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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.'"

5 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Re:3D Imax? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  2. String Theory? by Hemogoblin · · Score: 2, Informative

    "... 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

    1. Re:String Theory? by flawedconceptions · · Score: 2, Informative

      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).

  3. Re:Real Physics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.