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A Brief History of Stephen Hawking (newscientist.com)
New Scientist: The most recognisable scientist of our age, Hawking holds an iconic status. [...] He was routinely consulted for oracular pronouncements on everything from time travel and alien life to Middle Eastern politics and nefarious robots. He had an endearing sense of humour and a daredevil attitude -- relatable human traits that, combined with his seemingly superhuman mind, made Hawking eminently marketable.
But his cultural status -- amplified by his disability and the media storm it invoked -- often overshadowed his scientific legacy. That's a shame for the man who discovered what might prove to be the key clue to the theory of everything, advanced our understanding of space and time, helped shape the course of physics for the last four decades and whose insight continues to drive progress in fundamental physics today. The New York Times: 1970 Dr. Hawking shows that the area of a black hole's event horizon -- a spherical surface marking the point of no return -- can only increase, never decrease, as stuff falls into a black hole or it collides and merges with other black holes.
1971 He suggests that mini black holes much smaller than stars created in the Big Bang could be peppering the universe.
1974 He shocks his colleagues and the world by showing that black holes will leak and explode when quantum effects -- the weird laws that describe subatomic behavior -- are taken into account.
1976 Dr. Hawking says exploding black holes add randomness and unpredictability to the universe, forever erasing information about what might have fallen into a black hole.
Quantum physicists object, saying the universe can't forget, initiating a 40-year argument about the fate of information. Dr. Hawking concedes in 2004, but does not say how information is preserved in a black hole, and the argument continues to this day.
1982 Using a mathematical conceit called imaginary time, Dr. Hawking and James Hartle, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, propose a model of a self-contained universe that has no boundary in space or time, and thus no place or time when the laws of physics break down. [...] Further reading: Stephen Hawking is still underrated (The Atlantic); Science mourns Stephen Hawking's death (Nature); and How it all began: a colleague reflects on the remarkable life of Stephen Hawking (Smithsonian).
But his cultural status -- amplified by his disability and the media storm it invoked -- often overshadowed his scientific legacy. That's a shame for the man who discovered what might prove to be the key clue to the theory of everything, advanced our understanding of space and time, helped shape the course of physics for the last four decades and whose insight continues to drive progress in fundamental physics today. The New York Times: 1970 Dr. Hawking shows that the area of a black hole's event horizon -- a spherical surface marking the point of no return -- can only increase, never decrease, as stuff falls into a black hole or it collides and merges with other black holes.
1971 He suggests that mini black holes much smaller than stars created in the Big Bang could be peppering the universe.
1974 He shocks his colleagues and the world by showing that black holes will leak and explode when quantum effects -- the weird laws that describe subatomic behavior -- are taken into account.
1976 Dr. Hawking says exploding black holes add randomness and unpredictability to the universe, forever erasing information about what might have fallen into a black hole.
Quantum physicists object, saying the universe can't forget, initiating a 40-year argument about the fate of information. Dr. Hawking concedes in 2004, but does not say how information is preserved in a black hole, and the argument continues to this day.
1982 Using a mathematical conceit called imaginary time, Dr. Hawking and James Hartle, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, propose a model of a self-contained universe that has no boundary in space or time, and thus no place or time when the laws of physics break down. [...] Further reading: Stephen Hawking is still underrated (The Atlantic); Science mourns Stephen Hawking's death (Nature); and How it all began: a colleague reflects on the remarkable life of Stephen Hawking (Smithsonian).
He should be censored... All that talk about naked singularities. In my Christian country singularities are always suitably clothed.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Seriously none of that stuff can be proven with existing technology, so how can we know all of this is not random babbling.
2009: Hawking holds a party for time travelers, but invitations were only sent out after the party happened. Nobody showed up.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/stephen-hawkings-champagnefuelled-time-travel-party/news-story/3af5baf5f25d778b7f45a33f4998dc07
I've done some fairly impressive things myself, although I usually don't toot my horn about them.
For example, I've consistently posted better than half of the down-modded posts on /.
- AC
He was born. He ate. He shat. He died.
Covers the vast majority.
