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... Royal Society, Britains most prestigious scientific body, founded in 1660. Having just turned thirty-two years old, he was one of the youngest scientists to receive this honor (Hewitt). If black holes were slowly turning their mass into radiation, might a black hole eventually evaporate into space?
Hawking published a paper entitled Black Hole Explosions? . The paper looked at this possibility. Hawking believed that the ordinary kind of black hole, made from a massive star, pulled in matter from surrounding space much faster than it could lose it through emitting radiation (Susskind). Starting in 1971, however, Hawking started to think about another kind of black hole. Anything can create enough pressure on some matter can create a black hole -- not just the collapsing mass of a huge star (Boslough).
In particular, Hawking began looking back at the Big Bang. In the mid- 1970 s, Hawking had another one of the great leaps of intuition that seemed to mark each new stage in his career. What would happen, he thought, if the sum of histories technique (A technique that involves calculating and mapping all of a particles possible paths and assigning them probabilities. The result is a kind of map of the particles possible presence in space-time. ) was applied not to a single particle but to the evolution of the entire universe out of the Big Bang? Hawking constructed a model based on a single particle moving in the kind of curved space-time that Einstein had described.
When he determined the most probable path for such an ideal particle, the result was a space-time that was curved and boundless (Wagner). According to this model of the universe, if you move for enough in time from the Big Bang, the universe expands to a very large size. After reaching a maximum size, i begins to collapse until it is compressed to a very high density. This state, the opposite of the Big Bang, has been dubbed the Big Crunch. A Big Crunch is just a Big Bang approached from the other side (Wagner). By the early 1980 s Hawking realized that he needed greater financial security.
He had to have money both to pay for his full-time nursing care and to put his daughter through college. Around the end of 1982 Hawking decided that writing a popular science book might go a long way toward solving his money problems (Boslough). Hawking also felt that writing a popular science book would give him a chance to explain things in his own words and correct what he thought were the distortions that had crept into popular accounts of his work. Hawking decided to call his book A Brief History of Time. In it Hawking describes how scientists have, step by step, uncovered the secrets of the universe and of the atoms from which all matter is made.
The result is challenging reading, but Hawking had taken the advice about not having sums in his book: the only equation that appears is Einsteins classic E = mc^ 2. Instead of equations, Hawking relies on analogies and diagrams to show relationships and movement in space and time (Hewitt). By the summer of 1988 A Brief History of Time had been on the American best-seller lists for four months and had sold half a million copies. Hawking told one interviewer: I am pleased a book on science competes with the memoirs of pop stars. Maybe there is still hope for the human race. I am very pleased for it to reach the general public, not just academics.
It is important that we all have some idea of what science is about because it plays such a big role in modern society. (Wagner) The popularity of A Brief History of Time encouraged Bantam Books in 1993 to publish a collection of Hawkings earlier writings -- essays, talks, and interviews -- with the title Black Holes and Baby Universes. While A Brief History of Time focused on scientific matters, the new book includes autobiography and even a discussion of Hawkings favorite music in addition to the exploration of scientific questions (Wagner). Superstardom and personal problems overshadowed Hawkings scientific work for a while, but they did not bring it to an end. As the 1990 s began, Hawking continues to play a part in the finding of a theory of everything that might explaining how the forces we find in the universe today had arisen, and how they might be covered by a single, comprehensive explanation (Hewitt). As mentioned above, in 1979, Hawking was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. In the early stages of the disease, he couldnt walk far, so he needed an apartment near the Cambridge campus.
Finding a convenient place was difficult and university administrators were uncooperative. A few years and some productive research later, Hawkings disease had progressed to the point that he couldnt negotiate stairs. People were more helpful finding a better place then. He needed more and more assistance, from helpful students and then part-time nurses and finally full-time nursing care.
Between 1965 and 1970 Hawking worked on singularities in the theory of general relativity and devised new mathematical techniques to study this area of cosmology. From 1970, he began to apply his previous ideas to the study of black holes. Using quantum theory and general relativity, he was able to show that black holes can emit radiation. His success with proving this made him work from that time on combining the theory of general relativity with quantum theory.
In 1971, he investigated the creation of the Universe and predicted that, following the big bang, many objects as heavy as 10 tons but only the size of a proton would be created. These mini black holes have large gravitational attraction by the laws of general relativity, while the laws of quantum mechanics would apply to objects that small. Another remarkable achievement of Hawkings using these same techniques was his no boundary proposal made in 1983. He explains this would mean that both time and space are finite in extent, but the do not have any boundary or edge. There would be no singularities, and the laws of science would hold everywhere, including at the beginning of the universe. In 1982 he began writing a popular book on cosmology and by 1984 he had produced a first draft of A Brief History of Time.
However, Hawking suffered further illness in 1985. He caught pneumonia and was on life support in a hospital in Geneva. The doctor there told his wife it was not worth keeping him on life support. His wife flew him back to Cambridge where a surgeon there carried out a tracheotomy. An operation that saved his life but took away his voice. He was given a computer system to enable him to have an electronic voice.
It was with these difficulties that he revised the draft of A Brief History of Time which was published in 1988. The book broke all sales records. It had been on The Sunday Times bestseller list 237 weeks by May 1995. This feat is recorded in the 1998 Guiness Book of Records. He has also published several other books including 300 Years of Gravity and Black Holes and Baby Universes. The scientist appears for work a Cambridge University about 11 a.
m. each day and works into the evening conferring with students, correcting papers, attending lectures, and writing. He also lectures to crowded audiences. The transformers and chargers for the batteries on his 300 -pound wheelchair contribute to the 22 pieces of luggage necessary when Hawking travels.
Able to see, swallow, and smile he is otherwise limited to triggering a wheelchair button with one hand. Doctors predicted decades ago that he only had a few years to live. As a result, he became more determined to get the most from life. He didnt die.
Instead, as his condition worsened, his reputation in scientific circles continued to grow, as if to show the minds repudiation of the bodys limitations. He has been labeled the smartest person in the world. What has the work of Stephen Hawking added to twentieth-century science? Hawkings key discoveries about singularities, black holes, and the Big Bang did more than explain puzzling cosmic phenomena.
By bringing together the very different worlds of relativity and quantum mechanics, Hawking created a new way to look at the shape of space and time and the history and possible future of the universe. He also did valuable work in making the discoveries of the new physics accessible to a wide range of readers. The fact that these achievements came despite a crippling disease that would have devastated most people has, in my opinion, made Hawking a genuine hero and role model, not only for the disabled people, but for all of us. Whatever else he may achieve, Stephen Hawking has already advanced the amount of human understanding.
Hawking sees the goal of the future and calls us all to it: If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, Philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God. (Hawking) Bibliography: John Boslough, Stephen Hawking's Universe. William Morrow and Company, 1985 Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, 1988 Susskind, Leonard. "Black Holes and the Information Paradox. " Scientific American.
April 1997. Page 52 (6). web Hewitt, Paul G. Conceptual Physics. 2 nd ed. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992. Wagner, Jane.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. New York: Harper and Row, 1996.
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