{"id":56394,"date":"2018-03-14T10:40:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T05:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=56394"},"modified":"2018-03-14T10:40:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T05:40:09","slug":"physicist-stephen-hawking-who-conquered-the-stars-dies-at-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=56394","title":{"rendered":"Physicist Stephen Hawking, who conquered the stars, dies at 76"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON March 14 (TNS):<\/strong> Stephen Hawking, who sought to explain some of the most complicated questions of life while himself working under the shadow of a likely premature death, has died at 76.<\/p>\n

He died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,\u201d his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Hawking\u2019s formidable mind probed the very limits of human understanding both in the vastness of space and in the bizarre sub-molecular world of quantum theory, which he said could predict what happens at the beginning and end of time.<\/p>\n

His work ranged from the origins of the universe itself, through the tantalizing prospect of time travel to the mysteries of space\u2019s all-consuming black holes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,\u201d his family said. \u201cHis courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of his intellect contrasted cruelly with the weakness of his body, ravaged by the wasting motor neurone disease he contracted at the age of 21.<\/p>\n

Hawking was confined for most of his life to a wheelchair. As his condition worsened, he had to resort to speaking through a voice synthesizer and communicating by moving his eyebrows.<\/p>\n

The disease spurred him to work harder but also contributed to the collapse of his two marriages, he wrote in a 2013 memoir \u201cMy Brief History.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the book he related how he was first diagnosed: \u201cI felt it was very unfair – why should this happen to me,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realize the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawking shot to international fame after the 1988 publication of \u201c\u0093A Brief History of Time\u201d, one of the most complex books ever to achieve mass appeal, which stayed on the Sunday Times best-sellers list for no fewer than 237 weeks.<\/p>\n

He said he wrote the book to convey his own excitement over recent discoveries about the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy original aim was to write a book that would sell on airport bookstalls,\u201d he told reporters at the time. \u201c\u0093In order to make sure it was understandable I tried the book out on my nurses. I think they understood most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was particularly proud that the book contains only one mathematical equation – relativity\u2019s famous E=MC squared.<\/p>\n

His popular recognition became such that he appeared as himself on the television show \u201cStar Trek: Next Generation\u201d and his cartoon caricature appeared on \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d.<\/p>\n

TWO CONCEPTS OF TIME<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since 1974 he worked extensively on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics – Einstein\u2019s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.<\/p>\n

As a result of that research, Hawking proposed a model of the universe based on two concepts of time: \u0093\u201dreal time\u201d, or time as human beings experience it, and \u0093quantum theory\u2019s \u201cimaginary time\u201d, on which the world may really run.<\/p>\n

\u201cImaginary time may sound like science fiction … but it is a genuine scientific concept,\u201d he wrote in a lecture paper.<\/p>\n

Real time could be perceived as a horizontal line, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there\u2019s another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience – but in a sense, it is just as real as what we call real time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July 2002, Hawking said in a lecture that although his quest was to explain everything, a theory of determinism that would predict the universe in the past and forever in the future probably could not be achieved.<\/p>\n

He caused some controversy among biologists when he said he saw computer viruses as a life form, and thus the human race\u2019s first act of creation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive,\u201d he told a computer forum in Boston. \u201c\u0093We\u2019ve created life in our own image.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also predicted the development of a \u0093race of self-designing human beings, who will use genetic engineering to improve their make-up.<\/p>\n

Another major area of his research was into black holes, the regions of space-time where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.<\/p>\n

When asked whether God had a place in his work, Hawking once said: \u201c\u0093In a way, if we understand the universe, we are in the position of God.\u201d TNS\/Reuters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON March 14 (TNS): Stephen Hawking, who sought to explain some of the most complicated questions of life while himself working under the shadow of a likely premature death, has died at 76. He died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday. \u201cWe are deeply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,491],"tags":[932,247],"class_list":["post-56394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-london","tag-international","tag-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56396,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56394\/revisions\/56396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}