10 Cool Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking

[The Boofon]

In no particular order as his computer is playing up.

 

5: Lost a Bet on Black Holes

 

In 2004, the genius Hawking admitted he had been wrong and conceded a bet he made in 1997 with a fellow scientist about black holes. To understand the bet, let's backpedal a little to understand what black holes are in the first place.

 

Stars are gigantic -- they have so much mass that their gravity is always incredibly strong. This is fine, as long as the star continues to burn its nuclear fuel, exerting this energy outward, thus counteracting gravity. However, once a massive enough star "dies" or burns out, gravity becomes the stronger force, and causes that big star to collapse on itself. This creates what scientists call a black hole.

 

The gravity is so powerful in this collapse that not even light can escape. However, Hawking proposed in 1975 that black holes are not really black. Rather, they radiate energy.

 

But, he said at the time, information is lost in the black hole that eventually evaporates. The problem was that this idea that information is lost conflicted with the rules of quantum mechanics, creating what Hawking called an "information paradox."

 

American theoretical physicist John Preskill disagreed with this conclusion that information is lost in black hole. In 1997, he made a bet with Hawking saying that information can escape from them, thus not breaking the laws of quantum mechanics.

 

Hawking is such a good sport that he can admit when he's wrong -- which he did in 2004. While giving a lecture at a scientific conference, he said that because black holes have more than one "topology," and when one measures all the information released from all topologies, information isn't lost.

 

 

Nae as fucking clever as he thinks he is then.

[The Boofon]

8: Was on Oxford Rowing Team

 

Biographer Kristine Larsen writes about how Hawking faced isolation and unhappiness during his first year or so at Oxford. The thing that seems to have drawn him out of this funk was joining the rowing team.

 

Even before being diagnosed with the illness that would eventually render him almost completely paralyzed, Hawking didn't have what one would call a large or athletic build. However, row teams recruited smaller men like Hawking to be coxswains -- a position that does not row, but rather controls steering and stroke rate.

 

Because rowing was so important and competitive at Oxford, Hawking's role on the team made him very popular. Remembering Hawking from those days, one fellow boatsman called him "the adventurous type"

 

But as much as the rowing team helped his popularity, it hurt his study habits. Occupied with rowing practice for six afternoons per week, Hawking started "to cut serious corners" and used "creative analysis to create lab reports"

[The Boofon]

10: Received Mediocre Grades in School

 

These days, we know Hawking as a brilliant mind whose theories are difficult for a nonscientific mind to grasp. This is why it may come as a shock to learn that Hawking was a slacker when it came to his school studies.

 

In fact, when he was 9 years old, his grades ranked among the worst in his class. With a little more effort, he brought those grades up to about average, but not much better.

 

Nevertheless, from an early age he was interested in how stuff worked. He has talked about how he was known to disassemble clocks and radios. However, he admits he wasn't very good at putting them back together so they could work again.

 

Despite his poor grades, both his teachers and his peers seemed to understand that they had a future genius among them, evidenced by the fact that his nickname was "Einstein."

 

The problem with his mediocre grades was that his father wanted to send him to Oxford, but didn't have the money without a scholarship. Luckily, when it came time for the scholarship exams, he aced them, getting an almost perfect score on the physics exam.

 

 

See. Nae as clever as he pretends to be.

[minijc]

Was he schooled in England? Still got that American accent after all those years there, weird considering my dad has lost his weegie twang with staying up here.

[THE GRIM SHEEPER]

where is the other 7?

[Ke1t]

The thing about Hawking that you need to remember when it come to him being 'wrong' is that he's a Theoretical physicist.

 

That doesn't men that he's theoretically a physicist, it means that he deals with the realm of theoretical potentiality. In other words he speculates as to the cause and effect of the physical universe, proposing "This is possibly how it works" ideas that other physicists will then explore.

 

Sometimes his speculation will be right, sometimes it will be wrong.

 

If you think about it it's a pretty sweet job. Getting paid to sit in a wheelchair and come up with genius ideas... like Davros. He even sounds like Davros.

[The Boofon]

where is the other 7?

 

Have a little patience.

 

6: Helped Create the Boundless Universe Theory

 

One of Hawking's major achievements (which he shares with Jim Hartle) was to come up with the theory that the universe has no boundaries in 1983.

 

In 1983, the effort to understand the nature and shape of the universe, Hawking and Hartle combined the concepts of quantum mechanics (the study of the behavior of microscopic particles) with general relativity (Einstein's theories about gravity and how mass curves space) to show that the universe is a contained entity and yet has no boundaries.

