You may Not know something about BackHole!

↔ Nothing escapes their pull.

When anything (be it planets, suns, galaxies or particles of light) passes close to a black hole, they will be pulled in by its gravity. If something else acting on the object, like say a rocket, is stronger than the black hole's gravity, it can escape the pull.

Until, of course, it reaches the event horizon: The point where escape from a black hole is impossible. In order to escape the event horizon, objects must move faster than the speed of light, which is impossible.

This is the "black" part of the black hole, because if light can't escape, then we can't see inside and the area looks empty.

Researchers think that even small black holes would tear you apart before you fall through the event horizon. Gravity is stronger the closer you get to a planet, star, or black hole. If you were falling feet first, gravity at your feet would be so much stronger than at your head. This force would pull you apart.

↔ They slow down time.

NASA, ESA, CXC, STScI, and B. McNamara (University of Waterloo)

Composite Image of Galaxy Cluster MS 0735

Light bends around the event horizon and eventually gets pulled into nothingness as it falls through.

Scharf describes what we would see if a clock were to be sucked into a black in an interview with The Economist. He says the ticking of the clock (if it were to survive the forces of the black hole) would appear to slow down as it approached the event horizon and eventually would seem to freeze altogether.

This freeze in time is due to gravitational time dilation, explained by Einstein's theory of relativity. The gravity of a black hole is so strong, it can slow down time. From the clock's perspective it is still functioning normally. The clock would fade from view as the light from it is stretched further apart. The light would become increasingly red as the wavelength becomes longer and falls out of the visible light spectrum, vanishing from sight.

↔ They are the ultimate energy factories.

en.wikipedia.org

Spit, not swallow.

black holes vacuum up the mass surrounding them, and in the black hole this mass gets squished together so hard that space between the individual components of the atoms is compressed, and it is broken down into subatomic particles that can stream away.

These particles are released in jets, as seen in this picture taken with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. These particles propel out of the black hole due to intense magnetic field lines that can cross the event horizon.

Breaking up the particles creates energy, in an efficient manner. Converting mass into energy in this way is 50 times more efficient than nuclear fusion.

↔ They limit the number of stars in the sky.

AP

The man: Carl Sagan.

We were in Brooklyn so Scharf gave a shout out to Carl Sagan, who famously said "there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world”. In fact, there are 1022 stars in the universe.

Scharf says this number is determined by black holes. The particle jets emitted by black holes expand into bubbles that ripple through a galaxy's star-forming regions. The star-forming regions are areas of gas clouds that can cool down and form stars. The jets heat up these gas clouds and prevent stars from forming.

This means that there is a balanced relationship between the number of stars and the activity of black holes. Too many stars packed in a galaxy would make it too hot and explosive for life to evolve, but not enough stars can also prevent life from forming.

↔ We are made of them.

Now aren't you glad that black holes exist?

Some researchers think that black holes help create the elements because they break down matter into subatomic particles.

These particles can be used to create stars which in turn create elements heavier than helium, like iron and carbon, essential to the formation of rocky planets and life.These elements are what all mass is made of, including us.

Scharf tells The Economist, "Take away the black holes and you get a different mix of elements, in different places. You might also get different, more volatile stars, which explode in a destructive supernova, blowing away inchoate complex structures." Life may not have been possible without black holes.



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Hawking with Lucy hawking his daughter.

Stephen Hawkings was born in 08/01/1942 in Britain. He was a scientist and an author and a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Stephen Hawkings suffered from a motor neuron infection that left him paralyzed. Stephen Hawkings familyconsists of Frank Hawking his father, Isobel Hawking is mother, his sisters Philippa ,Mary and Lucy Hawking his daughter.

Professor Stephen Hawking says that physics is LESS interesting after 'God particle' discovery Professor Hawking made the claims at the Science Museum in London He said the discovery of the so-called God particle was 'disappointing' He also admitted he bet a fellow physicist $100 that it would never be found The 71-year-old was speaking at the launch of the museum’s new Collider exhibition.

Hawking's Theory:

Physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, pictured, admitted he was disappointed when the Higgs boson 'God particle' was found

The discovery of the Higgs boson ‘God particle’ was widely considered the biggest scientific breakthrough of modern day - so much so it won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics - but not everyone was quite so impressed. 

