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The great scientist Stephen Hawking passed away on the night of March 14th. Hawking was seriously ill, but despite his illness, he made a huge contribution to the development of science and was able to tell us about complex things in simple terms.
IQ is for fools
Hawking did not know what his IQ was and never even cared about it. He was sure that only losers were interested in this indicator.
Our entire planet is an aquarium with convex walls
Stephen Hawking believed that all of us, each person, is just a fish living in an aquarium with convex walls. And we judge the world distortedly, because we look at it from the inside, not being able to study it from the outside.
However, despite this theory, Hawking continued to explore the Universe, destroying all stereotypes about it.
The universe came from "nothing" and gravity
Hawking argued that there is no global mystery in the origin of the universe. She could very well have spawned herself out of "nothing." According to the Big Bang theory, at first it existed as a tiny but very hot particle with enormous density, infinite mass and, as a result, infinite gravity.
About 14 billion years ago, it exploded and created the space of our universe.
It is noteworthy that Hawking did many of his studies when he could not move and speak.
Stephen Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The disease made itself felt when the future great physicist was 18 years old. Doctors predicted the young man 2.5 years of life, but Hawking was able to live up to 76 years.
He talked about science easily and simply, as something taken for granted. And he dreamed that his books would be popular with people far from science, and sold in kiosks installed in airport waiting rooms.
Illusion is the enemy of knowledge
According to Hawking, the main enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. It seems to us that we know everything, while the world around us presents more and more surprises. A few decades ago, even science fiction could not assume the existence of black holes in the universe, and today their presence is recognized by the scientific community.
According to Hawking, research and discovery is much more interesting than how much money you get for it.
Paradise is not on Earth
When asked where he would like to go, Hawking replied that such a place is definitely not on Earth. According to the scientist, if he had a free couple of billion dollars, he would rent a spaceship and fly away from here.
Although the physicist could not fly into space, he did experience weightlessness. This opportunity was provided to him by the American company Zero Gravity, allowing Hawking to ride on a specially equipped aircraft, which, gaining altitude, “dives” down, and at this moment weightlessness arises on board for 25 seconds.
The past is just a spectrum of possibilities
According to Hawking, it doesn't matter what memories we have of the past. After all, events in the past do not occur in any particular way. They happen in every possible way. And, until an outside observer appears, they simply hover in an indefinite state.
This idea underlies quantum mechanics, which Albert Einstein categorically rejected.
“God does not play dice,” said Einstein.
However, Hawking, citing black holes as an example, argued that the Lord not only plays dice, but also throws them where no one can see them.
Time is relative
Where Hawking absolutely agreed with Einstein, however, was that time is a relative unit. And the closer an object is to Earth, the slower time flows for it.
Hawking advocated that this circumstance be taken into account when programming GPS systems, which should help to avoid errors that, according to the scientist, can accumulate at a speed of 10 km per day when determining global positions.
Fatalism is a trick
Stephen Hawking did not believe that everything in our life is predetermined, and jokingly remarked that even pronounced fatalists still look around before crossing the road.
The physicist himself considered himself an optimist and, despite the fact that he was not sure that humanity would live for at least another thousand years (after all, there are a huge number of scenarios under which all life on a tiny planet could die), he believed that by this moment our race will fly away from here, having mastered space.
Life is no place for tragedy
"Life would be very tragic if it weren't so funny" Hawking said. And today, when the whole world mourns for the great physicist, these words for many look like a cure for sadness.
The reaction of loved ones to the death of a scientist
Stephen Hawking has three adult children. The eldest son is interested in software, the youngest son and daughter have chosen to study languages.
On the morning of March 14, they contacted the press and said that they were deeply saddened by the death of their father. “He was a great scientist and a distinguished man whose work and legacy will live on for many years to come. His courage and perseverance with brilliance and humor inspired people around the world,” said the Hawking children. They also quoted their father.