 

To conceptualize this, he tells people to think of the universe like the surface of the Earth. As a sphere, you can go in any direction on the surface of the Earth and never reach a corner, an edge or any boundary where the Earth can be said to "end." However, one major difference is that the surface of the Earth is two-dimensional (even though the Earth itself is three-dimensional, the surface is only two-dimensional), while the universe is four-dimensional.

 

Hawking explains that spacetime (see the sidebar on this page) is like the lines of latitude on the globe. Starting at the North Pole (the beginning of the universe) and going south, the circumferences get bigger until beyond the equator, when they would get smaller. This means that the universe is finite in spacetime and will re-collapse eventually -- however, not for at least 20 billion years. Does this mean that time itself would go backwards? Hawking grappled with this question, but decided no, because there is no reason to believe that the universe's trend from ordered energy into disordered energy will reverse

[Ke1t]

Have a little patience.

 

6: Helped Create the Boundless Universe Theory

 

One of Hawking's major achievements (which he shares with Jim Hartle) was to come up with the theory that the universe has no boundaries in 1983.

 

In 1983, the effort to understand the nature and shape of the universe, Hawking and Hartle combined the concepts of quantum mechanics (the study of the behavior of microscopic particles) with general relativity (Einstein's theories about gravity and how mass curves space) to show that the universe is a contained entity and yet has no boundaries.

 

To conceptualize this, he tells people to think of the universe like the surface of the Earth. As a sphere, you can go in any direction on the surface of the Earth and never reach a corner, an edge or any boundary where the Earth can be said to "end." However, one major difference is that the surface of the Earth is two-dimensional (even though the Earth itself is three-dimensional, the surface is only two-dimensional), while the universe is four-dimensional.

 

Hawking explains that spacetime (see the sidebar on this page) is like the lines of latitude on the globe. Starting at the North Pole (the beginning of the universe) and going south, the circumferences get bigger until beyond the equator, when they would get smaller. This means that the universe is finite in spacetime and will re-collapse eventually -- however, not for at least 20 billion years. Does this mean that time itself would go backwards? Hawking grappled with this question, but decided no, because there is no reason to believe that the universe's trend from ordered energy into disordered energy will reverse

 

An idea they STOLE from Alan Moore, as depicted in his classic story, "The Last Rumble of the Platinum Horde".

 

Moore depicts a race of nomadic warriors who leave their homeworld in order to smash and loot their way across the Universe. The head off in a straight line, destroying countless civilisations until, finally....

 

Last Rumble of the Platinum Horde

[The Boofon]

An idea they STOLE from Alan Moore, as depicted in his classic story, "The Last Rumble of the Platinum Horde".

 

Moore depicts a race of nomadic warriors who leave their homeworld in order to smash and loot their way across the Universe. The head off in a straight line, destroying countless civilisations until, finally....

 

Last Rumble of the Platinum Horde

 

I'm getting the feeling you've got it in for Stephen Hawking.

 

Here he is as a weightless person to cheer you up. :laughing:

 

Check the nick of his coupon. Looks like he's triple dunted some proper ectos.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPeGDfqPPtc

[THE GRIM SHEEPER]

Have a little patience.

 

6: Helped Create the Boundless Universe Theory

 

One of Hawking's major achievements (which he shares with Jim Hartle) was to come up with the theory that the universe has no boundaries in 1983.

 

In 1983, the effort to understand the nature and shape of the universe, Hawking and Hartle combined the concepts of quantum mechanics (the study of the behavior of microscopic particles) with general relativity (Einstein's theories about gravity and how mass curves space) to show that the universe is a contained entity and yet has no boundaries.

 

To conceptualize this, he tells people to think of the universe like the surface of the Earth. As a sphere, you can go in any direction on the surface of the Earth and never reach a corner, an edge or any boundary where the Earth can be said to "end." However, one major difference is that the surface of the Earth is two-dimensional (even though the Earth itself is three-dimensional, the surface is only two-dimensional), while the universe is four-dimensional.

 

Hawking explains that spacetime (see the sidebar on this page) is like the lines of latitude on the globe. Starting at the North Pole (the beginning of the universe) and going south, the circumferences get bigger until beyond the equator, when they would get smaller. This means that the universe is finite in spacetime and will re-collapse eventually -- however, not for at least 20 billion years. Does this mean that time itself would go backwards? Hawking grappled with this question, but decided no, because there is no reason to believe that the universe's trend from ordered energy into disordered energy will reverse

 

your last post was 2:50, i have been waiting all afternoon for the rest

[Scarface]

It's never mentioned that Stephen Hawking is shyte at football though.

 

Apparently he's really good at dribbling.