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Hawking turns 70

JJM 777 said:
To derail this thread,

I wonder why the age of humans is (still in the modern world) calculated from the day of birth, while a person´s developmental and biological age is based on the day of conception. It doesn´t matter much when you are 70, but in early childhood it can make a difference of 10% - 20% of the total age of a person, if one was born very prematurely, and another one past the full term, and they are evaluated according to their date of birth.
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In china some people will tell you their age based on the date of conception. But they round to the nearest year (as we all do) so I think they add one year for the time of pregnancy, and then you are considered another year older after the first chinese new year, so a child born a month ago might be said to be 2 years old.

It's a little confusing and I may be giving some slightly false info there, but something like that, anyway. :)
 
steve s said:
Last year some idiot, either a politician or a pundit, thought that Hawking was an American and that if he had lived in a society with socialized medicine then he would be dead by now.
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No, it was the infamous editorial by IBD (Investors Business Daily) which appeared during the health care debate in the U.S. in the run-up to the vote on the bill. When their egregious factual error was pointed out to them they quickly struck the offending line from their editorial but made almost no other changes to it.
 

"You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family." — Robert W. Darwin to his son Charles.

Hawking was actually not an outstanding student as a youth. He was obviously extremely bright, but his teachers would often notice that he was not focused on his studies and never lived up to his full potential. But a turning point came in 1962, after he graduated from Oxford, when he first began to notice the symptoms of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease). He was rocked by the news that he was suffering from this incurable motor neuron disease that would rob him of all motor functions and likely soon kill him. At first the news was extremely upsetting. What would be the use of getting a Ph.D. if he was going to die soon anyway?

But once he got over the initial shock he became focused for the first time in his life. Realizing that he did not have long to live, he began to ferociously tackle some of the most difficult problems in general relativity. In the early 1970s he published a landmark series of papers showing that "singularities" in Einstein's theory (where the gravitational field becomes infinite, like at the center of black holes and at the instant of the big bang) were an essential feature of relativity and could not be easily dismissed (as Einstein thought).

— Michio Kaku, Physics Of The Impossible
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They say only the good die young. Thankfully that isn't "all the good die young." Thank you professor Hawking, it is indeed a wonderful life.


 
Here's an interesting one:

Make a list of Stephen Hawking's contributions to physics.

Tricky, isn't it? When you struggle to do this and then look carefully, you come to appreciate that Hawking's contribution to physics is scant. I'm afraid the truth of the matter is that he's really a mathematician, and a mere "celebrity physicist" who trades on speculations that are bereft of experimental support. When he talks about time travel or the origin of the universe, or the multiverse, he doesn't actually explain anything, and nobody actually understands it. Woo! they say, I didn't understand a word of that. He must be really clever. And nobody in the media says a word against him because he's in a wheelchair.

If you know any real physicists, as them in private what they really think of Hawking. Their answers might surprise you.
 
Farsight said:
Here's an interesting one:

Make a list of Stephen Hawking's contributions to physics.
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  • S W Hawking and G F R Ellis. The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time. Cambridge University Press, 1973.
  • Hawking radiation.
Farsight said:
Tricky, isn't it? When you struggle to do this and then look carefully, you come to appreciate that Hawking's contribution to physics is scant. I'm afraid the truth of the matter is that he's really a mathematician, and a mere "celebrity physicist" who trades on speculations that are bereft of experimental support. When he talks about time travel or the origin of the universe, or the multiverse, he doesn't actually explain anything, and nobody actually understands it. Woo! they say, I didn't understand a word of that. He must be really clever. And nobody in the media says a word against him because he's in a wheelchair.

If you know any real physicists, as them in private what they really think of Hawking. Their answers might surprise you.
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Real physicists respect mathematicians more than they respect those whose ignorance of mathematics leads them to accuse real physicists of not understanding physics.
 