On January 8, 1942, 300 years after the death of Galileo, Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England. Approximately 200 thousand other children were also born that day, but only one became the greatest theoretical physicist and cosmologist. In the early 1960s, Hawking began to show signs of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), which led to paralysis.
“An almost perfect embodiment of a free spirit, a huge intellect, a person who courageously overcomes physical infirmity, giving all his strength to deciphering the“ divine plan ”, - this is how the German popularizer of science Hubert Mania describes Hawking in his book.
Hawking's achievements in science are undeniable. "RG" will talk about some of the most popular theories of the great physicist.
Hawking radiation
Hawking radiation is a hypothetical process of "evaporation" of black holes, that is, the emission of various elementary particles (mainly photons).
The process was predicted by Hawking in 1974. By the way, his work was preceded by a visit to Moscow in 1973, where he met with Soviet scientists: one of the creators of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, Yakov Zeldovich, and one of the founders of the theory of the early Universe, Alexei Starobinsky.
“When a huge star contracts, its gravity becomes so strong that even light can no longer leave its limits. The area from which nothing can escape is called a “black hole.” And its boundaries are called the “event horizon,” explains Hawking.
Note that the concept of a black hole as an object that does not emit anything, but can only absorb matter, is valid as long as quantum effects are not taken into account.
It was Hawking who began to study the behavior of elementary particles near a black hole from the point of view of quantum mechanics. He found out that particles can go beyond it and that a black hole cannot be completely black, that is, there is residual radiation. Fellow scientists applauded: everything has changed now! Information about the discovery spread like a hurricane in the scientific community. And it had the same effect.
Later, Hawking also discovered the mechanism by which black holes can emit radiation. He explained that from the point of view of quantum mechanics, space is filled with virtual particles. They constantly materialize in pairs, "separate", "meet" again and annihilate. Near a black hole, one of a pair of particles can fall into it, and then the second one will not have a pair to annihilate. Such "thrown" particles form the radiation emitted by the black hole.
From this, Hawking concludes that black holes do not exist forever: they emit an ever stronger wind and, in the end, disappear as a result of a giant explosion.
“Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics because of the element of randomness and uncertainty associated with it. He said: God does not play dice. It seems that Einstein was wrong twice. The quantum effect of a black hole suggests that God not only plays dice, but sometimes throws them where they can not be seen," says Hawking.
Black hole radiation - or Hawking radiation - has shown that gravitational contraction is not as final as previously thought: "If an astronaut falls into a black hole, he will then return to the outer part of the Universe in the form of radiation. Thus, in a sense the astronaut will be reworked."
The Question of the Existence of God
In 1981, Hawking attended a conference on cosmology at the Vatican. After the conference, the Pope gave an audience to its participants and told them that they can study the development of the Universe after the big bang, but not the big bang itself, since this is the moment of creation, and therefore the work of God.
Hawking later admitted that he was glad that the Pope did not know the topic of the lecture that the scientist gave before. It just concerned the theory according to which the Universe did not have a beginning, a moment of creation as such.
There were similar theories in the early 1970s, they talked about a fixed space and time that were empty for eternity. Then, for some unknown reason, a point formed - the universal core - and an explosion occurred.
Hawking believes that "if we move back in time, we reach a big bang singularity in which the laws of physics do not apply. But there is another direction of movement in time that avoids the singularity: it is called the imaginary direction of time. In it, you can do without singularity, which is the beginning or end of time."
That is, a moment appears in the present, which is not necessarily accompanied by a chain of moments in the past.
“If the Universe had a beginning, we can assume that it had a creator. But if the Universe is self-sufficient, has no border or edge, then it was not created and will not be destroyed. It simply exists. Where then is the place for its creator?" - asks the theoretical physicist.
"From the Big Bang to Black Holes"
With this subtitle, in April 1988, Hawking's book A Brief History of Time was published, which instantly became a bestseller.
Eccentric and supremely intelligent, Hawking is actively involved in the popularization of science. Although his book tells about the appearance of the Universe, about the nature of space and time, black holes, there is only one formula - E = mc² (energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light in free space).
