October 26, 2010 • 23 mins
Stephen Hawking is one of the world's most famous physicists, but why is he so famous? In this episode, Allison and Robert take a closer look at the fascinating career of Stephen Hawking.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alice and I don't know, the science editor
how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
(00:20):
science writer at how stuff works dot com. And you know, um,
it's really hard not to love Stephen Hawking. Indeed, he's
very lovable and intelligent, especially when you you know, you write, podcast, edit,
live and breathe science, you know, at least from nine
to six from you know, for a living. Then then
you know he's a pretty big deal. Yeah, he starts
to approach idle status, but like we're discussing earlier, it's
(00:42):
often easy to like fall into the trap of just thinking,
all right, this is a brilliant, brilliant brain in um,
you know, a a disabled body and uh, and then
sort of like dismiss a lot of like whatever he's
talking about. What are you talking about? Dismiss who's dismissing Hawking?
Who has the audacity seeing that? Not like logically saying
like Hawking, but more like people are just kind of like, oh, yeah,
(01:05):
Stephen Hawking, he's brilliant, but without really giving a lot
of thought to like what he's you know, actually why
he's brilliant or much less thinking about the man, the
man that this is. This is a real dude, and
it's more than a theoretical physics and he's a pretty
interesting guy. Yeah. So today we thought we'd walk you
through a couple of things that you might not know
about Stephen Hawking. Despite the title hanging with Stephen Hockey,
(01:26):
he's not actually here in the studio. He didn't respond
to our interview requests. Imagine that. Um. This is based
on article that Jane McGrath, former co host of Stuff
You Miston history class back in the day, and she
wrote an article for House to Parks called ten cool
things you didn't know about Stephen Hawking. So if you
are really into Hawking and you want to go check
(01:46):
it out after you listen to our podcast, do it. Yeah.
We also have a quiz about Stephen Hawking. We have
two quizes about Stephen Hawking, I think. So if you
feel like Stephen Hawking already know that stuff, well bring it,
you know, come to the website and test that knowledge out. Okay,
So what is the theoretical physicist known for? What do
you know him for? Black holes? Right? Yeah, black hole
research and also the whole limitless universe thing where the
(02:07):
boundless universe. We'll get into that a little bit. Yeah,
a little bit. We don't don't turn off the podcast.
We're not going to get heavy into that. But but
well we'll discuss it. Let's let's start out with the
day of his birth. It's kind of handy because this
guy was born three hundred years to the day after
Galileo died on January so that's kind of handy. I
(02:28):
did think about looking up to see who died on
on my birthday to see if I could somehow link
myself a big figure in the past, but I didn't
have time before the podcast. Oh that that's a bit
of a letdown. I was really getting excited. We'll say
that for another podcast. Um, but but yeah, that's that's
pretty big. You know. It kind of implies that he
(02:49):
had some big guest shoes to fill, and you know,
some people would say he kind of did. But interestingly enough,
this guy has never received a Nobel It is interesting. Yeah,
I mean, so he's one of the most famous physicists
out there, one of the most famous scientists out there,
but he's gotten lots of other awards and prizes and
recognitions that, but nothing about Yeah, so inducted into the
(03:12):
Royal Society at the wee age of in his thirties.
I think he was thirty two. He was. He was
a relative young feller. Although a lot of people who
are making their names in math and science, they say
have already done like their critical work when they're pretty young,
which I always find distressing because you know what, if
my best years are are gone, your best years of
scientific brilliance is gone. Um So. Another interesting thing is
(03:37):
he's held at Cambridge University's Lucaezian Professor of Mathematics position.
And this is pretty darn prestigious, especially when you consider
that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the guys who
has held it, and Charles Babbage, And do you know
who Babbage is? I needed a little refresh on Babbage.
It sounds familiar. I was just talking about him with
Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff this morning. He something to
(04:00):
do with computers, he does, he does. He was essentially
the guy who led to the modern computer. Yeah, well,
computers are great. But has he received an award from
the Pope? Indeed, I'm not sure Babbage has, but Hawking
has he and Roger Penrose did the pious eleven Gold
Medal for science. You know, we have to do some
(04:22):
some sort of something about the pope giving out medals
to science because this was curious. I've not heard of this,
had you? Um? Yeah, I was a famiere a little
bit with it. I know one thing we're talking about Galileo.
Galileo did not get an award from the Pope, at
least not in his day and time. Yeah, and Galileo
certainly did not get the Presidential Medal of Freedom from
US President Barack Obama in two thousand nine. Yeah, what's up, Obama?
(04:44):
Why are you not giving Galileos dues? I think he'd
take him even after his death. Of course, Hawking is
no stranger to the media. Have you guys seen him?
Have you Have you checked him out in any of
his many appearances on TV or in film? Yeah, I've
seen the Futurama episode that he's in where um, he
like teams up with Al Gore and a few other
notable celebrities to like go back in time and um,
(05:06):
we're going to the future to like save the world.