See what I mean guys? All Clinger can come up with is some forty-year old book published by buddies, and Hawking radiation, see wikipedia. That's forty years old too, and there's no actual evidence for it. It's pie in the sky anyhow, because of the infinite time-dilation at the black-hole event horizon. It takes forever for anything to happen down there, including those magical mysterious "quantum fluctuations" that aren't actually explained. Note this bit in the wiki article: It is due to the peculiar behavior near a gravitational horizon where time stops as measured from far away. There's another reason why it's pie in the sky. See this other bit from the wiki article: In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy. And guess what? There aren't any particles with negative energy. Sheesh, talk about Emperor's New Clothes. There's mugs out there who swallow this hogwash just like others swallow those fairy tales about sweet baby Jesus. Don't be one of them. Be a skeptic.
 
Hawking made major contributions to singularity theorems in general relativity, some of which ended up having significant impact. His discovery of Hawking radiation was very important - that was certainly his biggest hit. He also made significant contributions to quantum cosmology (such as it is), gravitational instantons, and other more technical topics.

Hawking calculated the perturbations generated during inflation, an extremely important result that has since been confirmed observationally, and for which a Nobel prize will probably be awarded in the near future. However, he wasn't (quite) the first to do so, and the timing and originality of his work on that is disputed. I don't think it's at all likely that he would share the prize for it.

It's also true that all of these results were obtained in the late 70s and early 80s. Since then he has produced little of note, and has been on the wrong side of a number of major debates (such as information loss in black hole evaporation).

Overall, his scientific impact has been significant, but he does not quite belong in the very top echelon of physicists. If it weren't for his disability and his popular books, I have no doubt that he would be far less well-known.
 
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If the best one can come up with is that he isn't quite Einstein or Bell or whoever, isn't that quite a colossal compliment?
 
Sol: you'll be aware from our black-hole conversations that the singularity theorems might be challenged, and I'm sure you'll agree that "discovery" is an inappropriate word in the context of the Hawking radiation hypothesis. It doesn't actually leave that much.

Tubba: I'm afraid his achievements aren't colossal at all. He's "famous for being famous", not for his contribution to physics.
 
Farsight said:
Sol: you'll be aware from our black-hole conversations that the singularity theorems might be challenged, and I'm sure you'll agree that "discovery" is an inappropriate word in the context of the Hawking radiation hypothesis. It doesn't actually leave that much.
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Challenges by people ignorant of the basic facts aren't relevant. The singularity theorems were proven rigorously given certain carefully specified conditions; there is no debate whatsoever over their validity.

As for Hawking radiation, discovery is the correct word. Hawking showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes produce thermal radiation. No one knew that before he did his calculation; it was a discovery. It has not been experimentally verified - although it is very closely related to the mechanism for generation of perturbations during inflation, and there is now strong observational support for that.
 
Farsight said:
Here's an interesting one:

Make a list of Stephen Hawking's contributions to physics.

Tricky, isn't it? When you struggle to do this and then look carefully, you come to appreciate that Hawking's contribution to physics is scant. I'm afraid the truth of the matter is that he's really a mathematician, and a mere "celebrity physicist" who trades on speculations that are bereft of experimental support....
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Actually, if you were look up the contributions of most famous modern scientists, you'd find that they are mostly one-hit wonders. Many of the well-known physicists of the our generation are well-known because they do well at promoting science to the general public, a much need service particularly in the US. Sagan, Tyson, Kaku -- for me, educating the masses has been their greatest contribution, and no less worthy.
 
That's right, Farsight, only one major-discovery-that-spawned-a-whole-subfield-of-inquiry? That's a "scant" contribution. So that leaves, who? Newton, Einstein, Fermi, and Landau? They were the only physicists. All of those one-discovery people are chumps.

Maybe this is part of the crackpot way of thinking. Your average crackpot can sit down with an Einstein paper, spend an afternoon doing grade-school algebra, and go to bed thinking they found an error and thereby uncovered the true laws of relativity. The next day they can do the same thing with Bode's Law, and the day after that with the Mayan calendar, and over the weekend they'll read two LHC press releases and construct a proof that the Higgs Boson does not exist.

