From news reports.
The world-famous physicist, who died last Wednesday aged 76, was a co-author to a mathematical paper in which he sought to prove the so-called “multiverse” theory, according to a report by U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times. This theory imagines the existence of many separate universes other than our own.
The research, submitted two weeks ago, sets out the maths needed for a space probe to find experimental evidence for the existence of a “multiverse”. This is the idea that our cosmos is only one of many universes. If such evidence had been found while he was alive, it might have put Hawking in line for the Nobel prize he had desired for so long.
Hawking’s final work — titled “A Smooth Exit From Eternal Inflation” — is being reviewed by a leading scientific journal. In it, he predicted how our universe would eventually fade to darkness as the stars run out of energy.
Hawking, had previously warned that Earth would turn into a giant ball of fire by 2600. Therefore, humans would eventually need to colonize another planet or face extinction, he said.
Hawking claimed at the 2017 Tencent WE Summit in Beijing that “humans will turn the planet into a giant ball of fire by the year 2600”
Overcrowding and energy consumption will render Earth uninhabitable in just a few centuries, Hawking said via video:
Shades of John Ehrlich. Perhaps the proverbial “grain of salt” is in order on Hawking’s Earth prediction.
When I divided by zero, I got points taken off.
Poor Max, you must have gone to school when accuracy was valued above self esteem. You have my sincerest condolences. (I, too, had the misfortune of living before 2+2=7 was a fine answer and participation trophies were the name of the game. It made math and science so much harder that way.)
And now if you say 7+7 = 2 mod 3, you get a timeout mod 12, because it hurts the feeling of those who don’t have mommies (or legs, or privilege, or … I can’t remember exactly what …).
See Max, you’re way better at math than me.
Or is that comprehension?
Hawking’s disease destroyed his brain. His celebrity was not much for his physics work. IMO Dyson, Penrose, Weinberg, Glashow, Gell-Man are better physicists. I find his black hole theory speculative and dubious.
+1
What amazes me is that Cambridge made him Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at all.
Not the same caliber as Newton, Babbage, Stokes, Dirac
His best work is on black holes, which I think is a misunderstanding. I challenge physicists who follow Hawking to show me physics equations that include “information” (aside from Hawking). “Information” is not a physical quantity. He got that concept from Shanon’s information theory. But Shanon was not physicist, he was an electrical engineer working on how to store information in computers and transmit them in telephone wires. Shanon’s theory was not about black holes and heat engines.
Hawking applied Shanon’s information theory to black holes and that’s how the confusion began. Then physicists started talking about Hawking’s theory as if it were true. Then they hit upon the information paradox, which is a non-problem, so they are trying to solve a non-problem. Clausius’ formulation of entropy based on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics is more sensible.
Dr. Strangelove March 19, 2018 at 9:09 pm Edit
I do enjoy the irony of being lectured on the relative merits of scientific giants by someone hiding behind the alias “Dr. Strangelove” …
In addition, you sneer that “Shanon” (whose name you are not fit to spell … by which I mean that you repeatedly spelled it incorrectly) among his other failings “was not physicist [sic]”.
So what? Fundamental discoveries like those of Shannon often find application in field far removed from their initial use, viz:
What’s next, You going to point out disparagingly that “Shanon” was not a neurobiologist either? Funny … despite that, his information theory has found applications in neurobiology …
Was Hawking right about information? Is the “information paradox” real? I don’t know … but I do know that you anonymously rubbishing the entire field as being worthless is quite humorous …
w.
Spare me your ad hominem Willis.
Correction: Aside from Shannon’s name, I was thinking of Boltzmann’s entropy not Clausius. Hawking should have followed Boltzmann rather than Shannon. I don’t criticize Shannon. His theory is useful but Hawking misused it. Not to disrespect Hawking, but his theory concerns me because I also write theories on black hole and quantum mechanics.
“Rubbishing the entire field as being worthless” is not quite right. My view is local realism. It is as old as Aristotle and the general view of science as we know it. The moon exists whether anybody is looking at it or not. Amazingly this common sense view is now the minority view among theoretical physicists. This is because quantum mechanics particularly the Copenhagen Interpretation seems to contradict local realism. I don’t mind being in the minority. I’m in good company with Einstein, Schrodinger, Bohm, Penrose and a few others.