Until the 20th century, it was believed that the Universe is eternal and unchanging. Hawking argued in very accessible language that this was not so.
"In the light from distant galaxies, there is a shift towards the red part of the spectrum. This means that they are moving away from us, that the Universe is expanding," he says.
A static universe seems more attractive: it exists and can continue to exist forever. It is something unshakable: a person grows old, but the Universe is always as young as at the moment of formation.
The expansion of the universe suggests that it, at some point in the past, had a beginning. This moment, when the Universe began its existence, is called the big bang.
"A dying star, contracting under its own gravity, eventually turns into a singularity - a point of infinite density and zero size. If you reverse the passage of time so that the contraction turns into expansion, it will be possible to prove that the universe had a beginning. However, The evidence based on Einstein's theory of relativity also showed that it was impossible to understand how the universe began: it showed that all theories do not work at the moment the universe began.
Humanity awaits destruction
You can see how the cup falls off the table and breaks. But you can not see how it is going back from the fragments. The increase in disorder - entropy - is exactly what distinguishes the past from the future and gives the direction of time.
Hawking asked himself: what happens when the universe stops expanding and starts contracting? Will we see how broken cups are collected from fragments?
“It seemed to me that when the compression starts, the Universe will return to an ordered state. In this case, with the beginning of the compression, time should have turned back. People at this stage would live life backwards and become younger as the Universe shrinks,” he said.
Attempts to create a mathematical model of the theory were unsuccessful. Hawking later admitted his mistake. In his opinion, it consisted in the fact that he used too simple a model of the universe. Time will not turn back when the universe begins to shrink.
"In the real time we live in, the universe has two possible fates. It can continue to expand forever. Or it can start to contract and cease to exist at the moment of the "big flattening". It will be like a big bang, only in reverse" , - the physicist believes.
Hawking admits that the universe is still waiting for the final. However, it is stipulated that he, as a prophet of the end of the world, will not have the opportunity to be at that time - after many billions of years - and realize his mistake.
According to Hawking's theory, only the ability to break away from the Earth can save humanity in this situation.
aliens exist
People send unmanned vehicles into space with images of a person and coordinates indicating the location of our planet. Radio signals are sent into space in the hope that alien civilizations will notice them.
If you believe Hawking, then meetings with representatives of other planets do not bode well for earthlings. Based on his knowledge, he does not deny the possibility of the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization, but he hopes that the meeting will not happen.
In the documentary television series of the Discovery Channel, he expressed the opinion that if alien technologies surpass those of the earth, they will certainly form their colony on Earth and enslave humanity. Hawking compared this process to the arrival of Columbus in America and the consequences that awaited the indigenous population of the continent.
“In a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it is unlikely that Earth is the only place where life develops. From a purely mathematical point of view, numbers alone make it possible to accept the idea of the existence of alien life as absolutely reasonable. A real problem is what the aliens might look like, whether the earthlings will like them because they can be microbes or single-celled animals, or worms that have inhabited the Earth for millions of years,” says Hawking.
Even relatives and friends of the cosmologist note that one cannot believe his every word. He is a seeker. And in such a case there are more assumptions than facts, and mistakes are inevitable. But even so, his research gives man food for thought, a point from which to start searching for an answer to the question of the existence of man and the universe.
"The answer to this question will be the greatest triumph of the human mind, for then we will know the mind of God," says Hawking.
English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and writer Stephen Hawking believed that the nature of the cosmos could be much simpler than previously thought. The new theory was published just a few weeks after the death of an outstanding scientist.
The study, which contains the views of the physicist, written jointly with Thomas Hertog from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), was published in the Journal of High Energy Physics by the University of Cambridge, where Hawking worked, reports.
Cosmological inflation
Scientists believe that our Universe arose with the Big Bang, after which an unthinkably rapid development came - the so-called cosmological inflation. In the visible universe, this process ended long ago.
