Stephen Hawking is gone, what next?

It has not slipped the attention of the planet that we have lost one of Physics' best minds and personalities - Dr Stephen Hawking.

When Dr Hawking died, I decided to watch the film The Theory of Everything as I had always meant to and never got chance. For anyone in that position - I highly recommend it. The best way to describe the film is a mixed bag, it left me laughing, crying, sad, angry, happy and most of all awed.

I couldn't help but think, what an amazing mind to look at the universe and wonder, "How did it all begin?" Dr Hawking started with nothing but a question and dedicated his life to answering it and stunned the entire world with the mathematical foundation of the big bang.

But, now he's gone. What is next?
Or rather who?

This is Sabrina Paterski (credit to Matt Winkelmeyer for image). Paterski is 24 years old and is highly achieved already in Physics. Graduating from MIT with top grades, helping to discover spin memory and having one of her papers cited by none other than Dr Stephen Hawking himself before even completing her PhD. Could this young lady be the next Stephen Hawking and solve another fundamental mystery of the universe?

In all honesty, nobody knows. Any one of billions of people on this planet may ask a question and dedicate their life to the answer that shakes the Earth to it's core.

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." ~ Donald Rumsfeld.

Who will be the next person to uncover an unknown and find the answer. That, is the question.

~ModernSage