Leading physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has admitted he was disappointed by the discovery and believes ‘physics would be far more interesting if it had not been found.’

The 71-year-old made the claims during a sold-out event at London’s Science Museum to celebrate the launch of its new Collider exhibition.

The exhibition gives visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the LHC and CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva.

The Higgs boson's role is to give the particles that make up atoms their mass.

It has been described as the ‘missing piece’ of the Standard Model, which explains how the parts of the universe that we understand interact with one another.

Without this mass, particles would zip around the cosmos, unable to bind together to form the atoms that make stars and planets - and people.

The particle was confirmed using the Large Hadron Collider - the highest-energy particle collider ever made, built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2012.

The 71-year-old professor made the claims during a sold-out event at London's Science Museum to celebrate the launch of its new Collider exhibition, pictured. The new exhibition gives visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the LHC and CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva

WHAT IS THE HIGGS BOSON?

The Higgs boson's role is to give the particles that make up atoms their mass. 

It has been described as the ‘missing piece’ of the Standard Model, which explains how the parts of the universe that we understand interact with one another

Without this mass, particles would zip around the cosmos, unable to bind together to form the atoms that make stars and planets - and people.

The particle was confirmed using the Large Hadron Collider - the highest-energy particle collider ever made, built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2012.

However, our knowledge of particle physics is still far from complete, with mysteries such as the nature of dark matter to still be solved. 

Professor Hawking also had a more personal reason to lament the discovery, which earned Edinburgh scientist Professor Peter Higgs a £776,000 share of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

‘I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found,’ he said. ‘The Nobel Prize cost me $100.’

During this talk, the Professor also discussed being the longest known survivor of ALS, or motor neurone disease, and his slacker days as a student of natural science at Oxford University.

He admitted he once calculated he did about 1,000 hours of work during his three years at Oxford - an average of an hour a day.

‘Because of my lack of work, I had planned to get through the final exam by doing problems in theoretical physics and avoiding questions that required factual knowledge. 

'But I didn't sleep the night before the exam, because of nervous tension, and so I didn't do very well. I was on the borderline between a first and second class degree.’

Nonetheless Hawking was awarded a first and went on to pursue a career in mathematics and cosmology at Cambridge University, where he is now Director of Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

Professor Hawking also explained why he believes in one of the most exotic ideas in physics today, M-theory, which proposes the existence of a myriad different universes all created out of nothing.

‘These multiple universes can arise naturally from physical law,’ said Professor Hawking. 

Professor Hawking also had a personal reason to lament the discovery, which earned Professor Peter Higgs, pictured at the Collider exhibition, the Nobel Prize in Physics. Professor Hawking said: 'I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found. The Nobel Prize cost me $100.'

‘Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. 

'Most of these states will be quite unlike the universe we observe, and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist.

‘Thus, our presence selects out from the vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the Cosmos, this makes us, in a sense, lords of creation.’

Professor Hawking believes it is possible the first evidence for M-theory will be seen at the LHC.

The theoretical physicist also said that the future of the human race depends on going into space.

‘I don't think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet,’ Professor Hawking continued.

Ending his talk, he told his audience: ‘So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and hold on to that child-like wonder about what makes the universe exist.’

Professor Hawking also explained why he believes in M-theory, which proposes the existence of different universes all created out of nothing. He believes it is possible the first evidence for M-theory will be seen at the Large Hadron Collider, as celebrated at the Science Museum's latest exhibition pictured

Tribute to the man 
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Hawking's Own Universe!

Stephen Hawking's Universe: "Where do we come from? How did the universe begin? Why is the universe the way it is? How will it end? "All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist.  The questions are clear, and deceptively simple. But the answers have always seemed well beyond our reach. Until now. "The ideas which had grown over two thousand years of observation have had to be radically revised.  In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves.  From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy itself is just one of billions of galaxies, in a universe that is infinite and expanding. But this is far from the end of a long history of inquiry.  Huge questions remain to be answered, before we can hope to have a complete picture of the universe we live in. "I want you to share my excitement at the discoveries, past and present, which have revolutionized the way we think. From the Big Bang to black holes, from dark matter to a possible Big Crunch, our image of the universe today is full of strange sounding ideas, and remarkable truths. The story of how we arrived at this picture is the story of learning to understand what we see." --STEPHEN HAWKING

EXCLUSIVE !!! Alien Warning Message Live on TV in UK-We Come to Warn you About your Race and your Planet.