And so it's pretty funny. Um. So this episode really
made an impression on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I
do remember specifically that Philip Fry, the kind of idiot
main character and Futurama. He uh, he discovers like a
cosmic achnology and calls it a fry hole, and and
then Hawking like steals it from him and calls it
(05:28):
a Hawking hole. That's good stuff. He's been on The
Simpsons four separate times. I heard the connection there was
that his daughter Lucy knew one of the scriptwriters from
the Simpsons. Um and he Hawking had a funny quote
and he said, as many people know me through the
Simpsons as through science, which is kind of hilarious. And
he also said Simpsons is the best thing on American TV. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:49):
he's a big fan. You can you can kind of
tell a lot about somebody if they have at least
dug the Simpsons at one point or another. I have
a friend who swears that she's never seen the Simpsons,
which I find to be a lie. How and that
be she has she has a TV, she has seen TV,
she has seen the Simpsons. How could you not have
seen the Simpsons? And then, of course, um, you wrote
(06:11):
a recent article that was based around his Discovery series
Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, and this got a
lot of press because he was talking about some things
that people didn't want to necessarily hear about. Aliens. Yeah,
when we we did a podcast, yeah, talking about this
a little bit, but it basically boiled down to it
was a slow news week. Oil hadn't like leaked up
and polluted the golf yet, so everyone was like, what
(06:31):
are we gonna talk about that today? Aliens? Right? Um,
here's something you might not have known about Hawking. Along
with his whole appearances on TV and in film, he's
a children's author. Yeah, and I'm thinking, I'm kind of
excited about the books. So he's written too with his
daughter Lucy Hawking. Um. And the first one is George's
(06:53):
Secret Key to the Universe, and it's supposed to be
part of a trilogy built around this little boy George.
And the second one is out too, it's called George's
Cosmic Treasure Hunt. So I was curious because I was,
you know, I have some kids, know, some kids, I
gotta get them presents sometimes, you know, when things roll
around birthdays and such, And these started like good books
to get kids. Yeah, I mean it's supposedly like and
(07:15):
I haven't read them, but supposed to be each one
like deals with like real cosmological you know issues, like
they explain kind of how the universe works in you know,
far simpler terms. Yeah. They did an interview with ABC
Lucy and her I think Lucy and her dad did,
and Lucy says it was clear to me that there
was a wealth of science fiction available for children, but
not very much quote unquote science fact. Science fiction can
(07:37):
be exciting and very gripping, but it doesn't tell us
anything about the universe in which we live. We wrote
an adventure that is based on real science rather than
on fantasy. I don't know. I mean, do you think
that I kind of disagree with her on the whole
science fiction thing not being able to tell us about well,
the universe. It, No, it can, but I just don't
know how much I think. Maybe her point is more
(07:58):
when it comes to children's fiction, you know, you know,
like and I can't think of any like young adults
sci fi titles. Well, I don't know. I guess for
me when I was a young adult, like the sci
fi titles that I was into, or things like Asimov.
So so yeah, if you look at it that way,
it's like, you know, Asimov is perfectly fine for many
young people to read, and you know, and I think
(08:20):
reading as Amov has inspired you know, many scientists and
children who just you know, went on to other things
that remained interested in it. But the book that Hawking
is really well known for is, of course, Brief History
of Time. Right did you read it? Um? I don't
know if I've sat down and read it cover to cover,
but I've definitely hit it up here and there for
(08:40):
articles or you know, to answer little questions in my head. Um.
They made a movie out of it as well, which
I have not seen, but yeah, and there's a hawkings
and tons of documentaries. He's written all sorts of stuff.
But here's something this guy, this vaunted science celebrity, maybe
not always the best student. Yeah, everybody loves these stories.
(09:02):
Everybody does love these stories because whether you're a you know,
a kid who just got to see you know, in
in social studies, or you're a mom, or the argument
when you present your battery port to your parents. Hey,
you know, Steve Jobs never finished high school. Yeah, or
like when Einstein was a kidte Robbi convenient story, and
hockey wasn't even really that smart. Yeah, Bill Gates stole
(09:25):
the painting. You know, he turned out great. But as
it turns out, Hawking could actually get it done in
the grades department. When he took his scholarship exams, he
aised them and he had a near perfect score on
the physics portion. Yeah, when it came down to, uh,
you know, basically, be in a situation where you're not
going to get to go to the college you need
to go to unless you as this test, then he
(09:46):
ponied up and did it. So that's interesting because, um,
he didn't really want to study physics. Physics represented a
compromise between he and his dad, good old Frank. Yeah,
his dad wanted him to be a doctor. Yeah, I
mean you know that's a lot of parents want their
kids to go into medicine. Yeah, make that make the
big money. Right. But but then the yeah, that then
(10:09):
he was more interested in mathematics, like this, the whole
the hard cold you know when I mean not cold.
You know, if you're in love with mathematics, it's not
really a cold thing. But numbers can be warm and
fuzzy if you understand them. Yeah, they can be, yeah,
your best friends of your mathematician. But he was very
and you know, there's a lot of there's a lot
of potential in mathematics. There's a and then there's a
lot of you know, exact you know, calculation, and I
(10:31):
think he was really into that it wasn't so psyched
on biology, found it rather imprecise, and so Jane was
Jane was writing. So he ultimately wound up attending Oxford
and majoring in physics. And when it came to figure
out what physics path he wanted to go down, he
chose cosmology. Yeah, the big questions, you know, the big
overall what is he He's a big picture guy instead
of particle physics. So why there's a pretty interesting quote.