I see Hawking’s black hole information theory as the modern reincarnation of the ancient Idealism of Plato who invented the world of ideas. To Plato, ideas are the ultimate reality. The rocks and the moon are just illusions. Hawking just replaced Plato’s ideas with Shannon’s information, and we have the quantum version of Plato’s idealism. Information is the ultimate reality. If we lose the information, it’s like violating the laws of physics and making the particles disappear. I find it a bit silly but many physicists take it seriously. This is just to give a flavor of it without going to technical details.
As the great Feynman said, it’s safe to say nobody understands quantum mechanics, and that includes himself. I guess that’s why we have these silly theories.
Willis, that is ad hominum, and kind of a cheap shot. I don’t see how how Stranglove’s post was a lecture to you
As a historian, I doubt that anyone will ever think that Hawking’s scientific work was more fundamental, or more original than that of Newton, Dirac, or Stokes. As for Babbage, he was certainly quite original, but his work was not fundamental to computer science. Those honors must be reserved for another Cambridge Man, Alan Turing. Turing could not become Lucasian Professor as the seat was then held by Dirac.
Babbage designed the Analytical Engine, the first Turing-equivalent machine, exactly 100 years before Turing conceptualized the Turing machine. The Analytical Engine was a true computer had it been completed. Ada Lovelace is regarded as the first computer programmer. It was Babbage who taught Ada computer programming. Babbage should have gotten the honor but he didn’t publish his work. (Some believe the computer program that Ada published was written by Babbage for her)
BTW that multiverse paper by Hawking is all hype and no substance. To quote my favorite female physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder:
“The claim that the detection of CMB polarization would mean the multiverse exists makes as much sense as claiming that if I find a coin on the street then Bill Gates must have walked by. And a swarm of invisible angels floated around him playing harp and singing “Ode To Joy.”
In case that was too metaphorical, let me say it once again but plainly. Hawking has not found a new way to measure the existence of other universes.”
I thought that the end of the world and the resurrection of the dead wouldn’t happen until the UK left the EU
Well that ain’t about to happen, in reality.
Theresa the Appeaser has said that although we are in fact leaving, nothing at all is going to change!
Superb! You couldn’t make it up.
But she did,
Perhaps, if he was correct about parallel universes, Hawking will, in time, experience a full(er) life without the handicap of ALS. RIP!
Cool! I have a politically uncorrect accomplice (see top of thread). Welcome to the club!
The likelihood of the Earth turning into a ball of fire within 600 years of the life of the prophet who spouts the prophesy is extremely small, seeing that the Earth has existed more and less unscathed for at least 4,000,000,000 years. The co-incidence is too far-fetched. His IQ may have been high – but on this occasion it let him down (which happens to all us bright guys now and again, let’s us face it!!). I might have taken him serious if he had come out with a more likely time-span.
Hawking says: “humans will turn the planet into a giant ball of fire by the year 2600”
What is unique about the year 2600, I wonder. Why not 2100? According to the IPCC, civilization will be destroyed by 2100 if humans don’t stop pumpig CO2 into the atmosphere.
Should this be in the Darwin — We Have a Problem thread?
(Max, you’re terrible. Just terrible.)
People cut Hawking a lot of slack because he was so severely disabled.
Had he been a normal, healthy individual, many of his fantasies and theorems would have been rapidly debunked.
Exactly! 10+
Yeah that is probable.
It is so sad that he was ravaged by an ugly disease and early in his adult life.
The multiverse idea is the only one that makes sense.
Humans argued for centuries for the existence of God because the earth, and humans, seemed unique and perfect. How could they just come into existence without a guiding hand.
The physical laws (attraction between subatomic particles) just happen to be just right to allow matter to exist.
Think about it.
M theory is still the best explanation of where all the anti-matter went at the Big Bang. And the tension between the two branes is the cosmological constant that Einstein fretted about.
2 universes. Not a multiverse.
Where did the branes come from?
Kelloggs
<¿<
Setting his physics contributions aside, Hawking’s continued efforts to contribute whilst imprisoned in an almost immobile body commands my deep respect. Factoring in the indignities of dependency on others for almost every body function requiring either inputs or outputs and the frustrations of a very limited communications capability, I find it more than amazing that the man remained relatively sane. Pray that we are never so severely tested!
‘Fair winds and following seas’, Stephan Hawking.