"Geez", they say, "Scientific discovery is easy if you're an un-blinkered autodidact. I just laid the groundwork for four Nobel prizes; John Bardeen must have been a real plodder to only get two. Hawking is practically beneath my notice."

I agree with Sol. Hawking radiation is a remarkable discovery; it's subtle enough that it escaped notice (despite many of the tools being available) by Hawking's predecessors, which tells you something about Hawking's physics chops and insight; and it's important enough to dwell in the forefronts of the minds of everyone whose work touches quantum gravity.
 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

— Theodore Roosevelt
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..

 
Baloney said:
Actually, if you were look up the contributions of most famous modern scientists, you'd find that they are mostly one-hit wonders.
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I'm not sure that's entirely fair. For the most part, they're one field wonders. The days of the polymath contributing to every area of science are gone, because science has advanced massively since then and it's simply no longer possible for someone to learn enough about multiple fields to contribute significantly to them. In fact, for the most part people only specialise in a very narrow part of their chosen field and don't even know a huge amount about things that might seem to the layperson to be practically the same thing.

So it's not that people are actually one-hit wonders. It's usually that they make one significant breakthrough, then spend the rest of their life working in the same narrow area working out the consequences of that breakthrough, or doing other related work. The follow-up work might be just as, or even more, important, it just sounds less impressive to the layperson because they're still working on the same thing rather than jumping to a completely different field and making breakthroughs there as well.

Many of the well-known physicists of the our generation are well-known because they do well at promoting science to the general public, a much need service particularly in the US. Sagan, Tyson, Kaku -- for me, educating the masses has been their greatest contribution, and no less worthy.
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Definitely. And really, it shouldn't be particularly surprising that the best known people are the ones who are best at talking to the public. Obviously we don't tend to know about the people who don't talk to us. I'd say the same is at least partly true for Hawking - people know of him largely because of his books and TV appearances, not his actual physics. Plus, as Sol says, his disability. Even if he's not one of the best physicists around (and let's be honest, "not quite the best" isn't exactly a major criticism), he's still a great role model to show what a person can achieve despite a seriously crippling disability.

As for him doing less and being wrong recently, it's worth remembering that science only progresses by having people be wrong. Without having people to challenge and criticise what eventually turns out to be the right answer, me might never reach that answer at all. Being wrong is only a bad thing if you continue to be wrong long after we know better. Take Hawking's bets about information escaping black holes, for example. Sure, he was most likely wrong about it. But he was the one that did a large part of the work to show that, and has happily conceded that he was wrong and lost the bet. That's exactly how science is supposed to work. Although it's also worth noting that in that case, not everyone is convinced he has actually lost the bet, including one of the other parties to the bet.
 
Heck many of the most revered minds of history got things wrong.
 
Farsight said:
Tubba: I'm afraid his achievements aren't colossal at all. He's "famous for being famous", not for his contribution to physics.
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I bought my copy of Hawking&Ellis circa 1976. At that time, I was unaware of Hawking's disability, and Hawking had not written anything for popular audiences. I had heard of Hawking only because my copy of Misner/Thorne/Wheeler's Gravitation cited a dozen of Hawking's papers plus the book by Hawking&Ellis.

On the other hand, I cannot dispute Farsight's suggestion that Farsight's awareness of Hawking has everything to do with Hawking's fame and nothing to do with Hawking's contributions to physics.
 
Cuddles said:
So it's not that people are actually one-hit wonders. It's usually that they make one significant breakthrough, then spend the rest of their life working in the same narrow area working out the consequences of that breakthrough, or doing other related work. The follow-up work might be just as, or even more, important, it just sounds less impressive to the layperson because they're still working on the same thing rather than jumping to a completely different field and making breakthroughs there as well.
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Cuddles: Exactly what I meant, you just said it much more eloquently.
 
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