Quotes About Stephen Hawking

our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

If you like, you can say that the laws [of nature] are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence.

It would be a poor sort of immortality, however, because any personal concept of time for the astronaut would almost certainly come to an end as he was torn apart inside the black hole!

There is a history of the universe in which England win the World Cup again, though maybe the probability is low.

This process is known as inflation, something that was good for the universe in contrast to inflation of prices that too often plagues us.

People have searched for mini black holes of this mass, but have so far not found any. This is a pity because, if they had, I would have got a Nobel Prize.

In conclusion, rapid space travel and travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding. They would cause great logical problems, so let's hope there's a Chronology Protection Law to prevent people going back and killing their parents.

The basic assumption of science is scientific determinism.

It is said that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, and nowhere is that more true than in the case of black holes. Black holes are stranger than anything dreamed up by science-fiction writers, but they are firmly matters of science fact.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

Indeed, if it were, it would by definition not be random. In modern times, we have effectively removed the third possibility above by redefining the goal of science: our aim is to formulate a set of laws that enables us to predict events only up to the limit set by the uncertainty principle.

if the sun were to cease to shine at this very moment, it would not affect things on earth at the present time because they would be in the elsewhere of the event when the sun went out.

I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. These laws may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it.

It means the universe itself, in all its mind-boggling vastness and complexity, could simply have popped into existence without violating the known laws of nature.

Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

There is no time to wait for Darwinian evolution to make us more intelligent and better natured. But we are now entering a new phase of what might be called self-designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA.

There is a black hole with a mass of about four million times that of the Sun at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.

we can really be sure of is that even if the universe is going to recollapse, it won't do so for at least another ten thousand million years, since it has already been expanding for at least that long. This should not unduly worry us: by that time, unless we have colonized beyond the Solar System, mankind will long since have died out, extinguished along with our sun!

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.

associates and collaborators were Roger Penrose

however, not very accurate, and so his value for the speed of light was 140,000 miles per second, compared to the modern value of 186,000 miles per second. Nevertheless, Roemer's achievement, in not only proving that light travels at a finite speed, but also in measuring that speed, was remarkable—coming as it did eleven years before Newton's publication of Principia Mathematica.

This apparent loss of information, known as the information paradox, has troubled scientists for the last forty years, and still remains one of the biggest unsolved problems in theoretical physics.

A model is a good model if it: Is elegant Contains few arbitrary or adjustable elements Agrees with and explains all existing observations Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not borne out. For

If you fall towards a black hole feet first, gravity will pull harder on your feet than your head, because they are nearer the black hole. The result is that you will be stretched out lengthwise, and squashed in sideways. If the black hole has a mass of a few times our Sun, you would be torn apart and made into spaghetti before you reached the horizon.