(10:54):
He gave a two thousand to lecture to Cambridge's Center
for Mathematical Sciences and he said, came about particle physics,
but I felt that elementary particles at that time was
too like Botany. That's kind of rough, kind of a rough,
very fair to the Botan Steither, but yeah, definitely even
(11:14):
more interesting it is this man who we've come to
know in a wheelchair. I'll be a crazy advanced wheelchair
he was a rower. Yeah, first year Oxford, he went
out for the crew team. Yeah he was. Yeah, he
was kind of like he wasn't like one of like
the muscle rowers, but he's a cockin. He's the one
who sat in the front because he was kind of
a small guy even then, and so his petite build
(11:38):
was good for sitting in the front of the boat
when you shout directions, whoa, whoa, give me lunch or
whatever you yell at your rowers. So yeah, it's it's
it's important, I think to realize that this, you know,
this guy was once You know, if you're all young,
young dude out there steering and not rowing a boat,
well do they I mean they kind of direct Well,
(11:59):
I mean he's steering. He's not like, you know, wiggling
and bum from side to side to steer the boat.
But still he's out there. You know, it's physical exertion,
it's probably cold, and you know, well, so he had
to drop it because rowing, as some of you guys
probably know, it cuts into your school work, all that practice.
It's fairly intense sport. So you had to drop it. Yeah,
But once upon a time, Stephen Hawking was a rower.
Let's get to the family life. There's some pretty good
(12:20):
stuff there. Yeah, Like the the author of our our
article about about Hawking. His wife's name was Jane. Yeah,
first wife. He met his wife Jane at a New
Year's party, wife Jane. According to Jane, it's funny. His wife,
Jane thought that Hawking was a funny guy and he
and she admired his independence and the sense of humor
(12:43):
is something that remains with him. I mean, obviously he's
cool with showing up on the Simpsons in Futurama, but
but you see other things he's written and even the
you know, the the TV show on Discovery of the
Hawkings Universe, and there's a certain sense of humor to
that as well. Yeah, it's pretty sharp. But Gec, he's
good with comeback. It wasn't long after he met Jane, though,
that he ended up going to the doctor to what
(13:05):
he was like tripping a lot. He was filmed kind
of clumsy, you know, like there's something wrong with his
like motor skills and h He was diagnosed with blue
Garrig's disease, also known as a l S. Yeah. Here,
I'll just attempt it. Amiotrophic lateral sclerosis and that was
at the wee age of twenty two. Yeah, and they
(13:26):
were not giving that kind of a forecast either thought
he maybe lived like twenty four or something, right, Yeah,
not necessarily long to even finish his PhD. He was
then at Cambridge. So according to Mayo Clinic, in case
you guys want to know the deal in a l S,
if you don't remember H, signs of ALIS start to
begin with your muscle twitching. Maybe you have weakness in
an arm or even slurring of speech, so that would
(13:48):
kind of explain the clumsiness. And then eventually the cells
that control muscle activity you know, good stuff like eating, swallowing, breathing,
all that stuff are affected and you essentially become parallels.
It's too general at yeah, it occurs in one to
three people for per one thousand, and the most common
cause of death UM if you have a LS is
(14:08):
a respiratory failure. So you guys won't remember back in
two thousand nine, there are a lot of news stories
when talking went at the hospital and he would fairly
serious respiratory infection UM. But he obviously survived it, and
interestingly enough, he's now he's Britain's oldest survivor of a LS.
He's a small feet because the life expectancy after your
diagnosed is a few years, not decades. Yeah, Like I
(14:30):
think like three to five tops, And he's been justifying
the odds for decades. Um. So despite the diagnosis, he
was like, whatever, I'm getting engaged to my lady Jane,
and he did. Yeah, And she pointed out in an
interview I think, or maybe it was in her book
that that also there was like this atmosphere of you know,
that we could have a nuclear war at any moment.
(14:52):
It could, it could all be over, so all the
more reason. It's like, you know, the person I love,
you know, has this condition, but you know, and and
then everything might you know, go up in flames tomorrow,
But you know, right now, we've got this moment. Let's
make the best of this. Romantic they lasted for a
long time, but they too wound up splitting, and then
of course Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason, five years later,
(15:14):
So this caused some chattering the folks that like to
talk about this stuff, and Hawking has since split from
Mason as well, and he's a couple of kids, a
couple of grandkids now too. Yeah, this is actually really
interesting right across another tidbit about Hawking's musical taste, given
his you know, his own um um you know, musical explorations.
He's really big into like Wagner and some classical stuff, right,
(15:37):
But he was hanging out with his his son Tim,
and his Tim was listening to a lot of depeche
Mode all right. He wound up go into the depeche
Mode cos and the and Hawking says that he's like,
actually really digs depeche Mode now, So that's that's pretty cool.
I like the idea of like here setting sitting around
kind of jamming out everybody else. Ha said his ears
were ring for maybe twenty four hours after, So that's
(16:00):
you know, but if you gotta if you're gonna rock hard,
sometimes you gotta to roll with the punches, right Hawking. Yeah,
And and and come on, like some of those depeche
Mode songs are pretty somber, you know, so you should
be able to roll with that. Indeed. So wife Jane
eventually wrote this tell all about what it was like
to be married to the brilliant scientists, and it was
called Music to Move the Stars. Six hundred and ten
(16:21):
pages of detail on what it was like to be
married to Stephen Hawking, and from when I gather from
reading some of the reviews, it wasn't all positive. I
can't imagine what it would be like to live with
such a ridiculously smart mind. I mean, just say it
caused you to, you know, lack faith in your own judgment.
