stephen Chow! They could do a remake of Kung Fu Hustle, or Shaolin Soccer. But, first, I want to see them side-by-side in those yellow catsuits with the black stripes. They can do twists and turns in quick cuts to the tune the old Purina Cat Chow:

"Purina Cat CHOW, CHOW! CHOW!! Purina Cat CHOW, CHOW!!! CHOW!!!! Chhh-chhh-chhh chow-chi-chi-chow-chow-cheowwww!!!" (yes, they have to do it real gay-like, too, but then Hawkings might grin and say, "Mind...your...own...biznisss...."

(hehe funny.... image: "osmotic")

"the cause of the big bang itself"

[Anonymous Coward]

Chuck Norris, of course.

Sheesh.

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[WilliamSChips]

If you think Chuck Norris jokes are humor then you are brain-damaged. Some people say puns are the lowest form of humor but puns are occasionally still funny.

Wait!

[red5]

Hawking is a Brit? How come he talks with an American accent? They couldn't give him a voice box with an English accent?

Re:Wait!

[WilliamSChips]

His original voice was American and he got attached to it so even though he could change he doesn't want to.

Saw a rough draft of the script.

[skitz0]

I think the cum shot scene is going to be over the top.

Try the Stephen Hawking test

[cogno64]

Test your memory with an algorithm and hear Stephen Hawking

Plot Summary

[Bemmu]

Physicist Stephen Hawking crashes his car on a snowy Colorado road. He is found by Annie Wilkes, the "number one fan" of Hawking's heroine Misery Chastaine. Annie is also somewhat unstable, and Professor Hawking finds himself crippled, drugged and at her mercy. Annie forces Hawking to spend his days examining her black hole, confined to his wheelchair.

Trailer

[parislemon]

Can't wait to see the trailer for this bad boy...

http://www.trashingtrailers.com/

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[r3m0t]

Actually, they are extremely funny in the right setting. "Person posts them on online forum" is not it.

Recently in math class, somebody just said to the teacher, "sir, did you know Chuck Norris can break walnuts with his eyelids?" - it just catches people off-guard.

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the cocksmoking working out for you?

Alternate Theory of the Universe

[Digital Vomit]

I'm still waiting for my buddy's theory of the universe to be disproven:

"Matter [and energy] is nothing more than carefully arranged empty space."

Re:Alternate Theory of the Universe

[ampathee]

Things that don't make sense don't need disproving.

Re:Alternate Theory of the Universe

[Anonymous Coward]

John Wheeler had this idea circa 1955; he called it "matter without matter". His first idea was "gravitational geons", self-gravitating lumps of curved spacetime. It turns out they are unstable and dissipate, unlike real matter. His next idea was that particles are wormhole mouths. There are stability issues there, too, plus it's very difficult to use them to describe the half-integer spin particles which obey the Pauli exclusion principle (fermions). So far, nobody has made the idea work, although it gets brought up from time to time; see this paper by Crane, or this older one by Smolin. There is also an old trick by Sorkin, and one by Witten in the Skyrme model, but they didn't really work out as full particle theories and I forget how they work.

Re:Alternate Theory of the Universe

[Digital Vomit]

Things that don't make sense don't need disproving.

I guess quantum physics is not for you, then. ;-)

Re:Alternate Theory of the Universe

[Digital Vomit]

Hey, that's pretty interesting. I had no idea that this was anything more than a clever statement said by a friend after seeing how every bit of matter always ends up being empty space plus some smaller bits of matter. While much of those papers go well beyond my layman's understanding of quantum physics, I appreciate the links.

Cause of Big Bang?

[kalirion]

Isn't it accepted by most cosmologists that time came into existance with the Big Bang? Kind of makes it hard for a cause-effect relationship, doesn't it?

Re:Cause of Big Bang?

[Anonymous Coward]

only if our universe is static(not expanding or contracting). expansion and eventual contraction of the universe could imply that there has been more than a single big bang, thusly, time would have existed prior to the big bang.

there is also the widely held philosophy among certain physics camps that time is a human constructed concept and doesn't necessarily exist w/o perception by an observer. to quote(and para-phrase): "Time affords us a frame of reference by which we measure change." - author's name forgotten(sorry).

thusly, the philosophy is held that, without an observer, time is meaningless as the universe has no need of tracking and measuring itself.