Stephen Hawking with his fans

5 Mind-Blowing Facts About Black Holes!

They were actually the brainchild of John Mitchell.

I always attributed the discovery of black holes to Einstein.

While Einstein did revive the theory in 1916, John Mitchell actually thought of it first, back in 1783. The idea didn't go anywhere, though, because he didn't know what to do with it.

Mitchell started to develop the theory of black holes when he accepted Newton’s theory that light consists of small material particles, called photons. He wondered how the movement of these light particles is impacted by the gravitational pull of the star they are escaping, and what would happen to these particles if the gravitational pull was so strong that light could not escape.

Mitchell is also the founder of modern seismology, when he suggested earthquakes spread out as waves through the earth.

They literally pull the space around them.

Scientists float in zero gravity

Last night Scharf said to think of space as a rubber sheet. Think of the mass of a planet as a ball pushing down on the rubber sheet. The sheet of space becomes distorted and no longer has straight lines. This creates a gravitational pull, and explains why planets orbit the sun. 

Space can become increasingly distorted as an object's mass gets larger. This further distortion increases gravity and accelerates orbits, pulling anything around the object in faster and faster.

For example, the orbit of mercury around the sun is 30 miles per second, but the orbit of the stars close to the black hole at the center of our galaxy is 3,000 miles per second.

If this pull is strong enough, the orbiting object gets pulled into the larger object.

They come in different flavors.

Wikimedia Commons

We usually think of a black hole as just one kind, but astronomers have recently noticed that they come in different variations.

There are spinning black holes, electrical black holes, and black holes that do both. Regular black holes grow by swallowing matter, and spinning black holes are formed by the merging of two of them.

These black holes put out even more energy, because of their increased distortion of space. They make it impossible for matter near them to stand still or orbit slowly. A charged, spinning black hole can act as a particle accelerator.

One black hole called GRS 1915+105, about 35,000 light-years from Earth, is spinning more than 950 times per second.

They are incredibly dense.

Black holes have to hold a massive amount of mass in an incredibly small space to have the required gravity to pull light in. For example, to make a black hole with the mass of Earth, the entire planet would need to be squeezed down to a space 9 millimeters across.

A black hole with 4 million times the mass of our sun can fit into the space between Mercury and the Sun. Black holes in the center of galaxies could have a mass of 10 to 30 billion times the mass of our sun.

Having such a large mass in a tiny area means the black hole is incredibly dense, and the forces inside the black hole are incredibly strong.

They are noisy.

As everything around the black hole is pulled into its gaping maw, all of this stuff speeds up. The event horizon supercharges the speed of particles close to the speed of light.

Scharf said that when stuff falls through the center of the event horizon there is a gurgling sound.  This sound is the energy of motion being converted into sound waves. He described the noise as the sound you hear when water is released from a bath.

In 2003 astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, detected sound waves coming from a supermassive black hole 250 million light years away. 

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Stephen Hawking’s advice for twenty-first century grads: Embrace complexity

Advice for twenty-first century....



As the economy continues to chart its own tortuous, uncertain course, there seems to have been a fair amount of much-needed discussion on the kinds of skills new grads should possess. These skills of course have to be driven by market demand. As chemist George Whitesides asks for instance, what’s the point of getting a degree in organic synthesis in the United States if most organic synthesis jobs are in China?

Upcoming grads should indeed focus on what sells. But from a bigger standpoint, especially in the sciences, new skill sets are also inevitably driven by the course that science is taking at that point. The correlation is not perfect (since market forces still often trump science) but a few examples make this science-driven demand clear. For instance if you were growing up in the immediate post-WW2 era, getting a degree in physics would have helped. Because of its prestige and glut of government funding, physics was in the middle of one of its most exciting periods. New particles were literally streaming out of woodwork, giant particle accelerators were humming and federal and industrial labs were enthusiastically hiring. If you were graduating in the last twenty years or so, getting a degree in biology would have been useful because the golden age of biology was just entering its most productive years. Similarly, organic chemists enjoyed a remarkably fertile period in the pharmaceutical industry from the 50s through the 80s because new drugs were flowing out of drug companies at a rapid pace and scientists like R. B. Woodward were taking the discipline to new heights.