(16:42):
Do you question yourself? I mean there have to be
all sorts of issues that come up with a relationship
like that, or maybe it's just two people. Yeah, I
guess I would tend to, you know, It's it's always
been my experience that if somebody is really smart about
some things, they're probably pretty dumb about others about others,
you know, so it all evens out. Yeah, maybe so?
(17:03):
Maybe so. Anyway, he's since reconciled with wife Jane, and
she was at his bedside when he had that respiratory infection.
Back into us and nine. But let's depart from his
personal life before we get too many angry emails. Um,
let's get back to the physics. Yeah, in a nutshell,
the boundless universe theory that he's you know, attributed with,
(17:26):
it boils down to like think of the think of
the globe, right, yes, all right, Now, if you start
running around in a circle, you know on the globe,
we're not in a circle. But like you started just running,
then you would eventually loop around to where you were before,
and then you'd loop around to where you're before. You
just going forever. You know, you're never going to run off, right,
It's limitless, at least in a two D two dimensional framework.
(17:50):
Oh man, we should have called hi flat Stanley for this.
We should have called him flat Stam. He was busy.
I think he was going to Josh and Chucks the
Trie United to his agent. Wouldn't return my call. But um,
but yeah, so in a in a very two dimensional sense,
a globe is limitless. So uh, the boundless universe deal
is taking that idea and expanding it to a four
(18:12):
D universe and the universe right yeah, where you have
you know, three spatial dimensions in one of time. Right,
So universe has a contained entity but having no boundaries.
So I think that your analogy really helps to kind
of frame that in my mind and hopefully in listeners
minds too. I mean, it's contained, yet it has no boundaries,
So that's tricky. Yeah, it's it's a pretty big topic.
(18:34):
We may have to cover that one on its own
in a future podcast. So what about the black hole business?
What about the black hole bet? Oh? Yeah, so this
is this is in. It had to do with whether
information is lost in a black hole, right, So that's
what Hawkings said back in He essentially said that, well,
black holes, they're not exactly black. I mean they're radiating
(18:57):
energy because we tend to think of them as these
yawning malls of blackness sucking everything within, you know, remotely
close into it, right, tremendous cosmological forces. So Hawking thought
black holes radiated energy. But here's the tricky thing. At
the same time, he said that information was lost in
(19:18):
the black hole, so it's creating this nice little paradox. Yeah,
and us, the theoretical physicist John Preskill did not agree.
He even made a bet with Hawking, uh as well
as with cal Tech theorist Kip Thorne in that the
information can in fact escape from black holes. And this
(19:39):
was nice because pres Skill's idea didn't break the laws
of quantum mechanics as um as Hawking and Thorne we're doing.
And so eventually a two thousand four rolls around. Hawking said, yeah,
pres Skill was right. I'm not sure that Thorne has conceded. Actually, yeah,
I also couldn't find like what kind of money was
at stake here. I did there was an encyclopedia, and
(20:00):
the encyclopedia was to be given to the loser, so
the loser could look up information that he wasn't so
sure about. Oh so it's just kind of like a
kind of a petty, not a petty, but it's just
kind of like a joke result kind of. Yeah, yeah,
these are the kind of bets that sign just have.
They weren't like, it wasn't like a finger or anything. Okay,
that's good. So, as we mentioned earlier, Hawking also has
(20:24):
talked a good deal about the possibility of extraterrestrial life
in our universe. And uh, and that always gets some
you know, when you have a dude that's considered by
many to be one of, you know, one of the
if not the most brilliant mind out there, scientific mind
and he starts talking about alien aliens actually existing, you know,
people take notice and they run with it on slow
news weeks and uh, he said, some has said some
(20:45):
really cool stuff. He he thinks that sure, it's a
big universe out there, we might not be alone. But
his big point has been that it might be primitive life,
not necessarily intelligent life. In fact, he famously equipped that
sense of humor again that intelligent life has yet to
occur on Earth at NASA's fiftieth anniversary lecture series. So, yes,
life might be out there, but it might be primitive.
(21:07):
And his another point of his which is well received,
was that those aliens, they might not be DNA based. We,
like we've talked about before in the podcast, we tend
to think of aliens being somewhat similar to humans. Who
who's to say, you know, pure energy beings. So you know,
this guy is kind of a limit, you know, ultimately, right,
So if these aliens aren't DNA based, then they could
(21:29):
bring a whole host of new diseases that could just
lay waste to the human population and life on Earth.
And uh and as we mentioned in the Into the
Universe with Stephen Hawking show and Discovery, he uh he
discussed at length how of intelligent life on another planet
followed the same evolutionary scent as as human life and
(21:49):
it in it in it it even resembled our cultural advances.