With all due respect to the subject of this post and the comments in it. Can any one of us imagine the challenges that man faced, physically, and mentally in our world. When the passion of physics is the only passion you can chase, that is a handicap most would never survive. I can only imagine the psychological challenges that were faced in ever increasing intensity through his life as his health decayed. One would wonder if his brilliance was inate or a result of his challenges in life. That said, he lived much longer than most with his degenerative condition. I appreciated his contributions to all of us, even if he creeped me out (no disrespect).
May you rest in piece Stephen Hawking!
IMO every thing in the universe is or is made of quantum units at the level of indivisibility. These are basic existential elements that are also indestructible as they all survived the ‘big bang’. At the big bang the temperatures are so high these quanta are accelerating away from a center of mass and each other and are so hot their individual characteristics cannot come into play to form structures such as protons, neutrons, atoms etc. When they’ve cooled enough they begin to dance together and the first, incredibly small, structures come into existence. Eventually what we call the first ‘matter’ is said to be about 74 to 75 percent hydrogen, 24 or 25 percent helium and 1 percent lithium plus leftover ‘background radiation.
It is all about temperature.
The state of the universe is determined by the state (or states) of its basic existential elements.
The state of the universe’s basic existential elements is determined by their temperature.
I have read that the object called a black hole has a temperature measured in billionths of a degree K. Since the black hole begins at its event horizon its temperature would depend on temperature of the infalling material that becomes part of the singularity that causes the black hole’s existence. So what is the temperature of a singularity? Probably absolute zero. When a star of sufficient size reaches the point of fusing iron and collapses because its internal temperature (energy) cannot support its mass those basic existential elements at its core are crushed to the extent that there is no empty space between them, The dance has ended for them. They have no temperature (energy) and no longer exist as individual quanta.
The background radiation from the big bang is said to have cooled to about 2.6 degrees K in 13.7 or so billion years.
It appears that eventually, in hundred of billions or even trillions of years, every quantum bit of the universe will achieve a temperature of absolute zero, with no energy and singularity will be the state of everything in the universe. I believe Hawking considered a universe composed of black holes that he said would radiate away to nothing.
A universe of singularities would have only one force – mass attraction. Each would be attached to all of the rest by the equivalent of infinitely elastic bungee cords. Inexorably they will begin to accelerate toward one another. They will merge with one another at relatively slow speeds while accelerating toward the universal center of mass. After a long period, probably similar to the cool down, this singular material travelling at 0.999999….(carry it out as far as you like) of light speed will be about 300,000 kilometers from center of mass. One second later (as we humans compute time) these singularities containing all the basic existential elements in the universe will arrive at center of mass in the greatest collider in existence, the universe itself. This is where our big bang came from and the next will come from, ad infinitum.
Evidence for this is mostly anecdotal. Statistically this means that it is inevitable that the same sperm and egg containing the same DNA will come together under the same circumstances that resulted in all of us. We are all reincarnate and universal physics is the culprit. Are you one of the 80 percent that are said to experience de ja vu? Have you had clairvoyant or prescient moments? When your DNA builds your brain in this iteration of the universe it is the same brain you previously had in other iterations. As your brain develops latent memories of your previous incarnations are installed resulting in you having these experiences. These experiences are not limited to humans. Consider the working group of Asian elephants during the 2004 Sumatran tsunami. Some of them suddenly trumpeted with a scream and ran to high ground. Those elephants could not have an academic understanding that anything they may have sensed meant the tsunami was coming. But with a brain 3 times larger than a human, latent stored information could evoke such a response. Essentially this is what the so called sixth sense is.
All DNA based organisms are programmed to do two basic things: 1) survive to reproductive maturity and 2) reproduce. Those that are not ready for survival at birth have additional programming to assist their offspring in achieving reproductive maturity. Thus you are focused on achieving this programming and usually don’t have access to this latent information, but usually only have glimpses.
Nothing that has been written or said has displaced this 2500 year old description of the end of the world:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
And look upon the earth beneath:
For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke,
And the earth shall wear out like a garment,
And its inhabitants shall die with them: but
My salvation shall be for ever, and
My righteousness will never fail.
Is 51:6
Yeah, except that God so loved the world that he – became incarnate – in order to save it! /Not sure how to “characterise” that “pronouncement” 😉 / ;-(
Maybe this paper was mere projection by Stephen Hawking.
So Hawking thought we’re doomed, as well.
The moment I realized he’d lost his marbles was when he suggested that Earth will become like Venus due to climate change.
