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RIP Stephen Hawking
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3460
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RIP Stephen Hawking
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Several members of the Foro have exhibited an interest in cosmology, the nature of the universe, relativity, and quantum mechanics. For those who may not have heard, Stephen Hawking died today at his home in Cambridge, UK. I first became interested in the subject matter back in 1960 when, as a junior in high school, I read "One, Two, Three, Infinity," by George Gamow. It piqued an interest that I have never abandoned. In the early 1980s Carl Sagan 's "Cosmos" did much the same thing for a newer generation. And, of course, Stephen Hawking has been a lodestar all along for those interested in the subject matter. That he suffered from ALS makes his accomplishments all the more amazing. Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 15 2018 0:09:17
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Ricardo
Posts: 14848
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: RIP Stephen Hawking (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Stephen Hawking was the first scientist I ever referenced, in my black hole report paper in 5th grade elementary school. I remember looking in the library trying to understand what these black hole things were, and in doing so I also called up my physicist uncle to explain some basic things that were confusing me such as “gravitational collapse” etc. As kids growing up all we knew was from the Disney movie with the evil Robot in it, cool movie but very misleading science. So at tender age of 10 or 11 I already knew about Hawkings discover of black holes that “evaporate”, which seem to make sense even back then. Probably 10 years later my interest in the subject was rekindled by the movie “Contact”, which remains one of my all time favorites on a huge subject, and rediscovered Hawking from his “brief history of time” and other material for lay people. Also I was thinking about the connection between his illness and one of my late teenage guitar heroes Jason Becker who has the same disease. Oddly however, I don’t feel his overall contribution to physics all that significant, relatively speaking, compared to others I had learned about. As far as the black hole evaporation thing, well, the guy who created an algorithm to detect this predicted event went looking and found nothing (pretty bad considering they should have found some and it’s Hawkings main contribution to science), however had his technology used instead later to develop our beloved blue tooth. So Hawking is indirectly responsible for Blue Tooth. I must say his greatest achievement is really to put physics in the minds of many lay people, though not to the extent of someone like Carl Sagan. The story about his bet with one of his colleagues on the existence of Black Holes was memorable (he bet porn mags against it being found), and for me the saddest thing is he did not live to see the optically imaged event horizon photo of Sagittarius A that is due to be finalized this year, which would really vindicate a large part of his life’s work. Bummer!
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Date Mar. 17 2018 15:52:49
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Paul Magnussen
Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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RE: RIP Stephen Hawking (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Oddly however, I don’t feel his overall contribution to physics all that significant, relatively speaking, compared to others I had learned about. You’re not alone in that opinion. In Genius* (p. 40), Hans Eysenck remarks: quote:
A good example of how important irrelevant considerations may be is the status Stephen Hawking, whose sad disability has captured the public imagination […], and has propelled his poorly written popular A Brief History of Time into the best-seller list. It also identified him in the popular mind as a ‘genius’, which is patently over the top; he is an outstanding mathematical physicist, equal perhaps to Hoyle; first-rate, but no genius. To give but one instance of how the label of ‘originality’ or ‘creativity’ can accrue to the wrong person, consider his early stance in denying that the surface area of a black hole is actually a measure of entropy; if true, that would mean that a black hole had a temperature, defined in terms of its surface area. Now anything that has a temperature must radiate energy, and therefore cannot be a black hole! A young Californian research assistant called Jakob Bekenstein suggested, in a series of publications, just that: the surface area of a black hole was, indeed, a measure of entropy, and black holes do have temperatures related to their surface area. Furious, Hawking attacked Bekenstein’s interpretation of the equation Hawking had originally published. Later, Hawking paid a visit to Moscow and learned about the work of Yakov Zel’dovich on the way black holes interact with light. He became convinced that black holes must indeed emit radiation, and did have temperatures! He completely changed course, and advocated what earlier he had condemned, and now ‘Hawking radiation’ is considered one of the great achievements of the past 50 years of physics, combining as it does general relativity and quantum mechanics in one package. Poor Bekenstein, the original discoverer, is forgotten. *https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Creativity-Problems-Behavioural-Sciences/dp/0521485088/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521669480&sr=1-1&keywords=hans+eysenck+genius
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Date Mar. 21 2018 21:01:26
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estebanana
Posts: 9372
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: RIP Stephen Hawking (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Ok finally my chart uploads! On Hawking- I liken him to what a violinist I worked for said to me many years ago. He was the concert master of the Kennedy Center orchestra, when Slava was the conductor. He was a top level pro in every way, when there was a work with big gnarly violin solo, barring there was a guest soloist, he was the one who played it. We were talking one day about Yo Yo Ma, he said: "You know .....he's good, but for every Yo Yo, there are 50 cellists who are as good who will never be famous. They get jobs in orchestras, sure, as principal chairs, but they're never heard from again." The same is true, I believe, of scientists. And I prefer Stephen Jay Gould to any of the physics writers, so I claim membership in the Dunning Kruger Association.
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Date Mar. 22 2018 7:38:46
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estebanana
Posts: 9372
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: RIP Stephen Hawking (in reply to Dudnote)
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quote:
Oh God! I tried reading his final opus and rapidly gave up when all I could see in there was "Me! Me! Me! Me!". My preference for Gould is based on me being dirt digger type science lover. You guys can contemplate black holes, but I'm still blown away by T-Rex skeleton assemblies. Maybe SJG like Hitchens got a bit bloated on me me now and again, but SJG remains a significant figure in science his contribution was major. When Gould was a post doc and still young a mentor took him aside and said if you write, write for the layperson, don't only write for other academics. Gould's books do in spots get windy, like any heavyweight, but on quality of his total output he managed to keep himself at bay. Not only could he write about the origins of species and the history of science, but he co-developed a broad reaching major component of evolutionary theory. His idea is that evolution is like a series of short difficult climbs with lots of evolutionary change, followed by a period of slower development of stability with little change. And it made a big change in evolutionary thinking... Which has a relationship to what I brought up the other day on the issue of space travel and human speciation, things happened fast and furious, changes were made then ....for ling time nada With that written I'm going to go use my opposable digits for put some primitive hide glue on a primitive wood structure.
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Date Mar. 23 2018 6:23:06
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