It's also important to remember that he was a great advocate for feminism and women's liberation:
https://mashable.com/2017/03/20/stephen-hawking-piers-morgan-feminist-women-rights-gender-equality/
I welcome these signs of women’s liberation. But there may still be a gap between those women achieving high public status and those in the private sector.
Now that he's passed, the "skeptic" community (more like septic community) will try to erase this side of him to push male supremacy, don't let them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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I really hope we find evidence, even if indirect, of Hawking radiation in my lifetime. I would love to see him get a nobel prize for his work.
the Black Hole, on their way to the party.
Wouldn't it be funny if they had checked the invitations at the door and turned away all the time travellers for not having theirs with them? :)
To cover up the fact that time travel was real? Only in some timelines (or rather, permutations of the singular universe) they made it to the party and society collapsed when it became apparent time travel could happen and if the right people made it back they could save you/give you immortality/etc, or simply put the future doesn't matter and you can rewrite your past.
The world would fall into complete and utter chaos as people tried to change the past and future for their own gain, or to control the lives of others.
My wife and I were lucky enough to get tickets to see Dr. Stephen Hawking "speak" at the Berkeley Community Theatre. They were free, if I recall correctly, but demand for them was understandably high, since he had recently released his best-selling book A Brief History of Time, which was still on the NYT bestseller list at the time.
Great book, btw, if a tiny bit dated now. I recommend the illustrated, updated and revised edition to everyone with an interest in the work to which Hawking devoted his life.
Hawking was in town to present a series of lectures on cosmology and the physics of black holes at the University of California, and he graciously agreed to also appear at the BCT for a much more general presentation to a capacity crowd of almost 3,500.
ALS had, of course, long since claimed Hawking's ability to speak for himself - as well as almost all of his motor control - so, even then, the voice we heard was that of his voice synthesizer. Nonetheless, his personality came through in full force: by turns funny, professorial, wondering, and confiding. It was, no doubt, a canned presentation, but the man himself controlled the pace at which it unfolded - and his timing was absolutely masterful. He had the crowd hanging on his every word, and he received a standing ovation that lasted for a good five minutes or more at the end of his performance.
We'd had to park several blocks away, so, because of downtown Berkeley's proliferation of one-way streets, we found ourselves on Shattuck Avenue, headed the opposite direction from home, and looking for a chance to get turned around, when we passed the intersection of Shattuck and Allston Way. And there, on the corner, sitting all alone in his wheelchair, obviously waiting for suitably-equipped transport to arrive and whisk him away to his hotel, was Dr. Stephen Hawking, Lucasion Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, eminent physicist, bestselling author, and pop-culture superstar.
To this day, I still wish that we'd stopped, and offered to keep him company while he waited - but, sadly, we did not ...
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The triumvirate leaders of American Science were Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Neil Degrasse Tyson. We have just lost 1/3 of our scientific knowledge. These are the people we go to to ask any and all Scientific questions of Science. My feeling is that Bill Nye the Science Guy is not long for this world. When that happens our entire Scientific body of Scientific knowledge of Science will be contained in 1 person. We need to start an billion dollar Scientific program to create new Scientific Experts to whom we can bring all manner of as-sundry Scientific questions to in order to get and authoritative conclusions of Science. Without this people will start having to think for themselves, and we all know how dangerous that is. No Lets put our faith in Science.
Who will it be. Who can take the place of Stephen Hawking? Should the media crown the new cadre of Scientific experts, or should we be progressive and let the community of Science believing redditors come forth with the new prince.
Once think is for certain is that if we loose Tyson and Bill Bye the Science guy humanity will go crazy. We need to have guards guarding our Scientific experts round the clock.
I can't help but wondering something.
Considering he died on Albert Einstein's birthday, and in fact at the same age of 76 that Einstein died at, what is the likelihood that he actually planned that particular day to leave the universe?
Highly probable or just a freaky coincidence?
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Loved seeing him get the respect from the Nerd Space. I was always delighted to find him on yet another TV show!
The black holes are not observable.
How can a scientist observe black holes?