Stargazing Guy

– Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018)

An extract from an interview by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001) where Hawking says, “Colonies in space may be our only hope.”

There are certainly a lot of accidents that could befall humanity – and not just the ones we think we know (climate change, epidemic, nuclear war) but the ones we wouldn’t see coming (asteroid strike, super-volcano eruptions, coronal mass ejection).

It’s good to be an optimist, and plan for the best, but prepare for the worst.

The exploration of space and creating new homes on other planets in our solar system (Mars and Titan, for example), planets in other solar systems (many exo-planets have been discovered and there are thought to be billions of planets) and space habitats (huge structures orbiting the planets, the suns and exploring the galaxy) reduce the risk that a single disaster could wipe out humanity.

If we are the only intelligence in the universe we owe it to ourselves and the cosmos to survive. If we are one of millions of lifeforms, we need to add our biological and technological distinctiveness to the interstellar community (if they’ll have us!)

Aside from thinking deep thoughts (such as Hawking’s radiation temperature equation* – now engraved on his memorial stone in Westminster Abbey) he had a wicked sense of humour – watch his interview with John Oliver:

Hawking died in 2018 at the age of 76, after living with motor neurone disease for more than 50 years, making numerous discoveries, attaining many honours and distinctions and being ranked number 25 in the BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Credit: By JRennocks – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128242974

*=

T stands for temperature, the h stands for Planck’s constant, used to understand parts of quantum mechanics.

The c stands for the speed of light – made famous by Einstein’s great formula.

Then you’ve got 8 Pi, which helps us to understand that its spherical.

The G is Newton’s constant to understand gravity.

The M stands for the mass of the black hole.

And the k stands for Boltzmann’s constant, which is the energy of gas particles.

So in words, the equation simply says – the bigger the mass of the black hole, the lower the temperature of the Hawking radiation.

PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

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