Then we would be looking at some pretty scary aliens
who would probably not be pleasant to meet, right. They
might not be looking to make friends, but rather mind
the Earth of its available resources, right, and move on
in their giant spaceships to mind other planets. It was
kind of a kind of a you know, it wasn't
(22:09):
everybody focused on that aspect of it, and but that
that aspect of of the talk was very nightmark, you know,
I mean, the idea of any foreign force coming and
harvesting your planet, that's that's spooky. Indeed. So if you
want to send us some email about Stephen Hawking or
your favorite scientists out there, do where it's science stuff
at how stuff works dot com. We love hearing from
(22:31):
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That's all I got, Thanks for listening, guys. For more
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out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
(22:53):
home page. H
Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alice and I don't know, the science editor
how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
(00:20):
science writer at how stuff works dot com. And you know, um,
it's really hard not to love Stephen Hawking. Indeed, he's
very lovable and intelligent, especially when you you know, you write, podcast, edit,
live and breathe science, you know, at least from nine
to six from you know, for a living. Then then
you know he's a pretty big deal. Yeah, he starts
to approach idle status, but like we're discussing earlier, it's
(00:42):
often easy to like fall into the trap of just thinking,
all right, this is a brilliant, brilliant brain in um,
you know, a a disabled body and uh, and then
sort of like dismiss a lot of like whatever he's
talking about. What are you talking about? Dismiss who's dismissing Hawking?
Who has the audacity seeing that? Not like logically saying
like Hawking, but more like people are just kind of like, oh, yeah,
(01:05):
Stephen Hawking, he's brilliant, but without really giving a lot
of thought to like what he's you know, actually why
he's brilliant or much less thinking about the man, the
man that this is. This is a real dude, and
it's more than a theoretical physics and he's a pretty
interesting guy. Yeah. So today we thought we'd walk you
through a couple of things that you might not know
about Stephen Hawking. Despite the title hanging with Stephen Hockey,
(01:26):
he's not actually here in the studio. He didn't respond
to our interview requests. Imagine that. Um. This is based
on article that Jane McGrath, former co host of Stuff
You Miston history class back in the day, and she
wrote an article for House to Parks called ten cool
things you didn't know about Stephen Hawking. So if you
are really into Hawking and you want to go check
(01:46):
it out after you listen to our podcast, do it. Yeah.
We also have a quiz about Stephen Hawking. We have
two quizes about Stephen Hawking, I think. So if you
feel like Stephen Hawking already know that stuff, well bring it,
you know, come to the website and test that knowledge out. Okay,
So what is the theoretical physicist known for? What do
you know him for? Black holes? Right? Yeah, black hole
research and also the whole limitless universe thing where the
(02:07):
boundless universe. We'll get into that a little bit. Yeah,
a little bit. We don't don't turn off the podcast.
We're not going to get heavy into that. But but
well we'll discuss it. Let's let's start out with the
day of his birth. It's kind of handy because this
guy was born three hundred years to the day after
Galileo died on January so that's kind of handy. I
(02:28):
did think about looking up to see who died on
on my birthday to see if I could somehow link
myself a big figure in the past, but I didn't
have time before the podcast. Oh that that's a bit
of a letdown. I was really getting excited. We'll say
that for another podcast. Um, but but yeah, that's that's
pretty big. You know. It kind of implies that he
(02:49):
had some big guest shoes to fill, and you know,
some people would say he kind of did. But interestingly enough,
this guy has never received a Nobel It is interesting. Yeah,
I mean, so he's one of the most famous physicists
out there, one of the most famous scientists out there,
but he's gotten lots of other awards and prizes and
recognitions that, but nothing about Yeah, so inducted into the
(03:12):
Royal Society at the wee age of in his thirties.
I think he was thirty two. He was. He was
a relative young feller. Although a lot of people who
are making their names in math and science, they say
have already done like their critical work when they're pretty young,
which I always find distressing because you know what, if
my best years are are gone, your best years of
scientific brilliance is gone. Um So. Another interesting thing is
(03:37):
he's held at Cambridge University's Lucaezian Professor of Mathematics position.
And this is pretty darn prestigious, especially when you consider
that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the guys who
has held it, and Charles Babbage, And do you know
who Babbage is? I needed a little refresh on Babbage.
It sounds familiar. I was just talking about him with
Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff this morning. He something to
(04:00):
do with computers, he does, he does. He was essentially
the guy who led to the modern computer. Yeah, well,
computers are great. But has he received an award from
the Pope? Indeed, I'm not sure Babbage has, but Hawking
has he and Roger Penrose did the pious eleven Gold
Medal for science. You know, we have to do some
(04:22):
some sort of something about the pope giving out medals
to science because this was curious. I've not heard of this,
had you? Um? Yeah, I was a famiere a little
bit with it. I know one thing we're talking about Galileo.
Galileo did not get an award from the Pope, at
least not in his day and time. Yeah, and Galileo
certainly did not get the Presidential Medal of Freedom from
US President Barack Obama in two thousand nine. Yeah, what's up, Obama?
(04:44):
Why are you not giving Galileos dues? I think he'd
take him even after his death. Of course, Hawking is
no stranger to the media. Have you guys seen him?
Have you Have you checked him out in any of
his many appearances on TV or in film? Yeah, I've
seen the Futurama episode that he's in where um, he
like teams up with Al Gore and a few other
notable celebrities to like go back in time and um,
(05:06):
we're going to the future to like save the world.