“However, some theories about cosmological inflation say that this process does not stop and continues in other parts of space always. This perpetual inflation creates a “multi-world,” which is a collection of “pocket” universes, of which ours is just one of many,” The Times notes.
There can be infinitely many such universes. And if they differ from each other, then how to determine the one in which we live? Is he "typical" or not?
Actually this, as well as determining how to estimate what types of universes are likely and what can exist, is a key issue for understanding the laws of nature.
Stephen's latest theory Xokinga
Stephen Hawking approached this issue from the point of view that he formulated as a result of many years of research at the intersection of quantum and gravitational theories.
Professor Hawking has always been haunted by the idea of a "multiverse", which fundamentally disagrees with Einstein's theory of relativity. Last year, in an interview, he even stated that he had never been a "fan of the multiverse."
“The new theory involves the strange concept that the universe is something like a huge and complex hologram. In other words, 3D reality is an illusion, and the supposedly large world around us – and the dimension of time – is projected from information stored on a flat 2D surface,” adds The Telegraph.
Professor Hertog of the KU Leuven emphasized that "this is a very precise mathematical concept of holography that has emerged from string theory over the past few years, which is not yet fully understood, but it is amazing and fundamentally changes previous ideas."
Stephen Hawking stated before his death that "we are not dependent on a single unique universe, but our discoveries imply a significant reduction in the multiverse to a much smaller range of possible universes."
“Scientists have called this theory abstract, and also “stimulating, though not revolutionary,” according to The Times.
Who is Steven X oking?
The scientist spent most of his life in a wheelchair after being diagnosed at the age of 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neurodegenerative disease. Despite this, in 1979, he became a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and nine years later, he published A Brief History of Time, which became an international bestseller.
Together with Roger Penrose, he developed the singularity theorem within the framework of general relativity, and also provided a theoretical proof that black holes are a source of radiation. Today this phenomenon is called "Hawking radiation", or "Bekenstein-Hawking".
Public speeches of the scientist, which he did not stop even after he lost the ability to speak and communicated only with the help of a voice synthesizer, as well as popular science books in which he reflects on modern cosmology and his own discoveries, brought him world fame.
Hawking has repeatedly warned of the negative consequences of uncontrolled development, including the threat to earthly civilization from intelligent robots, global warming, nuclear war, and new genetically engineered viruses. In his opinion, natural disasters caused by these factors can force humanity to move to other celestial bodies.
Prepared by Andrey Pavlishin,
Stephen Hawking Theory of everything
Translation of the original edition:
The Theory of Everything
Reprinted with permission waterside productions inc and literary agency "Synopsis".
Copyright © 2006 Phoenix Books and Audio
© LLC AST Publishing House, 2017 (translated into Russian)
Introduction
In this series of lectures, I will try to outline our understanding of the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the formation of black holes. The first lecture is devoted to a brief overview of the ideas about the structure of the Universe, which were held in the past, and a story about how the modern picture of the world was built. This part can be called the history of the development of ideas about the history of the universe.
In the second lecture, I will describe how Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity led to the understanding that the universe cannot be static - it must either expand or contract. From this, in turn, follows the conclusion that at some time in the interval from 10 to 20 billion years ago, the density of the Universe was infinite. This point on the time axis is called the Big Bang. Apparently, this moment was the beginning of the existence of the universe.
In the third lecture, I will talk about black holes. They form when a massive star or larger body in space collapses under its own gravity. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, anyone stupid enough to fall into a black hole will stay there forever. Nobody can get out of there. In the singularity of the history of the existence of any object comes to an end. However, the general theory of relativity is a classical theory, that is, it does not take into account the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle.
In Lecture 4, I will explain how quantum mechanics allows energy to escape from a black hole. Black holes are not as black as they are painted.