Demand for new grads is clearly driven by the market, but it also depends on the prevalence of certain scientific disciplines at specific time points. This in turn dictates the skills you should have; a physics-heavy market would need skills in mathematics and electronics for instance, a biology-heavy market would mop up people who can run Western blots and PCR. Based on this trend, what kind of skills and knowledge would best serve graduates in the twenty-first century?

To me the answer partly comes from an unlikely source: Stephen Hawking. A few years ago, Hawking was asked what he thought of the common opinion that the twentieth century was that of biology and the twenty-first century would be that of physics. Hawking replied that in his opinion the twenty-first century would be the “century of complexity”. That remark probably holds more useful advice for contemporary students than they realize since it points to at least two skills which are going to be essential for new college grads in the age of complexity: statistics and data visualization.

Let’s start with the need for statistics. Many of the most important fields of twenty-first century research including neuroscience, synthetic and systems biology, materials science and energy are inherently composed of multilevel phenomena that proliferate across different levels of complexity. While the reductionist zeitgeist of the twentieth century yielded great dividends, we are now seeing a movement away from strict reductionism toward emergent phenomena. While the word “emergence” is often thrown around as a fashionable place-card, the fact is that complex, emergent phenomena do need a different kind of skill set.

The hallmark of complexity is a glut of data. These days you often hear talk of the analysis of ‘Big Data’ as an independent field and you hear about the advent of ‘data scientists’. Big Data now has started making routine appearances in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, whether in the form of extensive multidimensional structure-activity relationship (SAR) datasets or as bushels of genomic sequence information. It’s also important in any number of diverse fields ranging from voter behavior to homeland security. Statistical analysis is undoubtedly going to be key to analyzing this data. In my own field of molecular modeling, statistical analysis is now considered routine in the analysis of virtual screening hits although it’s not as widely used as it should.

Statistics was of course always a useful science but now it’s going to be paramount; positions explicitly looking for ‘data scientists’ for instance specifically ask for a mix of programming skills and statistics. Sadly many formal college requirements still don’t include statistics and most scientists, if they do it at all, learn statistics on the job. For thriving in the new age of complexity this scenario has to change. Statistics must now become a mandatory part of science majors. A modest step in this direction is the publication of user-friendly, popular books on statistics like Charles Wheelan’s “Naked Statistics” or Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise” which have been quickly devoured by science-savvy readers. Some of these are good enough to be prescribed in college courses for statistics non-majors.

Along with statistics, the other important skill for students of complexity is going to be data visualization and formal college courses should also reflect this increasingly important skill set. Complex systems often yield data that’s spread over different levels of hierarchy and even different fields. It’s quite a challenge to visualize this data well. One resource that’s often recommended for data visualization is Edward Tufte’spioneering series of books. Tufte shows us how to present complex data often convoluted by the constrains of Excel spreadsheets. Pioneering developments in human-computer interaction and graphics will nonetheless ease visual access to complicated datasets. Sound data visualization is important not just to simply understand a multilayered system or problem but also to communicate that understanding to non-specialists. The age of complexity will inherently involve researchers from different disciplines working together. And while we are at it it’s also important to stress – especially to college grads – the value of being able to harmoniously co-exist with other professionals.

Hawking’s century of complexity will call upon all the tools of twentieth century problem solving along with a few more. Statistics and data visualization are going to be at the forefront of the data-driven revolution in complex systems. It’s time that college requirements reflected these important paradigms.

10 Awesome New Inventions You'll Never Hear About

    Start the Countdown

                                                             
                                                              10. Bat Suit

                                                    9. Military Mind Control

8. Pencil Pusher




7. Perpetual Printing




6. Insect Assailants




5. Seed Racer





4. Body Armor With Built-in Stun Gun, Flashlight and Cameraphone Charger



3. Portable Cat-toy Park





2. License Plate Flipper




1. Robot That Devours Insects and Rodents

Stephen Hawking on life, the universe and marriage

The painful end of Stephen Hawking's first marriage, and the bitter acrimony of his second, have been described in detail by the Cambridge cosmologist for the first time in his autobiography.

