Stephen Hawkings Dead at 76

matsickma

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Stephen Hawking Dead at 76

Rest in peace Stephen Hawking...your life exceeded all expectations, your science changed and integrated our understanding of the universe and your humor showed us your down to earth humanity!

M
 
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Cougar

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Just to correct the typical reports, Hawking radiation does not escape from inside black holes. It is just one of the virtual particle pairs escaping from just outside the horizon of a black hole. That is, if it exists. It has never been observed.
 

chazmo

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Tough loss for science, and the world... It has always been astonishing to me how he achieved so much while overcoming his disabilities. RIP, Dr. Hawking.
 

txbumper57

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R.I.P. What a gift to mankind he was. The Big Bang Theory will never be the same.

TX
 

Quantum Strummer

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Just to correct the typical reports, Hawking radiation does not escape from inside black holes. It is just one of the virtual particle pairs escaping from just outside the horizon of a black hole. That is, if it exists. It has never been observed.

One variant of this is that whenever a virtual particle pair pops into existence just outside a black hole's event horizon, one of the particles can zip away from the horizon while the other falls in. The particle that falls in can be described mathematically as carrying negative energy into the black hole, thus reducing its mass. As esoteric as it sounds, it comes from trying to understand what's going on with gravity at very small scales.

-Dave-
 

Nuuska

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Today

Stephen Hawkings dies at Pi Approximation Day - which is also the birthday of Albert Einstein

Hawkings was born on January 8 - the day Galileo Galilei died.


Coinsidence ???

 

Cougar

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One variant of this is that whenever a virtual particle pair pops into existence just outside a black hole's event horizon, one of the particles can zip away from the horizon while the other falls in. The particle that falls in can be described mathematically as carrying negative energy into the black hole, thus reducing its mass. As esoteric as it sounds, it comes from trying to understand what's going on with gravity at very small scales.

Yes, I've heard that way of looking at it, which obviously balances the equations. Another way is that the intense gravity near the horizon of the BH separates the virtual pair. If one falls in, as you mention, we now have a real particle outside the BH, which cost that amount of gravity used to separate the pair. Thus, as you say, this reduces the mass and eventually evaporates the BH. Suggested reading: Black Holes and Time Warps, Einstein's Outrageous Legacy [1994] -- Kip Thorne. If only the first chapter! (Which IIRC, was kind of in a science-fiction setting....)
 

F312

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Ponder this, the universe is not stranger than you can imagine,
It’s stranger than you can’t imagine.

Ralph
 

JohnW63

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I never read any of his stuff. I always figured it was beyond my pay scale, so to speak, and, like many things in the theoretical physics, apt to be dis-proven for a new idea. What book of his would be a good place to start ?
 

bobouz

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"We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe, and no one directs our fate."
If I were a betting man, I'd wager that he's right on that one, too.
 

Cougar

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....What book of his would be a good place to start ?

Hawking was a great physicist, but he was not that great as a science writer. There are many excellent books about cosmology and the current state of science that are much better than those of Hawking. Here are a few....

Origins, Fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution [2004] -- Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith

The Red Limit [1977]-- Timothy Ferris

Blind Watchers of the Sky, The People and Ideas that Shaped Our View of the Universe [1996] -- Rocky Kolb

The First Three Minutes, A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe [1977] -- Steven Weinberg

Wrinkles in Time [1993] -- George Smoot, Keay Davidson
 
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