In the fifth lecture, I will talk about the application of the ideas of quantum mechanics to solving problems related to the Big Bang and the origin of the universe. This will bring us to the understanding that space-time can be finite but not have a boundary or edge. It resembles the surface of the Earth, but with the addition of two more dimensions.
In Lecture 6, I will show how this new boundary assumption can explain why the past is so different from the future, even though the laws of physics are symmetrical with respect to time.
Finally, in the seventh lecture, I will talk about attempts to formulate a unified theory that encompasses quantum mechanics, gravity, and all other physical interactions. If we succeed, we will really be able to understand the Universe and our place in it.
Lecture one
Ideas about the Universe
Back in 340 BC. e. Aristotle, in his treatise On the Heavens, formulated two strong arguments in favor of the fact that the Earth is spherical and not flat like a plate. First, he realized that lunar eclipses are caused by the passage of the Earth between the Sun and the Moon. The shadow of the Earth on the Moon is always round, and this is possible only if the Earth has a spherical shape. If the Earth were a flat disk, the shadow would be elongated and elliptical, except when the Sun is exactly above the center of the disk at the time of the eclipse.
Secondly, from the experience of their travels, the Greeks knew that in the southern regions the North Star is lower above the horizon than in the more northern ones. Based on the difference in the apparent positions of the North Star in Egypt and Greece, Aristotle even gives an estimate of the circumference of the Earth - 400 thousand stadia. What one stage is equal to is not exactly known (perhaps about 180 meters). Then Aristotle's estimate is almost twice the value currently accepted.
The ancient Greeks also had a third argument in favor of the fact that the Earth should have the shape of a ball: otherwise why do the sails of an approaching ship first appear on the horizon and only then its hull becomes visible? Aristotle thought that the Earth is stationary, and the Sun, Moon, planets and stars move in circular orbits around it. He thought so, because, due to mystical considerations, he was convinced that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and circular motion is the most perfect.
Aristotle believed that the Earth is stationary, and the Sun, Moon, planets and stars move in circular orbits around it.
In the 1st century A.D. e. this idea was developed by Ptolemy into a coherent cosmological model. The Earth is located in the center, it is surrounded by eight spheres, bearing the Moon, the Sun, the stars and the five planets known at that time: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The planets move in circles of smaller radii, which are associated with the corresponding spheres. This was required to explain their rather complex observed trajectories of movement across the sky. On the outer sphere are the so-called fixed stars, which retain their positions relative to each other, but all together make a circular motion across the sky. What is outside the outer sphere remained unclear, but this part of the universe was undoubtedly inaccessible to observation.
Ptolemy's model made it possible to accurately predict the positions of celestial bodies in the sky. But for this, Ptolemy had to admit that sometimes the Moon comes twice as close to the Earth as at other moments of its movement along the predicted trajectory. This meant that periodically the Moon should appear twice as large as usual. Ptolemy was aware of this shortcoming, but despite this, his model was accepted by most, though not all. She received the approval of the Christian Church, as a picture of the world, consistent with the Holy Scriptures. After all, this model had a huge advantage, since it left enough room for heaven and hell behind the sphere of fixed stars.
An old drawing depicting various cosmological models that explained the movement of the planets. The central diagram shows a heliocentric (the Sun is in the center) model of the movement of six planets known at that time, their satellites and other celestial bodies revolving around the Sun. From the second century onward, the geocentric (Earth in the center) Ptolemaic system (upper left) became the dominant model. It was replaced by the heliocentric system of Copernicus, published in 1543 (lower right). The Egyptian model (bottom left) and Tycho Brahe's model (top right) attempted to preserve the idea of a stationary Earth as the center of the universe. Details of planetary orbits are shown on the left and right.
