Stephen Hawking: at his place in space

An archive photo of physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Photo: Reuters

I was born exactly 300 years after Galileo's death, and I would like to think about it. that this coincidence has had an impact on the evolution of my scientific life, "wrote Stephen Hawking in an essay entitled" Why do we have to ask big questions? Included in his last book . Short answers to big questions. recently published. If this proclamation evokes a high self-esteem, it was typical for Hawking to broadcast it with a sharp retort that also follows this remark: "I estimate, however, that about 200,000 other babies born that day; I do not know if any of them later became interested in astronomy.

Briefly answering 10 big questions, Hawking's latest offering to the world, completed before his death in March, is a colorful signature style: a profound erudition triggered by an ironic sense of humor, a strange genius for to decipher the complexities of astrophysics and outer space, and a willingness to tackle some of the most thorny issues that have troubled humanity since dawn of civilization. Some examples belonging to the last category concern the existence of God, the possibility of traveling in time and the presence of other forms of life in the universe. Hawking considers each of these speculations with the utmost sincerity, using scientific reasoning to demystify or defend them. Until the end, he let himself go to doubt and the power of the human imagination to imagine and execute the unthinkable. As he says in his book, "today's science fiction is often the scientific fact of tomorrow."

Still from the movie "Theory Of Everything", where Hawking was portrayed by English actor Eddie Redmayne.

The big questions raised here are gigantic. Example: are we going to survive on earth? we colonize space? can we predict the future? Will artificial intelligence foil us? Hawking addresses each question with the rigor of a scientist and the empathy of a humanist. While explaining the movement of light from distant galaxies to the red spectrum spectrum, for example, he interrupts the process of deduction by asking an extremely human question: "Maybe the light was making us tired and reddening more moreover? ", he asks with half seriousness. In another essay, he states that we can find "many other life forms in the galaxy, but it is unlikely that we will find an intelligent life," keeping the punch for the end. "Meet a civilization more Advanced, at our present stage, could be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus – and I did not know they were better for that. "

Brief Answers to Big Questions: Stephen Hawking, John Murray, 256 pages, 650 ₹

In the 30 last years, he wrote his best-selling international Brief History of At the time (1988), Hawking had the opportunity to witness some of the most scientific progress narcotics, such as the construction of the world's largest particle accelerator at CERN, which captured the Higgs-Boson, a particle smaller than an atom had so far only inhabited the field of mathematical calculations. Many phenomena conceived by the greatest minds of theoretical physics, which have long existed in the form of elegant equations, are now demonstrated. Einstein's theory of relativity, Penrose's work in cosmology, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle were subjected to experiments that were difficult to imagine half a century ago. For Hawking, the next logical step in his astrophysics work was to "explore the solar system to find where humans could live."

Hawking, in several chapters, pbadionately argues for the need to find other planets to live on because life on earth, prone to all the depredations of human greed and greed, will not last indefinitely. One of Hawking's most loyal beliefs was that "the human race will have no future if we do not go into space". Interstellar travel, he thought, would be a reality in the next 200 to 500 years if the scientific and entrepreneurial communities gathered in their minds and resources. His pleasure of living a few moments in weightlessness, despite his debilitating motor neuron disease, pbadionately affirmed his hopes and convictions for such a future.

For Hawking, space travel was not simply an opportunity to extend man's claim to the universe. This project has made us all equal. "When we see the earth from space, we see ourselves as a whole," he wrote. "We see unity and not divisions. It's such a simple image with a compelling message; a planet, a human race. "