Stephen Hawking - passed away
- Thread starter pplpilot
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
byegad
Legendary Member
- Location
- NE England
The average IQ of the human race has taken a hit. A funny and ground-breaking man. It has been a privilege to have seen his like.
Someone once said that the worst part of there not being an afterlife is that, once dead, you can't tell the deists "I told you so!"
Yellow Fang
Legendary Member
- Location
- Reading
It feels like the world changed a bit. His physical condition seemed so bad thirty years ago that I had expected him to die long ago. He was 76 which is a reasonable age. I wonder what he might have achieved if he had not had motor neurone disease, because that must have slowed him down. Maybe more, maybe not much more.
winjim
Smash the cistern
[QUOTE 5181832, member: 43827"]H-A-W-K-I-N-S
"..so clever it makes me angry..........but not half as clever as he thinks he is". jefmcg[/QUOTE]
Y-E-S T-H-A-T-'-S T-H-E J-O-K-E
https://www.cyclechat.net/search/11028522/?q=Stephen+hawkins&o=relevance
"..so clever it makes me angry..........but not half as clever as he thinks he is". jefmcg[/QUOTE]
Y-E-S T-H-A-T-'-S T-H-E J-O-K-E
https://www.cyclechat.net/search/11028522/?q=Stephen+hawkins&o=relevance
FishFright
More wheels than sense
One of my heros, RIP
U
User169
Guest
Once held a door open for him and he said "thank you".
True story!
True story!
AndyRM
XOXO
- Location
- North Shields
Yellow Fang
Legendary Member
- Location
- Reading
I remember reading about Hawking Radiation in a Brief History of Time. If I understood properly, owing to Quantum Mechanics, pairs of matter and anti-matter sub-particles would spontaneously appear outside the event horizon of a black hole. Sometimes the anti-matter sub-particle would enter the black hole and annihilate a little bit of it. Other times the anti-matter sub-particle would escape the event horizon but annihilate the first bit of matter it came across, releasing a lot of energy. Eventually the black hole would evaporate into space.
It's mind-boggling to think how long that would take, considering the size of the black holes at the centres of galaxies. It reminds me of those scare stories Roman Catholic priests used to tell about how if there was a mountain the size of the sun, and if every thousand years a bird would brush it with its wing, the mountain would be worn away before sinners stopped roasting in hell.
It's mind-boggling to think how long that would take, considering the size of the black holes at the centres of galaxies. It reminds me of those scare stories Roman Catholic priests used to tell about how if there was a mountain the size of the sun, and if every thousand years a bird would brush it with its wing, the mountain would be worn away before sinners stopped roasting in hell.
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
If it helps, I once went into the old Blackwell's music shop in Oxford when he was on the ground floor and one of the staff was ferrying CDs up to him from the downstairs section. It's not impossible that @rvw was on the tills at the time.
Ob declaration: I did read A Brief History. I think I understood much of it, but it confirmed that I was no mathematical physicist.
winjim
Smash the cistern
This is what Stephen Hawking looked like in the 1960s:
It does seem to be a persistent myth though, it's on Wikipedia which cites that photo, published by the Grauniad, as a source.
Hitchington
Lovely stuff
- Location
- That London