In a personal and revealing memoir to be published on Thursday, the world’s most famous living scientist opens up about the personal trauma of his time with Jane Wilde, a girl he met while he was still at Oxford, and a second with his nurse Elaine Mason, with whom he had a “passionate and tempestuous” relationship.

For More than half a century, Professor Hawking, 71, has juggled with some of the biggest questions in science while struggling with a crippling illness that has left him almost completely paralysed. He has suffered from motor neurone disease since the age of 21, when he was expected to live no more than a few years, but both women saved his life on several occasions. Jane lifted him out of deep depression when he was first diagnosed with the debilitating neurological condition, providing the hope of a future life and family, while Elaine came to his rescue more than once with her expert nursing skills, he writes.

In My Brief History, however, he also discloses how Jane became more depressed after the birth of their third child, in 1979, and found it difficult to cope with the demands of a young family and a husband confined to a wheelchair.

“She was worried I was going to die soon and wanted someone who would give her and the children support and marry her when I was gone,” Professor Stephen Hawking writes. “She found Jonathan Jones, a musician, and gave him a room in our apartment. I would have objected, but I too was expecting an early death and felt I needed someone to support the children when I was gone.”

Jane had refused to allow Swiss doctors to turn off Professor Hawking’s life support on a visit to Geneva in 1985 when he developed pneumonia, and the additional stress of nursing him back to health told on their relationship. Professor Hawking, meanwhile, became increasingly unhappy with her close relationship with Jonathan. “In the end I could stand the situation no longer, and in 1990 I moved out to a flat with one of my nurses, Elaine Mason,” he says.

In 1995, Professor Hawking married Elaine. But within a few years his second marriage also came under strain and they divorced in 2007 – but not before Cambridgeshire Police had investigated allegations of abuse by his wife, claims he described as false. “My marriage to Elaine was passionate and tempestuous. We had our ups and downs, but Elaine’s being a nurse saved my life,” Professor Hawking writes.

In his book, Professor Stephen Hawking also recounts his early childhood and student days at Oxford, through to his first scientific breakthroughs in the study of black holes and quantum theory. Professor Hawking’s early love of toy trains evolved into an urge to understand how things work, even such intangibles as black holes and baby universes, and to bask in the power of such knowledge.

“If you understand how the Universe operates, you control it, in a way,” Professor Hawking says in the memoir, which he wrote at a painstaking speed of about one or two words a minute by twitching his deteriorating cheek muscles at a movement detector attached to a computer screen.

It was in his best-selling book A Brief History of Time that Professor Hawking raised the possibility of physicists coming up with a “theory of everything” to explain all the forces of nature, and “then we would truly know the mind of God”. The book, first published in 1988, sold 10 million copies.

“Physics was always the most boring subject at school because it was so easy and obvious. Chemistry was much more fun because unexpected things, such as explosions, kept happening,” Professor Stephen Hawking writes. “But physics and astronomy offered the hope of understanding where we came from and why we are here. I wanted to fathom the depths of the Universe.”

Despite being confined to a wheelchair and unable to talk, Professor Hawking says he is “quietly satisfied” with his life: “My disability has not been a serious handicap in my scientific work. In fact, in some ways I guess it has been an asset: I haven’t had to lecture or teach undergraduates, and I haven’t had to sit on tedious committees. So I have been able to devote myself completely to research.”

He ends his memoir with this sentence:


“It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics.I’m happy if I have added something to our understanding of the Universe.” - Stephen Hawking.




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5 Things you Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly the world's most recognizable theoretical physicist, but let's take a look at five things you might not know about the longtime Cambridge professor:

1. HE PUTS HIS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS

When Stephen Hawking thinks he's right about a scientific theory, he doesn't back down, and he's not afraid to wager on himself.

Perhaps the most famous of Hawking's bets came in 1997, when he found himself in an argument with fellow theoretical physicists Kip Thorne and John Preskill. Hawking and Thorne contended that the information carried in Hawking radiation in black holes must be "new," a notion that would have required rewriting quantum physics. Preskill, on the other hand, felt that it was the view of black holes that needed rewriting. Since Hawking had likened the fate of information in a black hole to "burning an encyclopedia," the men wagered a set of encyclopedias on the outcome of their argument.

