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Is Stephen Hawkings losing it?

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Dartful Dodger:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on May 03, 2010, 09:48:52 am ---I'm sorry but Hawking has never actually 'done' anything except be inspirational, his opinions on aliens are no better than anyone else's.

--- End quote ---

His Hustler magazine is more than inspirational.

saint:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on May 03, 2010, 09:48:52 am ---I'm sorry but Hawking has never actually 'done' anything except be inspirational, his opinions on aliens are no better than anyone else's.

--- End quote ---

Hmmmm. Spent his entire adult life in academic fields where peer review is the norm. What exactly do *you* consider qualified?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

--- Quote ---Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years... He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario...

Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).

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

Hawking was always interested in science. As University College did not have a mathematics fellow at that time, it would not accept applications from students who wished to read that discipline. Hawking therefore applied to read natural sciences, in which he gained a scholarship. Once at University College, Hawking specialised in physics. His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in The New York Times Magazine:

    It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. [...] He didn't have very many books, and he didn't take notes. Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries.

Hawking was passing, but his unimpressive study habits resulted in a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination:

    And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves.

After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1962, he stayed to study astronomy. He decided to leave when he found that studying sunspots, which was all the observatory was equipped for, did not appeal to him and that he was more interested in theory than in observation. He left Oxford for Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he engaged in the study of theoretical astronomy and cosmology.


....

In the late 1960s, he and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, applied a new, complex mathematical model they had created from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.[17] This led, in 1970, to Hawking proving the first of many singularity theorems; such theorems provide a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a singularity in space-time. This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of general relativity.

....

He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of John Wheeler's "No-Hair Theorem" -- namely, that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.

...

Hawking's many other scientific investigations have included the study of quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons and the S matrix, anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy, the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time, spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian, Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation, gravitational radiation, and wormholes.

----

Selected publications
Technical

    * Singularities in Collapsing Stars and Expanding Universes with Dennis William Sciama, 1969 Comments on Astrophysics and Space Physics Vol 1 #1
    * The Nature of Space and Time with Roger Penrose, foreword by Michael Atiyah, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-691-05084-8
    * The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with George Ellis, 1973 ISBN 0521099064
    * The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, (with Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Roger Penrose), Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-56330-5 (hardback), ISBN 0-521-65538-2 (paperback), Canto edition: ISBN 0-521-78572-3
    * Information Loss in Black Holes, Cambridge University Press, 2005
    * God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History, Running Press, 2005 ISBN 0762419229

Popular

    * A Brief History of Time, (Bantam Press 1988) ISBN 055305340X
    * Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, (Bantam Books 1993) ISBN 0553374117
    * The Universe in a Nutshell, (Bantam Press 2001) ISBN 055380202X
    * On The Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy, (Running Press 2002) ISBN 076241698X
    * A Briefer History of Time, (Bantam Books 2005) ISBN 0553804367

--- End quote ---

Ginsu Victim:
Musician Jason Becker was diagnosed with ALS in 1989 and is still writing music to this day, using an eye-movement alphabet system developed by his father.



LLUncoolJ:
If nothing else, the guy has brought awareness of singularity theories, most notably, the big bang, to the masses. It's good to have a public figure to associate with science. Einstein's celebrity probably helped influence a lot of people to pursue careers in science. Of course I have no evidence to back any of this up.

drventure:

--- Quote ---He's the world record holder for living with ALS, scientists cannot explain how he's managed to live so long and that's pretty neat.
--- End quote ---

That, and he guest starred on the Simpsons. Theoretical Physics Master? Meh. Guest star on Simpson?  :afro:

 ;)

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