Page Title

Stephen Hawking

Who was Stephen Hawking?

Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. He was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, UK,where he was raised with his two sisters, Phillipa and Mary, and his adopted brother, Edward. Even though Stephen was known as "Einstein" by his classmates throughout his years in school, he was never a very good student academically, being told by one of his teachers that he would "never amount to anything". This, however, didn't stop him from going to University of Cambridge and getting a PhD. While in University, he studied applied mathematics and theoretical physics, stating that the academic work was "ridiculously easy", passing through very easily. Throughout his career, he worked with many differnet other scientists to create different theories and formulae, with one of his most notable works being on Hawking Radiation. He would also go on achieving several different awards throughout his life, such of which being the Albert Einstien award, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and the Adams Prize. From his works, he has become a very well known physicist and has made many breakthroughs, advancing science to a whole new level. Because of his works, he was given the honour of being elected the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a spot that had also been held by Sir Isaac Newton.

In his personal life, Stephen married Jane Wilde, an English author and teacher, in 1965. They had 3 children (Robert, Lucy, and Timothy), whom they raised in Cambridge. Lucy (or Catherine) grew up to become a journalist, novelist, and science educator. Her main focus is to try to teach children about science, writing several children's books and giving talks to children about science. Robert Hawking originally aspired to be a scientist like his father, but ended up growing up to become a software engineer. He studied at the University of Oxford, and now lives in Seattle, working for Microsoft. Robert was the youngest of the three children, being born in 1979. As a child, he enjoyed playing chess with his father, and would occasionally play pranks on him, integrating swear words into his speech synthesizer, messing up what he was trying to say. Most likely because of his love for playing pranks and board games and such as a child, he now works at LEGO and has graduated from the Exter Univeristy in English from Spanish and French. Although raising a wonderful family together, Stephen and Jane divorced in 1990, but still stayed close even after the divorce. Stephen later remarried to Elaine Mason, one of his nurses, in 1995, although later divorcing again in 2006. After Jane's marriage with Hawking, in 2007, she wrote a book titled Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen about her relationship with Stephen. Her book was later turned into a movie in 2014, being released as The Theory of Everything.

One of the things that Stephen Hawking was well known for was his disability. In 1963, at the age of 21, Stephen was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, or ALS, and had told that he would only be able to live for 2 more years. Because of this, he became depressed, and having going through university at the time did not help. Over the years, his disability would wear him down, slowing paralyzing him and reducing his physical abilities to move most of his muscles. He would become very independant, and would refuse the help of most people, trying to make it through it himself. He didn't want his disability to get in the way of his love of science, and would continue to persue it no matter what. It would also take him several years to finally start using a wheelchair, having only been using crutches. Along with all of his physical deteriorations, his voice would also start to be lost, making it harder for him to communicate and only being able to be understood by his close friends and family. In 1985, Stephen had developed pneumonia, which at the state he was currently in, was life threatening. Because of this, emergency surgery had to be done on him. This resulted in a tracheotomy, removing his ability to talk entirely. The computer device that he had used afterwards was given to him by Walter Woltosz, who was the CEO of Words Plus. It was originally developed for his mother, who also had Lou Gehrig's disease, but was later improved to help Stephen. As he slowly began to lose the ability of his hands, it was updated to allow for it to recognize the movement of his cheek muscles, making it easier for him to use the device. It was once again adapted by Intel to allow for it to recognize the movement of face muscles and brain patterns, decreasing the possibility of him contracting another disease.

Unfortunately, as of March 14, 2018, Stephen Hawking passed away. His family stated that he passed peacefully surrounded by people that he loves. In his honour, the Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge set their flag to fly at half-mast, and had students and teachers a book of condolences.

Contributions

Throughout his life, Stephen Hawking had many breakthroughs in science, drastically improving our understanding of the universe. His main field of study was theoretical physics, working a lot with black holes, general relativity, and the big bang. Here are just a few of his contributions throughout the years:

Hawking Radiation ▼

Hawking radiation is a type of radiation emitted by black holes all throughout their lifetime. It is caused by a quantum occurence within the event horizon of the black hole, resulting in it to gradually shrink over time. On a quantum level, the radiation occurs because of a particle/antiparticle pair being created by the immense gravitational energy of the black hole. These two particles then get shot out at opposite directions (one heading into the black hole and one heading out), lowering the mass ever so slightly of the entire object. How one of the particles is capable to escaping the incredible gravitational force is beyond our knowledge, as gravity in quantum physics is still unclear to scientists. The amount of mass and energy lost everytime this occurs can be calculated by Einstein's famous equation: E = MC².