In 2004, Stephen Hawking presented a paper that contradicted his previously held beliefs, so he conceded the bet and presented Preskill with a copy of Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia.

This bet wasn't Stephen Hawking's first. In his bestseller A Brief History of Time, he described a similar bet he made with Thorne in 1975. Hawking had long been a believer in the existence of black holes, but he wanted an "insurance policy" that would give him some consolation if his theories turned out to be bunk. The wager: if black holes didn't exist, Thorne had to cough up a four-year subscription to the British satirical magazine Private Eye for Hawking as a consolation prize. If black holes existed, Hawking had to cover a one-year subscription to Penthouse for Thorne. Hawking eventually made good on his end of the wager and revealed that he had sent Thorne his skin-mag subscription "much to the outrage of Kip's liberated wife."

2. THE POPE DIDN'T ALWAYS SUPPORT HIS WORK

In 2006 Stephen Hawking revealed in a lecture that Pope John Paul II had discouraged the scientist from studying the beginning of the universe. According to Hawking, he was attending a cosmology conference at the Vatican when the Pope warned that while studying the universe was an acceptable pursuit, its origins were the work of God and shouldn't be explored.

Hawking took the Pope's grief in stride, though. He joked to his lecture audience that he was glad the Pope hadn't known about the paper Hawking had presented at the conference, which dealt with "“ you guessed it "“ the beginning of the universe. Hawking playfully explained, "I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."

3. THERE'S A STORY BEHIND Stephen Hawking's VOICE

Although Hawking is English, his computerized voice synthesizer makes him speak with an American accent. What gives? The voice synthesizer Hawking uses, a DECTalk DTC01, is actually a pretty old piece of equipment from 1986. The synthesizer is bulky and fragile, but Hawking has his reasons for not upgrading. He has said, "I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it."

Stephen Hawking did briefly consider switching to a different machine that would have given him a French accent but said he decided against it because he thought his wife would divorce him. Hawking's voice box also got a chance to "sing" last year on a A Glorious Dawn, a Jack White-produced vinyl single released as a tribute on what would have been Carl Sagan's 75th birthday.

4. HE'S HAD A NICE TV CAREER

How many scientists can add "Appeared on hit TV shows" to the bottom of their curriculum vitae? In 1994 Hawking made an appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which he played a hologram of himself who was locked in a poker game with holograms of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton.

In 1999 The Simpsons wanted to use Hawking in the episode "They Saved Lisa's Brain," Hawking agreed not only to allow the producers to use his image but to do his own voicework. Here's Hawking talking about his first appearance in Springfield:

Hawking would go on to do more guest spots on The Simpsons, and he also appeared on Futurama.





5. RICHARD BRANSON HELPED HIM FLOAT

In late 2006, Hawking publicly advocated for human colonization of other planets and declared that his next goal was to go into space. He even joked "Maybe Richard Branson will help me." In 2007, the billionaire entrepreneur made it happen. Branson covered all of the costs for Hawking to go on a flight that made the scientist the first quadriplegic to float in zero gravity. Here's video of the flight and Hawking talking about the experience:

Stephen Hawking : Life Beyond Death

Stephen Hawking

For a man with superhuman powers of thinking it might seem a bit greedy to seek more, but Stephen Hawking is trying to cram as much into his life as possible.

“If I had to choose a super hero to be, I would pick Superman. He’s everything that I’m not.”

The genius of this world famous Cambridge Professor isn’t limited to his academic work on theoretical cosmology. He knows how to command attention, make you laugh and understand a little of his world, trapped by motor neurone disease.

Stephen Hawking

Hawking has made a film about himself and it is a touching glimpse of an extraordinary life. His first wife Jane is mesmorising as she talks about falling in love with a brilliant student coming to terms with the discovery of his dreadful illness.

His sister Mary reveals their chaotic, stimulating childhood surrounded by books and filled with lively argument. His colleagues and former students talk of caring for him in return for learning from him. Colleagues explain just how special his thinking and discoveries still remain.

And his carers reveal the joys and frustrations of living with a man who can travel to the edge of space in his mind and yet is unable to move, talk or breathe for himself. It leaves you with dozens of questions.