From The Illustrated Atlas by Johann Georg Heck, 1860
However, in 1514, the Polish priest Nicholas Copernicus proposed a much simpler model. At first, fearing accusations of heresy, he published his model anonymously. He believed that the center is the motionless Sun, and the Earth and planets move around it in circular orbits. Unfortunately for Copernicus, it took almost a hundred years before his ideas were taken seriously. Then two astronomers - the German Johannes Kepler and the Italian Galileo Galilei - publicly supported the Copernican theory, despite the fact that the orbits predicted on the basis of this theory differed somewhat from the observed ones. The dominance of the Aristotle-Ptolemaic theory ended in 1609 when Galileo Galilei began to study the night sky with a newly invented telescope.
In 1609, Galileo Galilei began to study the night sky with a newly invented telescope.
Observing Jupiter, Galileo noticed that the planet is accompanied by several small satellites (moons) that revolve around it. This meant that not all celestial bodies should revolve around the Earth, as Aristotle and Ptolemy thought. Of course, it was still possible to assume that the Earth is motionless and is at the center of the Universe, and the satellites of Jupiter move along extremely complex trajectories around the Earth, so that the appearance of their circulation around Jupiter is created. However, the Copernican theory was much simpler.
One of the most famous and popular physicists of our time, Stephen William Hawking, has died at the age of 77. During his life, he made many discoveries and assumptions about the structure of the world. TengriMIX shares some of them with you.
The past is a possibility
Hawking believed that one of the consequences of quantum mechanics is that the events of the past happened not in any particular way, but in all possible ways. This is due to the probabilistic nature of matter and energy. Until an outside observer is found, everything will hover in uncertainty.
“No matter what memories you have about the past in the present, the past, like the future, is uncertain and exists in the form of a spectrum of possibilities,” Hawking said.
Aquarium fish are oppressed
A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy banned pet owners from keeping ornamental fish in round aquariums. The law was intended to protect the poor fish from a distorted perception of reality, since indirect light could give them a distorted picture of their habitat.
Hawking used this example to illustrate the fact that it is impossible to know the pure nature of reality. It seems to us that we have an accurate picture of what is happening around us. But what if we knew that we live in a metaphorical huge aquarium with bulging walls and there is no way we can find out what is actually going on around us in order to compare?
There is a Theory of Everything
If there is any "theory of everything" that can describe the entire universe, then it is M-theory. It was first proposed by Edward Witten in the 1990s and was later conceptualized and refined by Hawking and his colleague Leonard Mlodinov. M-theory is an offshoot of string theory and describes the entire universe at once. According to it, at the smallest level, all particles consist of branes - multidimensional membranes, the properties of which can explain absolutely all the processes occurring in our Universe. By the way, this theory also assumes the existence of a huge number of universes in which physical laws operate that are different from ours.
light power
There is one fun fact: a one-watt night light emits billions and billions of photons per second. Photons are small packets into which light comes. They, like all particles, behave like particles and like waves of particles.
Quarks are never alone
Quarks, the "building blocks" of protons and neutrons, exist only in groups and never one at a time. The force that binds quarks increases with the distance between them, so if you try to pull one quark away from another, the harder you pull, the harder it will try to break free and come back. Free quarks do not occur in nature.
The universe created itself
Hawking was a staunch atheist. He devoted a lot of time to scientific evidence that God is not needed for the existence of life. One of his famous sayings is: “Since there is such a force as gravity, the Universe could and did create itself out of nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason why the Universe exists, why we exist. There is no need for God in order to “ignite "fire and make the universe work."
General relativity has to do with errors in navigation systems
The general theory of relativity was formulated by Einstein in 1915. It postulates that gravitational effects are caused not by the force interaction of bodies and fields located in space-time, but by the deformation of space-time itself, which is associated, in particular, with the presence of mass-energy.
Hawking acted as a popularizer of this theory. He argued that if general relativity was not taken into account in GPS navigation satellite systems, errors in determining global positions would accumulate at a rate of about ten kilometers per day. It is important to understand that the closer an object is to Earth, the slower time passes. Thus, depending on how far from the Earth the satellites are, their on-board clocks will run at different speeds. We could compensate for this difference automatically if this effect were taken into account."
Prepared by: Nurlyaiym Nursain