Re:Cause of Big Bang?

[kalirion]

there is also the widely held philosophy among certain physics camps that time is a human constructed concept and doesn't necessarily exist w/o perception by an observer. to quote(and para-phrase): "Time affords us a frame of reference by which we measure change." - author's name forgotten(sorry).

Wait, how can you have change without time? Change isn't merely measured by time, it's defined by it.

thusly, the philosophy is held that, without an observer, time is meaningless as the universe has no need of tracking and measuring itself.

I think I recall reading a theory in Brian Greene's Fabric of Cosmos that the entirety of space-time is static and every moment is fixed at it's location, which would beg the question of why the states of "successive" moments are so much alike. In fact it could be that all the moments are completely different and our memories don't mean squat - they're merely part of the moment without being caused by anything.

Re:Cause of Big Bang?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, how can you have change without time? Change isn't merely measured by time, it's defined by it.

a very good and valid point indeed, but again, if we follow the logic that time is a human constructed concept and is only relevant if perceived by an observer(human or animal), they ponder how time can exist in the absence of an observer(again, as they like to say, the universe has no need to track and measure itself).

regarding your other point, i am quite sorry as i've not read that book and therefore i can't really make a qualified argument for or against said point. however, that does seem to be an interesting theory and as someone with an interest in time, i may have to track it down and read it.
  again, though, i was merely stating what a sub-group of physicists have said: that w/o an observer time doesn't exist.

personally i don't follow said theory myself. i think time exists regardless of observation or not. as well, i also lean towards the theory that the universe is expanding and will eventually contract. but then, i also believe the multi-verse theory is plausible so take from that what you will.

Stunts

[Anonymous Coward]

In 3D Hawking might need to enlist the help of Jackie Chan, but in 11D, MC Hawking will do all his own stunts!

Re:British??

[bcmm]

I'm sure I read an article a few years ago about him changing his voice to a less American one.

He's british?

[Strudleman]

Funny, I never noticed the accent....

Re:Top 10 Facts about Stephen Hawking

[Briareos]

The same goes for Bruce Schneier Facts. They just aren't funny with Chuck Norris...

np: Uusitalo - Musit Irti / Huutaa (Tulenkantaja)

Not again

[Dirtside]

What's with all these rappers who think they're actors?

Re: The Fifth DImension

[some guy I know]

the 4D people would have to call time the -fifth- dimension

No, the Fifth Dimension is a singing group (or at least it was at one time; I don't know about currently).

Time is often incorrectly called the "Fourth Dimension", but it's not the same kind of dimension as spatial dimension, so it really shouldn't be lumped in with them.
Here is an illustrative analogy:

You have three kids, and your neighbor has a kid.
You might call your third-born kid your "third kid", but you wouldn't call your neighbor's kid your "fourth kid".

Time is like that.
When some theories postulate eleven or more spatial dimensions, and others postulate two or more temporal dimensions, it is very confusing to lump temporal and spatial dimensions together.
In fact, physicists should come up with another term when referring to temporal dimensions.
I suggest "goober", because it isn't currently being used for anything important.
So you could say that our reality appears to be composed of "three spatial dimensions and one temporal goober", or even just "three dimensions and one goober" (even though some theories postulate that reality may consist of many more dimensions and goobers than that).
This would help clarify things immensely.

Re: The Fifth DImension

[Anonymous Coward]

Time is often incorrectly called the "Fourth Dimension", but it's not the same kind of dimension as spatial dimension, so it really shouldn't be lumped in with them. [...] In fact, physicists should come up with another term when referring to temporal dimensions.

No, they shouldn't. What is a "time dimension" to one observer is a mix of time and space dimensions to another observer; there is no clean-cut distinction. That's the whole point of spacetime in relativity.

What physicists do to specify how many time and space dimensions, though, is to say they're working in a "3+1" or "10+2" or "2+0" spacetime, where the first number is the number of independent space dimensions, and the second is the number of independent time dimensions. So they don't "lump the dimensions together", but they also don't incorrectly pretend that a time dimension is not a spacetime dimension just like the space dimensions are.