And so it's pretty funny. Um. So this episode really
made an impression on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I
do remember specifically that Philip Fry, the kind of idiot
main character and Futurama. He uh, he discovers like a
cosmic achnology and calls it a fry hole, and and
then Hawking like steals it from him and calls it
(05:28):
a Hawking hole. That's good stuff. He's been on The
Simpsons four separate times. I heard the connection there was
that his daughter Lucy knew one of the scriptwriters from
the Simpsons. Um and he Hawking had a funny quote
and he said, as many people know me through the
Simpsons as through science, which is kind of hilarious. And
he also said Simpsons is the best thing on American TV. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:49):
he's a big fan. You can you can kind of
tell a lot about somebody if they have at least
dug the Simpsons at one point or another. I have
a friend who swears that she's never seen the Simpsons,
which I find to be a lie. How and that
be she has she has a TV, she has seen TV,
she has seen the Simpsons. How could you not have
seen the Simpsons? And then, of course, um, you wrote
(06:11):
a recent article that was based around his Discovery series
Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, and this got a
lot of press because he was talking about some things
that people didn't want to necessarily hear about. Aliens. Yeah,
when we we did a podcast, yeah, talking about this
a little bit, but it basically boiled down to it
was a slow news week. Oil hadn't like leaked up
and polluted the golf yet, so everyone was like, what
(06:31):
are we gonna talk about that today? Aliens? Right? Um,
here's something you might not have known about Hawking. Along
with his whole appearances on TV and in film, he's
a children's author. Yeah, and I'm thinking, I'm kind of
excited about the books. So he's written too with his
daughter Lucy Hawking. Um. And the first one is George's
(06:53):
Secret Key to the Universe, and it's supposed to be
part of a trilogy built around this little boy George.
And the second one is out too, it's called George's
Cosmic Treasure Hunt. So I was curious because I was,
you know, I have some kids, know, some kids, I
gotta get them presents sometimes, you know, when things roll
around birthdays and such, And these started like good books
to get kids. Yeah, I mean it's supposedly like and
(07:15):
I haven't read them, but supposed to be each one
like deals with like real cosmological you know issues, like
they explain kind of how the universe works in you know,
far simpler terms. Yeah. They did an interview with ABC
Lucy and her I think Lucy and her dad did,
and Lucy says it was clear to me that there
was a wealth of science fiction available for children, but
not very much quote unquote science fact. Science fiction can
(07:37):
be exciting and very gripping, but it doesn't tell us
anything about the universe in which we live. We wrote
an adventure that is based on real science rather than
on fantasy. I don't know. I mean, do you think
that I kind of disagree with her on the whole
science fiction thing not being able to tell us about well,
the universe. It, No, it can, but I just don't
know how much I think. Maybe her point is more
(07:58):
when it comes to children's fiction, you know, you know,
like and I can't think of any like young adults
sci fi titles. Well, I don't know. I guess for
me when I was a young adult, like the sci
fi titles that I was into, or things like Asimov.
So so yeah, if you look at it that way,
it's like, you know, Asimov is perfectly fine for many
young people to read, and you know, and I think
(08:20):
reading as Amov has inspired you know, many scientists and
children who just you know, went on to other things
that remained interested in it. But the book that Hawking
is really well known for is, of course, Brief History
of Time. Right did you read it? Um? I don't
know if I've sat down and read it cover to cover,
but I've definitely hit it up here and there for
(08:40):
articles or you know, to answer little questions in my head. Um.
They made a movie out of it as well, which
I have not seen, but yeah, and there's a hawkings
and tons of documentaries. He's written all sorts of stuff.
But here's something this guy, this vaunted science celebrity, maybe
not always the best student. Yeah, everybody loves these stories.
(09:02):
Everybody does love these stories because whether you're a you know,
a kid who just got to see you know, in
in social studies, or you're a mom, or the argument
when you present your battery port to your parents. Hey,
you know, Steve Jobs never finished high school. Yeah, or
like when Einstein was a kidte Robbi convenient story, and
hockey wasn't even really that smart. Yeah, Bill Gates stole
(09:25):
the painting. You know, he turned out great. But as
it turns out, Hawking could actually get it done in
the grades department. When he took his scholarship exams, he
aised them and he had a near perfect score on
the physics portion. Yeah, when it came down to, uh,
you know, basically, be in a situation where you're not
going to get to go to the college you need
to go to unless you as this test, then he
(09:46):
ponied up and did it. So that's interesting because, um,
he didn't really want to study physics. Physics represented a
compromise between he and his dad, good old Frank. Yeah,
his dad wanted him to be a doctor. Yeah, I
mean you know that's a lot of parents want their
kids to go into medicine. Yeah, make that make the
big money. Right. But but then the yeah, that then
(10:09):
he was more interested in mathematics, like this, the whole
the hard cold you know when I mean not cold.
You know, if you're in love with mathematics, it's not
really a cold thing. But numbers can be warm and
fuzzy if you understand them. Yeah, they can be, yeah,
your best friends of your mathematician. But he was very
and you know, there's a lot of there's a lot
of potential in mathematics. There's a and then there's a
lot of you know, exact you know, calculation, and I
(10:31):
think he was really into that it wasn't so psyched
on biology, found it rather imprecise, and so Jane was
Jane was writing. So he ultimately wound up attending Oxford
and majoring in physics. And when it came to figure
out what physics path he wanted to go down, he
chose cosmology. Yeah, the big questions, you know, the big
overall what is he He's a big picture guy instead
of particle physics. So why there's a pretty interesting quote.
