RIP Stephen Hawking, 76

[Kenny]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/14/stephen-hawking-professor-dies-aged-76

[+ m_writer]

RIP.

 

Let's honor his legacy by learning, reading something about science, explore and create.

 

Don't know what something is but want to know it? Let's read and learn, together.

 

Thank you for your contributions to humanity, Dr. Hawking.

[bostonman]

I was so sad to hear the news - but then again, it's beyond remarkable that he was able to live for so many years, especially given that when he was first diagnosed with ALS at the age of 21, he was given a 2-year life expectancy. So his life deserves a real celebration. And what he was able to accomplish over all that time is equally extraordinary. A true visionary, a true genius, and an inspiration to anyone battling a life-long disease.

 

In an era where our government would like to throw so much scientific discovery out the window for good, we must keep Hawking's legacy and tenacity alive.

[bigvalboy]

A great loss for the planet...May he rest in peace.

[+ WilliamM]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/stephen-hawking-physicist-who-came-to-symbolize-the-power-of-the-human-mind-dies-at-76/2018/03/14/d4298e14-273a-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html?utm_term=.1134982835ce

 

Also:

 

 

Cover Photo

Stephen Hawking became a leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes. His work led to a turning point in the history of modern physics. Credit Terry Smith/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images

Stephen Hawking Dies at 76; His Mind Roamed the Cosmos

A physicist and best-selling author, Dr. Hawking did not allow his physical limitations to hinder his quest to answer “the big question: Where did the universe come from?”

 

 

By DENNIS OVERBYEMARCH 14, 2018

 

Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.

 

His death was confirmed by a spokesman for Cambridge University.

 

“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview.

 

Dr. Hawking did that largely through his book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988. It has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. The 2014 film about his life, “The Theory of Everything,” was nominated for several Academy Awards and Eddie Redmayne, who played Dr. Hawking, won the Oscar for best actor.

 

Scientifically, Dr. Hawking will be best remembered for a discovery so strange that it might be expressed in the form of a Zen koan: When is a black hole not black? When it explodes.

What is equally amazing is that he had a career at all. As a graduate student in 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was given only a few years to live.

 

 

The disease reduced his bodily control to the flexing of a finger and voluntary eye movements but left his mental faculties untouched.

 

He went on to become his generation’s leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits so deep and dense that not even light can escape them.

 

That work led to a turning point in modern physics, playing itself out in the closing months of 1973 on the walls of his brain when Dr. Hawking set out to apply quantum theory, the weird laws that govern subatomic reality, to black holes. In a long and daunting calculation, Dr. Hawking discovered to his befuddlement that black holes — those mythological avatars of cosmic doom — were not really black at all. In fact, he found, they would eventually fizzle, leaking radiation and particles, and finally explode and disappear over the eons.

 

Slide Show

Slide Show|11 Photos

The Expansive Life of Stephen Hawking

The Expansive Life of Stephen Hawking

CreditPaul E. Alers/NASA

Nobody, including Dr. Hawking, believed it at first — that particles could be coming out of a black hole. “I wasn’t looking for them at all,” he recalled in an interview in 1978. “I merely tripped over them. I was rather annoyed.”

 

That calculation, in a thesis published in 1974 in the journal Nature under the title “Black Hole Explosions?,” is hailed by scientists as the first great landmark in the struggle to find a single theory of nature — to connect gravity and quantum mechanics, those warring descriptions of the large and the small, to explain a universe that seems stranger than anybody had thought.

 

The discovery of Hawking radiation, as it is known, turned black holes upside down. It transformed them from destroyers to creators — or at least to recyclers — and wrenched the dream of a final theory in a strange, new direction.

 

“You can ask what will happen to someone who jumps into a black hole,” Dr. Hawking said in an interview in 1978. “I certainly don’t think he will survive it.

 

“On the other hand,” he added, “if we send someone off to jump into a black hole, neither he nor his constituent atoms will come back, but his mass energy will come back. Maybe that applies to the whole universe.”

 

Dennis W. Sciama, a cosmologist and Dr. Hawking’s thesis adviser at Cambridge, called Hawking’s thesis in Nature “the most beautiful paper in the history of physics.”

 

Part of the New York Times obituary

Edited March 14, 2018 by WilliamM

[+ sync]

The interesting sensation about the future that Stephen Hawking shared with his wife--“We had this very strong sense at the time that our generation lived anyway under this most awful nuclear cloud -- that with a four-minute warning the world itself could likely end,”-- has me pondering Trump's upcoming meeting with Kim Jung Un.

[Kenny]

Hawking enjoyed running over the toes of people he didn’t like with his wheelchair. So in 1976, when Hawking was invited to attend Prince Charles’s induction into the Royal Society, he gave him the business. “The prince was intrigued by Hawking’s wheelchair, and Hawking, twirling it around to demonstrate its capabilities, carelessly ran over Prince Charles’s toes,” according to the biography Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind. “One of Hawking’s regrets in life was not having an opportunity to run over Margaret Thatcher’s toes.”

 

More reasons to mourn his passing.