Strangest interview

We meet in Cambridge, at the gala premiere of Hawking, surrounded by his family and friends. It is striking that his first wife Jane is there, with son Tim who works in marketing and Lucy, a children’s author, who I soon realise I met at university twenty five years ago.

They all find the screening emotional and it is no wonder given how it talks so openly about the family’s happiness and divorce. Friends and academics had come from all over the world, including Hawking’s close friend Professor Kip Thorne and the man who devised his speech computer Walt Waltosz.

I am there to do an interview and field audience questions after the screening.

But this is the strangest interview I have ever done. Breaking all normal journalistic rules I have had to send all my questions in advance.

Before we have even met he decides which few of them he will answer, and undergoes the painstaking process of composing his response. When I greet the professor his assistant Jonathan picks up his hand for me to shake.

I try to make eye contact and look for any movement in his face. He smiles, and that makes me instantly relieved. While most of us take one second to speak three words it takes Stephen Hawking at least one minute.

‘Threat of an early death’

With his Daughter

 He controls a computer by twitching his cheek muscles, scrolling through letters and words which are then spoken by his now famous voice synthesiser. Devised many years ago when computerised voices were rather primitive he could have it improved anytime if he wanted.

But Hawking has grown fond of his voice and knows the power of its sound. If the disease ever gets to those cheek muscles he will be unable to communicate forever, save the smiles in his lips and eyes.

Hawking has lived for almost fifty years knowing he could die at any moment and I ask what affect that has on his thoughts and behaviour.

“The doctor who diagnosed me with ALS, or motor neurone disease, told me it would kill me in two or three years.”, he says, “All my life, I have lived with the threat of an early death. So I hate wasting time.”

It is hard not to take that answer as some sort of chastisement, but I try not to think he referring to me.

In the film Stephen Hawking wonders if he is as famous for his disabilities as he is for his discoveries. He is also honest about enjoying the glamorous consequences of fame. He clearly enjoys being feted, traveling and meeting world leaders.

“I enjoyed the media attention, and witnessing everyday people getting more involved in understanding the physics of our universe”, he says in the film.

But he also confronts the downside and intrusion into his private life. The low point, he says, was the breakdown of his second marriage being accompanied by unsubstantiated and untrue allegations in the press about him being physically abused. ”

To my mind this was a gross invasion of our privacy,” he says “and was an extremely hurtful and damaging experience for us both. Unfortunately being in the public eye can have its drawbacks.”

‘Life after death’

Stephen Hawking has always been blunt about not believing in God. His work is about how the universe created itself, how there was no need for God even in sparking the Big Bang.

But for a man whose theories are so beyond the imagination of most people, and whose conclusions about black holes have never actually been observed I have to ask him about consciousness and the mind.

Does he think it is possible they could survive after physical death? Hawking gives a tantalising answer. “I think the brain is like a program in the mind, which is like a computer. So it’s theoretically possible to copy the brain onto a computer, and so provide a form of life after death.”

However just when you imagine he’s going to reveal a theory of how this could be done he leaves your hopes dashed, explaining this is way beyond our present capabilities. “I think the conventional afterlife is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark.”

Stephen Hawking with President Barack Obama

Stephen Hawking is passionate about reaching mass audiences. In the film he explains his desire when thinking about “A Brief History of Time” to write an international bestseller about the universe, the kind of book people would buy in airports and take on holiday.

This is a man whose academic work has left halls full of physicists stunned in the past but even now he tells me “A Brief History of Time” is the book he enjoyed writing the most.

“I tried to share with the public my excitement about the progress we have made, in understanding the laws of nature, and the history of the universe. In particular, whether it had a creator.”

Next year Hawking may get closer to his discoveries with a trip into space itself. Sir Richard Branson has offered him the only free trip on his commercial spaceship Virgin Galactic.

Stephen Hawking has told Branson to hurry up, as his time on earth is limited. You cannot meet Stephen Hawking without wishing he gets to do it. You just know something amazing will come from it.

Returning to his Superman dream he adds “I would love to be able to be to leap from building to building. And I had a crush on Margo Kidder who played Lois Lane.” That infectious smile spreads again.

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