(10:54):
He gave a two thousand to lecture to Cambridge's Center
for Mathematical Sciences and he said, came about particle physics,
but I felt that elementary particles at that time was
too like Botany. That's kind of rough, kind of a rough,
very fair to the Botan Steither, but yeah, definitely even
(11:14):
more interesting it is this man who we've come to
know in a wheelchair. I'll be a crazy advanced wheelchair
he was a rower. Yeah, first year Oxford, he went
out for the crew team. Yeah he was. Yeah, he
was kind of like he wasn't like one of like
the muscle rowers, but he's a cockin. He's the one
who sat in the front because he was kind of
a small guy even then, and so his petite build
(11:38):
was good for sitting in the front of the boat
when you shout directions, whoa, whoa, give me lunch or
whatever you yell at your rowers. So yeah, it's it's
it's important, I think to realize that this, you know,
this guy was once You know, if you're all young,
young dude out there steering and not rowing a boat,
well do they I mean they kind of direct Well,
(11:59):
I mean he's steering. He's not like, you know, wiggling
and bum from side to side to steer the boat.
But still he's out there. You know, it's physical exertion,
it's probably cold, and you know, well, so he had
to drop it because rowing, as some of you guys
probably know, it cuts into your school work, all that practice.
It's fairly intense sport. So you had to drop it. Yeah,
But once upon a time, Stephen Hawking was a rower.
Let's get to the family life. There's some pretty good
(12:20):
stuff there. Yeah, Like the the author of our our
article about about Hawking. His wife's name was Jane. Yeah,
first wife. He met his wife Jane at a New
Year's party, wife Jane. According to Jane, it's funny. His wife,
Jane thought that Hawking was a funny guy and he
and she admired his independence and the sense of humor
(12:43):
is something that remains with him. I mean, obviously he's
cool with showing up on the Simpsons in Futurama, but
but you see other things he's written and even the
you know, the the TV show on Discovery of the
Hawkings Universe, and there's a certain sense of humor to
that as well. Yeah, it's pretty sharp. But Gec, he's
good with comeback. It wasn't long after he met Jane, though,
that he ended up going to the doctor to what
(13:05):
he was like tripping a lot. He was filmed kind
of clumsy, you know, like there's something wrong with his
like motor skills and h He was diagnosed with blue
Garrig's disease, also known as a l S. Yeah. Here,
I'll just attempt it. Amiotrophic lateral sclerosis and that was
at the wee age of twenty two. Yeah, and they
(13:26):
were not giving that kind of a forecast either thought
he maybe lived like twenty four or something, right, Yeah,
not necessarily long to even finish his PhD. He was
then at Cambridge. So according to Mayo Clinic, in case
you guys want to know the deal in a l S,
if you don't remember H, signs of ALIS start to
begin with your muscle twitching. Maybe you have weakness in
an arm or even slurring of speech, so that would
(13:48):
kind of explain the clumsiness. And then eventually the cells
that control muscle activity you know, good stuff like eating, swallowing, breathing,
all that stuff are affected and you essentially become parallels.
It's too general at yeah, it occurs in one to
three people for per one thousand, and the most common
cause of death UM if you have a LS is
(14:08):
a respiratory failure. So you guys won't remember back in
two thousand nine, there are a lot of news stories
when talking went at the hospital and he would fairly
serious respiratory infection UM. But he obviously survived it, and
interestingly enough, he's now he's Britain's oldest survivor of a LS.
He's a small feet because the life expectancy after your
diagnosed is a few years, not decades. Yeah, Like I
(14:30):
think like three to five tops, And he's been justifying
the odds for decades. Um. So despite the diagnosis, he
was like, whatever, I'm getting engaged to my lady Jane,
and he did. Yeah, And she pointed out in an
interview I think, or maybe it was in her book
that that also there was like this atmosphere of you know,
that we could have a nuclear war at any moment.
(14:52):
It could, it could all be over, so all the
more reason. It's like, you know, the person I love,
you know, has this condition, but you know, and and
then everything might you know, go up in flames tomorrow,
But you know, right now, we've got this moment. Let's
make the best of this. Romantic they lasted for a
long time, but they too wound up splitting, and then
of course Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason, five years later,
(15:14):
So this caused some chattering the folks that like to
talk about this stuff, and Hawking has since split from
Mason as well, and he's a couple of kids, a
couple of grandkids now too. Yeah, this is actually really
interesting right across another tidbit about Hawking's musical taste, given
his you know, his own um um you know, musical explorations.
He's really big into like Wagner and some classical stuff, right,
(15:37):
But he was hanging out with his his son Tim,
and his Tim was listening to a lot of depeche
Mode all right. He wound up go into the depeche
Mode cos and the and Hawking says that he's like,
actually really digs depeche Mode now, So that's that's pretty cool.
I like the idea of like here setting sitting around
kind of jamming out everybody else. Ha said his ears
were ring for maybe twenty four hours after, So that's
(16:00):
you know, but if you gotta if you're gonna rock hard,
sometimes you gotta to roll with the punches, right Hawking. Yeah,
And and and come on, like some of those depeche
Mode songs are pretty somber, you know, so you should
be able to roll with that. Indeed. So wife Jane
eventually wrote this tell all about what it was like
to be married to the brilliant scientists, and it was
called Music to Move the Stars. Six hundred and ten
(16:21):
pages of detail on what it was like to be
married to Stephen Hawking, and from when I gather from
reading some of the reviews, it wasn't all positive. I
can't imagine what it would be like to live with
such a ridiculously smart mind. I mean, just say it
caused you to, you know, lack faith in your own judgment.
