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Stephen Hawking Receives Copley Medal
smooth wombat writes "Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the Royal Society's 275th Copley medal for his contribution to cosmology and theoretical physics. Other notables to receive the award, established by Stephen Gray in 1731 'For his new Electrical Experiments', include Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Albert Einstein. In his remarks, Professor Hawking reiterated his previous comments that man must colonize other planets. The medal presented to Professor Hawking was sent into space onboard Space Shuttle Discovery and spent some time on the International Space Station in July of this year. Hawking has expressed an interest in going into space and commented, 'My next goal is to go into space, maybe Richard Branson will help me.'"
I know that Stephen Hawking is a remarkable scientist and fellow human, but does this medal reflect any recent breakthrough of his or is this merely a lifetime achievement award?
In space, no one can hear your voice synthesizer...
Stephen Hawking's theories of a donut shaped universe intrigue me, but I heard he stole them from someone else. D'oh!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sorry, can't read "Stephen Hawking" anymore without hearing "...and all my shootings be drive-by's..." in my head. (You down with entropy? Yeah you know me.)
I agree that transferring someone aspect of human consciousness off the planet has an aesthetic appeal. It would just feel wrong if, after all these years of striving, the human race just totally ceased to exist.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that the human race, in it's present form, will survive more than another few hundred years.
One possibility is that the human race will design a new species and raise this new species as it's children allowing itself to die off. This new species will look and act superficially human but it will be sufficiently different genetically that interbreeding with present day humans would be impossible. The main impetus for designing this new species will be to improve on and correct defects of existing humans. This species will be noticeably smarter and stronger and healthier.
Another possibility is that people won't bother with creating a new species at all and will instead transfer their consciousness to something like a computer. Everyone's consciousness will be sufficiently connected that the result will essentially be one collective consciousness.
A final possibility is that humanity will prove beyond any doubt that there is no purpose to its existence and simply allow itself to cease to exist.
Either way, enjoy it while you can - because you are likely to be one of the last generations of the human race in it's present form.
I think we should be focusing on colonising the *space* between the planets, using the asteroid belts as a source of raw materials. But, yes, he's dead right.
Saying that the former is essential is not saying that efforts should not expended on the latter. And, in fact, getting to the point where people can productively and sustainably live on other planets requires lots and lots of fairly generally applicable basic research that would do much to enable new ways of improving life on this planet.
From MC Hawkings FAQ's:
Q: The song E=mc Hawking contains the line, "my power is my mass times the speed of light squared."
Even a first year physics student in high school knows that energy (not power) is mass times the speed of light squared. Power (the rate of energy) is mass times the speed of light squared, divided by time.
If the song lyric were true, time would be constant and, it goes without saying, the universe would collapse upon itself. Given that this has not occurred, the statement must be incorrect.
A: As I indicated in the above FAQ, I am not a physicist. So, if I had written the song the error could be attributed to simple ignorance. However, since MC Hawking wrote the tune there must be another explanation. Therefore, I passed this question on the MC Hawking himself. He had this to say:
Yo! Fuck you bitch. You wanna to step to the Hawkman on physics? You're in my house now punk! Check it, the rhyme doesn't say that power is mass times the speed of light squared, it says that my power is mass times the speed of light squared.
The song also says that, "E stands for energy, yo that's me...". So, my power is energy motherfucker.
Therefore, the equation can be expressed thusly (where e=energy, m=mass, c=the speed of light and x=my power):
x=mc2 AND x=e THEREFORE e=mc2.
Step-off bitch!
I laughed for hours, then spent a week trying to explain to other people why it was funny...
I think his comment goes a bit further then his one sentence reiteration, I believe one of his main points is that he thinks that mankind should not all be on the same planet to ensure propagation.
Let's say we clean this planet to the standards you refer to, then everyone is happy until a large meteor hits the planet and either wipes out mankind or our civilization (along with its technical ability to go into space).
He is thinking much deeper then a knee jerk liberal reaction to global warming and polution.
DK
Sometimes a little too political, but still a great group. Nice to see them give the nod to Hawking!
"Yellow" was pretty good, too.
Ok, is it just me, or did anyone else first mis-read the title as saying "Stephen Hawking Receives Cosplay Medal"?
I must be tired...
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Honestly, people already spend billions on developing countries. The problem with developing countries and poverty isn't an issue of money or even time. Its a matter of getting people to work together.
Fact is, food is cheap, but getting it to the parts of Africa that need it isn't. Why? The transport system sucks. Why does the transport system suck? Because the African governments are corrupt or the area is filled with warlords who *want* people to starve in genocidal proportions.
You can throw money all day long at a place like Africa today, and all you will end up with is people like Idi Amin or Mobutu Sese Seko, who get just incredibly rich off of aid money and bribes that should be used to develop infrastructure. The people will continue to starve or die of AIDS. Looking at Uganda under Yoweri Museveni (who is now looking a little of the dictator himself), you saw a very real campaign against AIDS that *worked* not because we dumped a billion dollars on Uganda, but because the government and people worked on the problem.
