Stephen Hawking, legendary theoretical physicist, dies at 76

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Dan Homerick

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  • #10
    TechCrazy said:
    Hopefully, he will finally be able to explore the cosmos and learn the mysteries of the universe first hand.
    Click to expand...
    Or, you know, he might just be gone. Shutdown, not to be restarted.

    Not as poetic, I'll grant you that.

    Perhaps there's a poetic way of describing his death that's actually consistent with his beliefs, but I sure don't know of it.
     
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    NezumiRho

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  • #18
    His beliefs did not include a supreme being, but that does not mean we cannot wish him Godspeed on whatever journey continues past death. And even for those who are not convinced one way or another:

    He is a champion of humanity. He has left us a glorious collection of science, theories, knowledge- possibilities like jewels of fire scattered across the night sky. He may now rest, but he will surely never fade. That is immortality by any measure!

    RIP
     
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    TechCrazy

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  • #22
    Dan Homerick said:
    TechCrazy said:
    Hopefully, he will finally be able to explore the cosmos and learn the mysteries of the universe first hand.
    Click to expand...
    Or, you know, he might just be gone. Shutdown, not to be restarted.

    Not as poetic, I'll grant you that.

    Perhaps there's a poetic way of describing his death that's actually consistent with his beliefs, but I sure don't know of it.
    Click to expand...

    What I described is a play on words from his quote

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit."
     
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    starglider

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  • #24
    My Dad gave me A Brief History of Time when I was eleven years old. For a nerdy, quiet, generally unpopular kid, it was a revelation---not just about the ideas in the book, but that the beauty and elegance of the universe could be discovered by the human mind alone.

    Here was someone who was brilliant, unabashedly nerdy, witty, and hilarious. He was everything I wanted to be as a kid, and he did it while being almost completely paralyzed. For a certain kind of young kid, he upended what it meant to be successful and popular.

    I don't envy his disability, but I so admire his life and what he did for a generation of geeks.
     
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    starglider

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  • #26
    Dan Homerick said:
    TechCrazy said:
    Hopefully, he will finally be able to explore the cosmos and learn the mysteries of the universe first hand.
    Click to expand...
    Or, you know, he might just be gone. Shutdown, not to be restarted.

    Not as poetic, I'll grant you that.

    Perhaps there's a poetic way of describing his death that's actually consistent with his beliefs, but I sure don't know of it.
    Click to expand...

    How about this:

    You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

    And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

    And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

    And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.
    Click to expand...

    ---Aaron Freeman

    https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... Id=4675953
     
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    Quisquis

    Quisquis

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  • #28
    Dan Homerick said:
    TechCrazy said:
    Hopefully, he will finally be able to explore the cosmos and learn the mysteries of the universe first hand.
    Click to expand...
    Or, you know, he might just be gone. Shutdown, not to be restarted.

    Not as poetic, I'll grant you that.

    Perhaps there's a poetic way of describing his death that's actually consistent with his beliefs, but I sure don't know of it.
    Click to expand...

    I'm having difficulty with this, too...

    You can always refer to the physicist's eulogy, but i'm struggling for a more concise way to put it artfully.
     
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    aleph_nought

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  • #31
    allinwonder said:
    He may not be Einstein, but he was certainly more inspirational for new generations of kids to pursue science as their career.
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    Einstein was a few generations removed and the only thing people remember is the old gentleman with unruly white hair. Hawking was in his prime when global media became a reality so his voice and image was everywhere, from bestselling books and news clips to cartoons. He's been around the whole time I've been alive, I didn't realize how old he was and how long he'd survived with ALS until today.

    May he rest in peace and may his memory live on. He, Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan helped open my eyes to the wonders of a Universe where rationality and compassion co-exist, no gods needed.
     
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    drwellingtonyueh

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  • #33
    Dan Homerick said:
    TechCrazy said:
    Hopefully, he will finally be able to explore the cosmos and learn the mysteries of the universe first hand.
    Click to expand...
    Or, you know, he might just be gone. Shutdown, not to be restarted.

    Not as poetic, I'll grant you that.

    Perhaps there's a poetic way of describing his death that's actually consistent with his beliefs, but I sure don't know of it.
    Click to expand...

    His atoms are free to disperse and wander the cosmos.

    And, if Benford is right, maybe he's become a member of the Magnetic Beings Club.
     
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    Chuckstar

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  • #39
    While it's still sad, I prefer to try to think of it as the great news of each of the last 54 years that Hawking didn't die in any of those years. Rather than being the tragic news of 2018, that he died in this year. ALS patients typically survive less than 5 years after diagnosis (IIRC), while Hawking made contributions to physics for 55 years after his diagnosis.
     
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    bokuwaomar

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  • #40
    SuicidalZerg said:
    The world just got a little bit dumber.
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    I get the sentiment but I could not disagree more. Hawkins was an influential man, and there are many who will miss him, but many of those whom he has influenced will step up and carry us onwards, perhaps more so now because he is gone.
     
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