(16:42):
Do you question yourself? I mean there have to be
all sorts of issues that come up with a relationship
like that, or maybe it's just two people. Yeah, I
guess I would tend to, you know, It's it's always
been my experience that if somebody is really smart about
some things, they're probably pretty dumb about others about others,
you know, so it all evens out. Yeah, maybe so?
(17:03):
Maybe so. Anyway, he's since reconciled with wife Jane, and
she was at his bedside when he had that respiratory infection.
Back into us and nine. But let's depart from his
personal life before we get too many angry emails. Um,
let's get back to the physics. Yeah, in a nutshell,
the boundless universe theory that he's you know, attributed with,
(17:26):
it boils down to like think of the think of
the globe, right, yes, all right, Now, if you start
running around in a circle, you know on the globe,
we're not in a circle. But like you started just running,
then you would eventually loop around to where you were before,
and then you'd loop around to where you're before. You
just going forever. You know, you're never going to run off, right,
It's limitless, at least in a two D two dimensional framework.
(17:50):
Oh man, we should have called hi flat Stanley for this.
We should have called him flat Stam. He was busy.
I think he was going to Josh and Chucks the
Trie United to his agent. Wouldn't return my call. But um,
but yeah, so in a in a very two dimensional sense,
a globe is limitless. So uh, the boundless universe deal
is taking that idea and expanding it to a four
(18:12):
D universe and the universe right yeah, where you have
you know, three spatial dimensions in one of time. Right,
So universe has a contained entity but having no boundaries.
So I think that your analogy really helps to kind
of frame that in my mind and hopefully in listeners
minds too. I mean, it's contained, yet it has no boundaries,
So that's tricky. Yeah, it's it's a pretty big topic.
(18:34):
We may have to cover that one on its own
in a future podcast. So what about the black hole business?
What about the black hole bet? Oh? Yeah, so this
is this is in. It had to do with whether
information is lost in a black hole, right, So that's
what Hawkings said back in He essentially said that, well,
black holes, they're not exactly black. I mean they're radiating
(18:57):
energy because we tend to think of them as these
yawning malls of blackness sucking everything within, you know, remotely
close into it, right, tremendous cosmological forces. So Hawking thought
black holes radiated energy. But here's the tricky thing. At
the same time, he said that information was lost in
(19:18):
the black hole, so it's creating this nice little paradox. Yeah,
and us, the theoretical physicist John Preskill did not agree.
He even made a bet with Hawking, uh as well
as with cal Tech theorist Kip Thorne in that the
information can in fact escape from black holes. And this
(19:39):
was nice because pres Skill's idea didn't break the laws
of quantum mechanics as um as Hawking and Thorne we're doing.
And so eventually a two thousand four rolls around. Hawking said, yeah,
pres Skill was right. I'm not sure that Thorne has conceded. Actually, yeah,
I also couldn't find like what kind of money was
at stake here. I did there was an encyclopedia, and
(20:00):
the encyclopedia was to be given to the loser, so
the loser could look up information that he wasn't so
sure about. Oh so it's just kind of like a
kind of a petty, not a petty, but it's just
kind of like a joke result kind of. Yeah, yeah,
these are the kind of bets that sign just have.
They weren't like, it wasn't like a finger or anything. Okay,
that's good. So, as we mentioned earlier, Hawking also has
(20:24):
talked a good deal about the possibility of extraterrestrial life
in our universe. And uh, and that always gets some
you know, when you have a dude that's considered by
many to be one of, you know, one of the
if not the most brilliant mind out there, scientific mind
and he starts talking about alien aliens actually existing, you know,
people take notice and they run with it on slow
news weeks and uh, he said, some has said some
(20:45):
really cool stuff. He he thinks that sure, it's a
big universe out there, we might not be alone. But
his big point has been that it might be primitive life,
not necessarily intelligent life. In fact, he famously equipped that
sense of humor again that intelligent life has yet to
occur on Earth at NASA's fiftieth anniversary lecture series. So, yes,
life might be out there, but it might be primitive.
(21:07):
And his another point of his which is well received,
was that those aliens, they might not be DNA based. We,
like we've talked about before in the podcast, we tend
to think of aliens being somewhat similar to humans. Who
who's to say, you know, pure energy beings. So you know,
this guy is kind of a limit, you know, ultimately, right,
So if these aliens aren't DNA based, then they could
(21:29):
bring a whole host of new diseases that could just
lay waste to the human population and life on Earth.
And uh and as we mentioned in the Into the
Universe with Stephen Hawking show and Discovery, he uh he
discussed at length how of intelligent life on another planet
followed the same evolutionary scent as as human life and
(21:49):
it in it in it it even resembled our cultural advances.
Then we would be looking at some pretty scary aliens
who would probably not be pleasant to meet, right. They
might not be looking to make friends, but rather mind
the Earth of its available resources, right, and move on
in their giant spaceships to mind other planets. It was
kind of a kind of a you know, it wasn't
(22:09):
everybody focused on that aspect of it, and but that
that aspect of of the talk was very nightmark, you know,
I mean, the idea of any foreign force coming and
harvesting your planet, that's that's spooky. Indeed. So if you
want to send us some email about Stephen Hawking or
your favorite scientists out there, do where it's science stuff
at how stuff works dot com. We love hearing from
(22:31):
you guys, or hit us up on Twitter where we're
lab stuff, and Facebook where we're stuff in the science Lab.
That's all I got, Thanks for listening, guys. For more
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
(22:53):
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