Space, while not perhaps as pressing a goal, is still somewhere we really do need to go, and it is a place where there is a lot of room to throw money around and you will still get a result. What Africa needs is a new mindset, and peace, and simply pushing money at it doesn't help peace. Not with the corruption that thrives off of it.
I think you are kinda missing the point of what he is saying. At our growth rate, it will become essential for us to go either into space to new worlds. According to http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html It took us roughly forty years to double from 3 billion to 6 billion. Assume we create more medicines, etc over time. Assume also that birth control is used by more people and the overal growth rate for the world say drops to..... I don't know... a doubling time of 50 years. Slightly slower.
Now say the Earth is at half maximum capacity in the future. If those people have children the way their parents did, then in fifty years the population will double and the Earth will be full. In another fifty years, they will need a second Earth to house all the people. In another fifty years, four Earths. I think that's what he is really trying to get across.
That is to say eventually we will either face famine, war, etc as the Earth simply becomes too populated and is drained of its resources, or we must escape to the cosmos. And honestly, this is probably the most far out reason of why we should go to other planets. There are a lot cooler reasons like simple exploration and things like that.
Would you rather spend the money increasing the number of mission critical servers in your data center, or creating a hot site so you can survive a catastrophic accident at the main site?
It's all about offsite backups, man.
-- Dave
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
The species is more important than the planet. It's more important than all planets. Continued existence is the primary goal of all life. Some would argue there *is* no other goal. I have no responsibilty to any planet except as it pertains to keeping me and my species alive and thriving. That is the way of life. Parasites who destroy their hosts are inefficient parasites. They will either adapt and evolve into a less destructive parasite, or they will die out. What they will not do is simply stop doing what they do, stop trying to further their species.
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
Well, then I hope we invent teleportation, too. Even with multiple space elevators and an unlimited space ship carrying capacity you'd be hard-pressed to move a substantial portion of the current population of the planet off of it.
I think what he's saying is more that if we colonize other planets, it's harder for our race to disappear. Just colonizing other planets in the solar system means that an extinction level event is no longer just one rock.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Our view of the universe is human-centric. The only reason you even notice the pollution is because it's impacting you. Is it really better if the most versatile form of life we know of becomes extinct than polluting some planets? Anyway, every planet in our solar system is lifeless on any kind of meaningful scale, esp. Mars, the best candidate for terraforming as far as we know so far.
Meanwhile, we are probably very far from the point at which we can colonize planets in other systems, and I suspect that we WILL have either learned our lesson or destroyed ourselves before we get that far. Of course, little prevents a slide back into barbarism, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I always hear this lecture about colonizing to preserve the human race. They bring up the usual asteroid destroying the earth and such, but I've never heard a reason for why the it is necessary to preserve humans. Last time I checked the universe does fine without our input.
Pollution? That was here long before humans, and will still be here long after we're gone. How about urbanization, paving, mining, deforestation, irradiation, damming, habitat destruction, species exploitation. There's a long list of bad things we do to this planet that goes way beyond pollution.
Everything we do that is vaguely beneficial to another species is either accidental, or an attempt to repair damage we've already done.
I don't see how versatility imparts any special value to a species. If so then there are plenty of other species that can lay claim to that distinction - especially some of the microscopic ones that we put a lot of resources into destroying. Humans are certainly one of the most invasive members of the macrofauna, and we've demonstrated that we can inflict damage on a much broader scale than any other species.
So you ran out and checked them all, and developed a meaningful scale for measuring life? Sounds like the wrong guy got the medal.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
And that is why Hawkings is who he is, and why you are who you are. He is trying to look ahead to the time when the earth, or even just the major life forms (human being one of the prominents) WILL be wiped out. While you, OTH, want what is and will always be unobtainable.
Many years ago (~35), I thought that communism was an interesting form of gov. Problem was, that there never has been a communist gov. There were attempts to set them up, but power mongers come along and take hold. Hitler "created" an enemy in the jews and later in other nations. Along the way, he built up the military, ran up a HUGE deficit, and slowly started taking away rights from the citizens. Of course, it turned out that most likely, Hitler arranged a serious of incidents that encouraged the citizens to turn away from liberties and worry about their security. The same thing happened in USSR with Stalin, and in China with Mao. In fact, this approach can and will happen in any country where they allow their leaders to do things quietly or allow them to get by with illegal actions. The problem is that no matter the intention, some new leader will come along and invent new enemies and even engineer things to go their way, such as say, trading hostages for weapons prior to being the head leader or invading a country on false pretext of nuclear weapons( It is for these reason I became a libertarian).
Hawkings has it right. We should be concerned about the long term survivability of mankind rather than the short term survival of a man.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When it comes to that, you sfall back to your most basic survival instincts. As a species, we should do what we need to survive. There's no "right" or "wrong" in it. If survival means terraforming and "polluting" a planet, so what? Even if that planet has life that will have to die to make way for us, then so be it.
Well that's just a shocking display of incompetence.
When will someone finally get around to creating a competent courier service that sends parcels straight to where they are supposed to be, rather than mis-directing them, and losing them for months on end.
It's a disgrace.
Z.