Tag: Stephen Hawking

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Bill Gates predicts the future of global health

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates lays out his predictions for global health in 2040 during a lecture given at the Cambridge Union in honor of Stephen Hawking. (Cambridge Union via YouTube)

What’s the shape of global health to come? Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates issued two hopeful predictions for the year 2040 today during a lecture given at the late physicist Stephen Hawking’s home university in his honor.

Spoiler alert: Gates says insights into how our microbiome works, and efforts to cut down on infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV, will make life dramatically better for wide swaths of the world’s population by 2040.

Gates drew upon his experience as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — and upon data relating to global health trends — to support the case he laid out in the Professor Hawking Fellowship Lecture, presented by the Cambridge Union.

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Stephen Hawking gets a cosmic sendoff

Stephen Hawking’s memorial stone depicts a black hole as well as an equation that describes the temperature of a black hole’s Hawking radiation. (Westminster Abbey via Twitter)

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking’s ashes were interred among the greats of British science at Westminster Abbey today — and to mark his passing, his message of peace and hope was beamed to the nearest known black hole.

Black holes were a favorite subject for the theorist, who died in March at the age of 76 after dealing with progressive disability for decades. His memorial stone on the abbey’s floor, which is sure to become the site of scientific pilgrimages for decades to come, is engraved with the outlines of a black hole as well as an equation that describes a black hole’s Hawking radiation.

Today’s memorial ceremony was anything but dark. Nobel-winning scientists and Oscar-winning celebrities joined Hawking’s family and more than 1,000 others to pay tribute to the physicist.

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Stephen Hawking’s ‘Final Theory’ gets published

Belgian physicist Thomas Hertog meets with Stephen Hawking in 2015. (KU Leuven / Facebook)

Weeks after the death of British physicist Stephen Hawking, his final research paper on the nature of our universe and its place in the wider multiverse was published today in the Journal of High-Energy Physics.

Now it’s up to his co-author, Belgian physicist Thomas Hertog, to keep an eye out for observational evidence for or against Hawking’s “Final Theory.”

The pre-print version of the paper — titled “A Smooth Exit From Eternal Inflation?” — has been circulating for months. It addresses the rather mind-blowing idea that our universe is merely one of the many possible manifestations in a multiverse.

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Even after death, Stephen Hawking stirs up a fuss

Physicist Stephen Hawking visited the Large Hadron Collider’s underground tunnel in 2013. (CERN Photo / Laurent Egli)

The ashes of the late British physicist Stephen Hawking will get a fitting resting place in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

But you could argue that the true monuments to Hawking’s memory are his books and theoretical papers, delving into the nature of black holes, the big bang and other cosmic mysteries. And as was often the case during his life, the last paper he completed is stirring up a fuss just days after his death.

Hawking’s so-called “Final Theory” is a paper written with Belgian collaborator Thomas Hertog, and titled “A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?” It hasn’t yet been published in a journal, but it’s said to be under review and is available for inspection on the ArXiv pre-print server.

The paper focuses on hypotheses having to do with cosmic inflation and the idea that our own cosmos is just one of many universes in a multiverse.

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Celebrities and tech titans salute Stephen Hawking

The cast of “The Big Bang Theory” gathers around physicist Stephen Hawking, a guest star. (BigBangTheory via Twitter)

Few luminaries bridged the frontiers of science and pop culture as completely as physicist Stephen Hawking, and that fact was as obvious as 2+2=4 in the tributes that were tweeted as word of his death spread.

Hawking played himself as a wheelchair-riding brainiac on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “The Big Bang Theory,” and popped up as an animated character on “The Simpsons” and “Futurama.” He was also a frequent host or guest star for a plethora of science documentaries.

Check out a sampling of the tributes, starting with Microsoft’s past and present CEOs, Bill Gates and Satya Nadella.

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RIP Stephen Hawking, world’s most famous scientist

British physicist Stephen Hawking, shown here delivering a speech at George Washington University in 2008, has passed away at the age of 76. (NASA Photo / Paul E. Alers)

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who became famous for his way-out theories and for overcoming debilitating disease, has died at the age of 76, his children said in a statement tonight.

“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” according to the statement, which was distributed by British news media and attributed to Lucy, Robert and Timothy Hawking. “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.”

The statement said Hawking died peacefully in his home near Cambridge University.

“His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world,” the children said. “He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”

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Stephen Hawking warns about hell on Earth

British physicist Stephen Hawking delved into cosmic mysteries in a Discovery Channel series titled “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.” (Credit: Discovery Channel)

British physicist Stephen Hawking has warned repeatedly that Earth could well be doomed, but his latest warning gives us no more than 583 years before we get burned on Earth.

During a video clip aired at the Tencent WE Summit on Nov. 5, the 75-year-old scientist said that humanity would have to deal with exponential growth in the centuries ahead. He noted that the world’s population has been doubling every 40 years.

“This exponential growth cannot continue into the next millennium,” Hawking, who has been coping with neurodegenerative disease for decades, said in his computer-synthesized voice. “By the year 2600, the world’s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot.

“This is untenable,” Hawking said as a planet-sized ball of fire blazed on the screen.

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Stephen Hawking lays out space timetable

Physicist Stephen Hawking addresses the Starmus Festival via video. (Starmus via YouTube)

British physicist Stephen Hawking has repeatedly warned us that we have just a century or two to move off Earth, and he just shared his vision for how to do it.

Hawking laid out a timetable this week during a lecture titled “The Future of Humanity,” presented to an audience of 3,000 attending the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway.

He said a base could be established on the moon within 30 years to serve as a gateway to the rest of the solar system. Settlers could follow up with a Mars base within 50 years. But Hawking went on to call for setting an even speedier schedule for space exploration.

The 75-year-old, wheelchair-riding physicist recalled President John F. Kennedy’s vision of putting Americans on the moon by the end of the 1960s – a deadline that was met with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

“A goal of a base on the moon by 2020, and a manned landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite the space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy’s target did in the ’60s,” he said, using his computer-generated voice. “The spin-off to this would be an increase in the public recognition of science generally.”

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Stephen Hawking: Leave Earth in 100 years

British physicist Stephen Hawking looks into technologies that could help humanity create a second home beyond Earth within the next century. (Credit: Discovery Channel)

In an upcoming TV documentary, British physicist Stephen Hawking revives his prediction that humanity will have to spread out a new home in space within 100 years in order to ensure the species’ survival.

But this time, he’s looking into how it can be done.

The two-part documentary, titled “Expedition New Earth,” is due to air on BBC Two as part of the British network’s revived “Tomorrow’s World” TV series.

Hawking has repeatedly warned of the potential threats facing humanity, including nuclear war, rapid climate change, potential pandemics, catastrophic asteroid strikes and even a robot uprising. That echoes similar warnings issued by Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX.

 

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Balloons for Stephen Hawking’s 75th birthday

Party balloons and a spacey view: Not a bad way to mark Stephen Hawking’s birthday. (NEAR via YouTube)

Famed British physicist Stephen Hawking has long wanted to go into space, so what better way to celebrate his 75th birthday than sending him a greeting from near-space?

The greeting comes courtesy of a stratospheric balloon experiment, executed at the Idaho-Oregon border by an Boise-based amateur science group called Near Space Education and Research, or NEAR.

The balloon-borne platform was festooned with a “Happy Birthday, Stephen Hawking,” plus a couple of party balloons for the occasion.

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