I agree.
… hey, but he read it in the peer-reviewd literature.
….. should have reviewed that before hitting the button !!
An idea like that our universe is ‘one of many’ is meaningless. It just reflects the fact that there are aspects of reality, or should I say existence, that we simply do not grasp, even are not at all aware of. Speculation about the universe or verses belongs firmly in Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘unknown unknowns’ category.
As we make and reproduce near-observations, we reduce the unknowns, which is a necessary and sufficient condition for a scientific philosophy. Ideally, science is a utilitarian philosophy that characterizes a fitness function that normalizes Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Every other realization of “science” is merely speculation that is “consistent with”.
Hawking was a True Believer (in the CAGW religion).
I imagine that the last actual physics he did was in his final year as an undergraduate student.
By Martin: I imagine that the last actual physics he did was in his final year as an undergraduate student.
We like to demonise all alarmists here, its what we do. No matter their genius, no matter they’ve forgotten more science than we’ll ever know, if they are any threat at all to BAU status quo they’re fair game for character assassination. Witness the misrepresentation of what he said at the Tencent WE Summit. Mocking it into “humans will turn the planet into a giant ball of fire by the year 2600” with quotation marks added no less, then bouncing it around the usual kook-infested echo-chambers.
This is just one tiny example, but for maroons here its now the fake truth. Despicable.
“they’ve forgotten more science than we’ll ever know”
Not worth remembering?
Andrew
So who made the giant ball of fire segment just after the two minute mark? Are you saying someone faked this video zazove ?
“giant ball of fire”. This “quote” is not what he said but you’ve just repeated the faked headline, again.
zazove, I described it as a giant ball of fire myself, because that’s what it is, and that’s what I was pointing out to you. If it was his handlers who did it and he had no editorial control, which I believe people are suggesting on this thread, then shame on them, but I would be surprised if he had no editorial control. His video shows the earth as a giant ball of fire, right after he says 2600. Therefore he wanted to convey the message graphically that the earth would be a giant ball of fire in 2600.
….. and hey, that’s Nick Stokes’ job.
Late career grandstanding seems to be a common path and rather addictive in the case of Carl Sagan.
Well, everyone is wrong about something.
Do thoughts/ideas/knowledge have mass(energy)? Just wondering.
We have barely reached the edge of our solar system,let alone made close observation of anything beyond that seemingly hard limit. The belief in a universe is based on inference from signals that may or may not be true representations of their source(s). We want to believe. He wanted to believe, in something.
Hawkins did not advance science as he was working on dead science.
Inflation, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Cosmic ‘Strings’, Multi-universes, Black Holes and so on are dead science.
Science gets its ‘life’ so to speak from its connect to the physical world.
We have made the most fundamental possible physical error which explains why there is a jump up and down breakthrough in the astronomical observations.
There are piles and piles of anomalies and paradoxes in the astronomical observations.
https://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/mond/DMOct05.pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v511/n7511/full/nature13481.html
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1438/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/24014/07/140721100418.htm
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
The pillars of modern cosmology include black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. Modern cosmology also includes a history of the universe that posits the Cosmic Background Radiation is a veil behind which we cannot see the first 377,000 years of the universe. It was followed by the “Dark Ages” during which there was no starlight to illuminate anything. Some modern cosmologies include multiple other universes that cannot, in principle, be observed.
We may have enough parameters for a whole herd of elephants.
A bit of perspective on the Hawking and Hertog paper by a theoretical physicist specializing in general relativity:
https://backreaction.blogspot.ca/2018/03/hawkings-final-theory-is-not.html
“In case that was too metaphorical, let me say it once again but plainly. Hawking has not found a new way to measure the existence of other universes.”
The overrated guessing scientist made this poorly thought out claim,
“Overcrowding and energy consumption will render Earth uninhabitable in just a few centuries, Hawking said via video:”
Already the latest on population growth is to PEAK around mid to late century, just a few decades from now.
Energy supplies from Nuclear alone can last for a few THOUSAND years, Fusion may still happen in a decade or two.
He is being laughable on this.
Hopefully the James Webb telescope gets up and functions as it should next year. Fielding the technology to see more and further back in time is a big part of the answer to separating the theoretical chaff from the factual grain. If as many here profess, much of current Cosmology theory is utter BS sustained only by new hypotheses unverified by observations and falsified by others, then eventually that will be revealed.