A brief adieu to Professor Stephen Hawking
The world lost an exceptional mind this week. We are deeply saddened by the recent passing of Professor Stephen Hawking. For those unfamiliar with his work, Hawking revolutionized physics, and is best known as the first physicist to outline a cosmology that unites theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. He’s the namesake of the phenomenon now known as Hawking radiation — the observation that black holes thermally create and emit subatomic particles before they eventually fade into nothing.
Hawking the author
Hawking wrote 15 books on physics. Since publishing his first book, Hawking has been praised by his admirers for his ability to make discoveries in physics intriguing and comprehensible for the average reader. His books inspire awe and wonder. Find our detailed report of his most notable book, A Brief History of Time, in the Instaread app.
Hawking’s thoughts on death
When Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, in his early 20s, doctors gave him just a few years to live. He beat the odds and survived another half century. In an interview with The Guardian in May of 2011, Hawking stated:
Although Hawking had high hopes for his life on Earth, he did not believe in heaven or any other form of afterlife:
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail…There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
A brief history of A Brief History of Time
First published in 1988, A Brief History of Time became a #1 New York Times bestseller, selling more than a million copies in its first year. The book remains immensely popular today, despite its highly specialized subject matter. More than 10 million copies in 40 languages have been sold around the globe.
A few of our favorite insights from the book
The universe has been expanding since it started.
The universe is expanding at a rate just fast enough to sustain its existence. If it ever slows down, it will collapse on itself. About 5 million years ago, a mysterious force that scientists refer to as dark energy accelerated the rate of expansion. Scientists are still dumbfounded by dark energy, and how it sped up the expansion. The somewhat mystical force makes up a ponderous 68 percent of all energy in the universe.
The general theory of relativity, which holds that gravity curves space-time, makes time travel theoretically possible. However, many practical problems must be overcome before time travel can occur.
Time can actually loop back on itself, which means that time travel is possible. In theory, people traveling through the loop could revisit their past selves. Before you pack up the Delorean, there are some major obstacles that scientists still need to overcome to get from point A to B. Learn more in the app.
Black holes, the result of a star of a certain density that has collapsed into itself, have such strong gravitational force that not even light can escape them.
Other physicists regarded Hawking as a leading expert on the science of black holes. In A Brief History of Time, he describes how although black holes cannot be seen, their gravitational force can be detected. Black holes aren’t rare in our universe, either. In fact, there are most likely more black holes than visible stars! Their immense gravitational force sucks nearby objects into them, and is thought to prevent light particles from escaping. Hawking revised his theory in 2015, arguing that light does in fact escape them.
Open the Instaread app to read or listen to our full report on A Brief History of Time.
Thanks for your stellar work, Professor Hawking.
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