A Small Tribute To Stephen Hawking

filotasriza3 (66)in #steemstem • 6 years ago

As you already may know by now since there a thousand posts about it Stephen Hawking is dead. He died at the age of 76 and was considered one of science's top people that change the world and our viewpoints of the world. Probably you didn't care a lot as i didn't either, that's the hard truth because it's not a person we actually know and we will continue on with our lives.

Even though that's the case i think that i should make a tribute to this person by telling you a bit of his story giving more emphasis in his achievements to understand better how important that person was and will be forever in the scientific community. I won't say a lot about his life just a brief intro of it.

Brief Introduction

Stephen William Hawking as his full name is was born on 8 January of 1942 in Oxford England and died 14 March of 2018 (today). His family was a very educated one something that was rare for that era and Stephen wanted to study Mathematics although his family background was in medicine. Soon enough he earns a Bachelor degree in Physics and starts researching in the section of cosmology. In 1963 he is diagnosed with a disease that called ALS a disease that means his nervous system, or to be more specific a part of it had to shut down. That means that he couldn't move or talk freely that's why the wheelchair came after a short period of time. By that time he got married and had 3 children.

Achievements

Apart from taking Bachelors,a PhD, appeared in movies, made a lot of lectures world wide and in the best universities around the world as well as writing a couple of valuable for the society books he made some discoveries or theories that change the whole scientific thinking.

Singularity & Hawking's Radiation

So we know about black holes and heard about them. They are really dense objects that suck everything in. Once you get near it's horizon you are doomed and you can't get out. They even absorb light. Stephen Hawking alongside Roger Penrose showed that in the center there is something called singularity. In a singularity there is so much matter that everything is crushed there.

Hawking Radiation show us that Black holes can actually die. How this happens i am gonna explain right away. So in general around the black hole you might think the vacuum is empty but that's not exactly the case. It's full of particles that some enter the black hole and other not. This particles that enter the black hole have negative mass making very slowly the black hole become smaller and smaller. As the mass shrinks the process move faster and eventually the black hole cease to exist with a massive eruption or BOOM so to speak.

So except all this, Hawking wanted to point out that everything in our universe gathered in a singularity that went KABOOM resulting in the known to everyone Big Bang and creating our universe. All of this concepts and theories created just in his brain without using his hands to do the calculations so you can imagine!

Cosmic Inflation & Time

So he continued on a theory made by Alan Guth (1980) that says, that after the big bang the universe expanded faster before it came down to a slow rate. Stephen Hawking calculated the quantum fluctuations that created during the cosmic inflation and showing how some galaxies might be spread in the universe. Also along with James Hartle he made another theory in which before the Big Bang there was no time so the concept of the beginning of the universe alongside god had no value. This is still debatable by many scientists.

Why I Like Him

Although i didn't know a lot of things about him and his career and probably i don't get most of it anyway i have seen some of his interviews and heard some of his statements. I really liked him because he was a fighter and a believer of science. While the disease he had pointed out that he should have died a lot sooner, he lived to be 76 years old. Also he was on wheelchair and couldn't even speak but that didn't stopped him for reading, researching and busting a lot of myths.

Sure he had a very high IQ but in his state most of the people would have given up i believe. Also, i really liked him because in his interviews he didn't afraid to share his exact believes no matter what others will think about him and he also made fun.

A really funny example and clever was the Time Travel Party. He just wanted to point out that time travel is impossible with a very easy trick. He organized a party for time travelers but didn't give out any invitations until next day. That way the true time travelers would have been shown up, but nobody came :p That of course isn't a 100% answer to the question '' does travel exists?'' but it sure give some insights.

Finally, he didn't hesitate to share his beliefs about religion and god something that is really controversial for anyone to do so and can even ruin entire careers. In many different occasions and interviews he said that he is an atheist, that he understands why people believe in god and that i was natural but now with all the advancement of science that shouldn't be the case. Also he has said that as he don't believe in god, someone that directs our fate he doesn't believe in afterlife and heaven or hell.