Because the particle/antiparticle split happen and the black hole slowly looses mass and energy, it must have its own entropy. To find the entropy of a black hole, you can use one of the many variations of Hawking's formula: S_BH = kA ÷ 4ℓ_p². In his equation, k is Boltzmann's constant (the average kinetic energy of particles within a gaseous matter relative to its temperature), A is the area of the event horizon of the black hole (calculated by the formula 4πr²), and ℓ_p is the planck length (a very, very small unit of length). The subscripted BH doesn't serve too much of a purpose, and is thought to either mean Black Hole or Bekenstein Hawking. This equation was first created by Jacob Bekenstein in 1973, but later revised by Stephen Hawking in 1974.

Information Paradox ▼

Everything in the universe has its own information. The information, in this case, is the arrangement of different types of atoms coming together to make one large entity, which is what mostly everything comprises of. One of the most important laws of physics states that this information will never be lost, as the atoms will always conserve the information of whatever entity they are holding the information of. However, in roughly the mid 70s, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein proposed the idea that information will be lost in a black hole as it will be destroyed once in it. This raised a paradox that scientists still aren't sure about today, but has raised great debate over the years.

Hawking Energy ▼

In 1915, Einstein published a theory known as the general theory of relativity. It describes the gravitation of modern physics by combining sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation and special relativity (a theory that describes the relationship between space and time). Even with this theory being proven several times over again and having it expanded upon by later scientists, there are still things that are very hard to understand within it. One of the hardest things about the theory is mass in general relativity. It is such a complex thing that even mass in special relativity is known to be an easier concept to understand. One of Hawking's theories revolves around trying to make sense of it, proposing the idea of what is now known as Hawking Energy or Hawking Mass. His theory, along with a few formulae, are used as a way of understanding light waves and curvatures within general relativity, reinforcing Einstein's theory and making it more understandable.

Hawking-Hartle State ▼

The big bang theory is a well known theory about how the universe came to be. The theory states that before everything came to be, the entire universe was all compressed into a tiny volume of space, roughly a few billion times smaller than an atom. Before the expansion of the universe began, we are still unclear on what exactly happened or what it was like, leaving it as one of the largest mysteries about the universe. However, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle had decided to try and make sense of what it was like, creating the Hawking-Hartle state. In this state, time would not exist, leaving only space. Because of this, trying to figure out the origin of the tiny speck of the universe would be pointless as the origins of things can only exist in space time, leaving the Hawking-Hartle state with no origin. Furthermore, the beginning of everthing is also thought to be a gravitational singularity, or an area in space time with an infinite gravitational field.

Primordial Fluctuations ▼

After the big bang occurred, the universe went through several stages to get to where it is now. One of the stages it had gone through is what is known as primordial fluctuations. These fluctuations are believed to have been quantum fluctuations (a change in the amount of energy one point in space has), leading to the creation of all the stars and planets in the universe. These quantum fluctuations occurred because the rate of growth that the universe had experienced had gotten much faster in the cosmic inflation (the time between 10 and 36 seconds after the big bang). This lead the quantum fluctuations to occur, changing the conditions of the universe at the time; therefore allowing stars, planets, etc. to start developing.

Hawking-Penrose Theorem ▼

Scattered throughout the universe, there are spots known as gravitational singularities. These singularities are places where the laws of physics and gravity break down, and the gravitational field becomes infinite. In the Hawking-Penrose theorem, they state that under these conditions is one of the ways that general relativity can break down. Singularities can be found in places like the center of certain black holes, where the density and gravitational pull is almost infinite. They can also be found at the beginning of the universe, before the big bang, as Stephen Hawking stated in his part of the theorem.

No Boundary Condition ▼

The Earth, like most planetary objects, is a speheroid. Being a spheroid, Earth has no starting point, meaning any point on the Earth can not be traced back to one specific point. Because of this, it also means that Earth has no boundaries or edges, meaning we could technically walk around it in a straight line forever without ever falling off or leaving the planet all together. The no boundary condition, proposed by Stephen Hawking and James Hartle, is a model that is based off of just that - a place where there are no boundaries. One of the ways Hawking had described his theory is by relating it to different directions on Earth. Anywhere on the planet, you can travel north as far up as you can. Once you get to the North Pole, however, moving north loses its meaning as technically, you would only be able to move south. This can be compared to the Universe by replacing the directions with time. Right now, time is moving forward continuously. At the big bang, however, when everything was billions of times smaller than a subatomic particle, time as we know it loses its meaning. This lead both Hawking and Hartle to create their model of the universe based around that.

Even though Stephen Hawking and James Hartle had worked very hard on proving the existence of their model, it was not received by scientists as something plausible. Most people often think that it is unlikely that it is true and can be proven, and that it can't be used as a basis of any other theories. This has made it harder to be accepted by the general public, and has gained little to no popularity over the years.

Thank you, Stephen Hawking, for everything you have done. You have made the universe a place that humans have been able to understand more than ever, and you will be remembered by many as one of the world's greatest scientists. I am glad to have been able to live at the same time as you, and learn so much from your works.

Tribute to Stephen Hawking