[mike carey]

Hawking enjoyed running over the toes of people he didn’t like with his wheelchair. So in 1976, when Hawking was invited to attend Prince Charles’s induction into the Royal Society, he gave him the business. “The prince was intrigued by Hawking’s wheelchair, and Hawking, twirling it around to demonstrate its capabilities, carelessly ran over Prince Charles’s toes,” according to the biography Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind. “One of Hawking’s regrets in life was not having an opportunity to run over Margaret Thatcher’s toes.”

 

More reasons to mourn his passing.

As you would expect, his passing was one of the topics on the daily news panel show on ABC TV here. Their go-to quantum physicist (I kid you not, smart guy on all sorts of levels) had a different take on that. He said Hawking ran over people's toes to break into conversations because it would have taken so long for him to do so using his voice simulator. I suspect both versions are true.

[+ poolboy48220]

From all accounts he had a wonderful sense of humor. When he did his guest spot on Star Trek: The Next Generation (playing himself, in a poker game Data created on the holodeck with him, Einstein, and Isaac Newton), he interrupted Newton's speech about being the father on physics saying "Oh no, the apple story again". Makes you wonder if he wrote that line himself.

[+ freecahill1965]

RIP: He was an icon.

[TruthBTold]

It makes me admire people who from sheer force of will live well beyond what people have predicted for him. And, of course, as mentioned above medical advances helped him do so. I am sure he would want us to continue to provide everyone with the opportunities he had in all areas of medicine. Let's not forget that this is what is intended for us in the near future. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/22/trump-budget-seeks-huge-cuts-to-disease-prevention-and-medical-research-departments/?utm_term=.dd5640c9a8f4

[big-n-tall]

...and he died on National PI Day, which also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday.

 

May he rest in peace.

Edited March 14, 2018 by big-n-tall

[Populist Fury]

One of my favo people in the world.

 

RIP :'(

[caliguy]

Wow. He was the modern day Einstein.

[+ José Soplanucas]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/ba194fbb4d201e6a937ee1cad4d6e922/tumblr_n6uh45bvgP1te1gv9o1_500.gif

[marylander1940]

Stephen Hawking's ashes to be buried near graves of Darwin and Newton in Westminster Abbey“Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the Abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton in 1882.”

http://images.archant.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.5458945.1522532627!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpghttp://images.archant.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.5458946.1522532633!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

What a difference compared to the way half of our country sees scientists as evil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Cc8t3Zd5E

[marylander1940]

I have to bump @Kenny 's thread because I just love his tombstone.

 

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-death-dies-equation-discovery-tombstone-radiation-nobel-a8254966.html

Edited June 15, 2018 by marylander1940

[caliguy]

On some forums I listen to some of the religious loons talking about how he's in hell right now because he rejected Christ ie an athiest. Yeah, I'm sure a guy who committed himself to helping man understand the world around themselves is burning it hell while you hypocrites have done absolutely nothing but promote ignorance.

 

It's amazing how even today you still have this BS. Same ones that would burn anyone questioning the earth not being the center of the Universe.

 

Rip. Amazing we got to live in the same time as someone as great as Hawking.

[+ Avalon]

Stephen Hawking's ashes to be buried near graves of Darwin and Newton in Westminster Abbey“Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the Abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton in 1882.”

 

http://images.archant.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.5458945.1522532627!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpghttp://images.archant.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.5458946.1522532633!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

What a difference compared to the way half of our country sees scientists as evil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Cc8t3Zd5E

 

His burial place is most appropriate.

[+ Avalon]

Didn't he say that we should not search for extraterrestrial life because someone might hear us and reply? The Universe is big and scary and there are things out there that are greater than we are. Not everyone may be friendly.

[caliguy]

Didn't he say that we should not search for extraterrestrial life because someone might hear us and reply? The Universe is big and scary and there are things out there that are greater than we are. Not everyone may be friendly.

Yeah, he did say that which is kind of surprising. He does believe there are other civilizations out there and that were pretty insignificant. Probably right. If you can do light speed travel your technology is vastly superior.

[alkan]

Yes, if they reach us, they will be technologically superior. If we reach them first, we will be. What would you give for the chances of survival of the weaker civilisation in either event?

[+ Avalon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle

 

Just came across this term. The earth is but a speck in the Cosmos.

[mike carey]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/13/stephen-hawkings-voice-beamed-black-hole-ashes-interred-westminster/

A recording of his synthesised voice accompanied by music by Vangelis, has been broadcast to a black hole. The one chosen is the nearest to us, and is about 3.5k light years away

[marylander1940]

Didn't he say that we should not search for extraterrestrial life because someone might hear us and reply? The Universe is big and scary and there are things out there that are greater than we are. Not everyone may be friendly.

 

Yes, the Mayflower folks were friendly at first, later they started the conquest of native land calling them the worshippers of Satan. Defensive wars, history repeats itself. The Spanish, Portuguese and the French at least practice mixed marriages. The English and Dutch would trade with them, and occasionally sign alliances putting one tribe against the other, but the main goal was removal, over and over again, something we practiced too combined with open biological warfare by G. Washington.

 

I guess now it's a good time for the aliens to come out and introduce themselves, a proposal for a Trump Tower in Mars would be enough to welcome them with open arms.