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Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

nytimes.com

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Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#21

Post by Maro »

cyphar wrote: post #12
curiousgal wrote: post #8

I get that Hawking's work is incredible and that he, himself, is an amazing person. But is his work really worth putting him on the same pedestal as Newton?

I have the same feeling, and I think people often mix his personal achievement (fighting a degenerative disease for so long and being a very large mind in the world of cosmology) with his scientific achievements (helping refine cosmology and think about black holes and their interactions). I've read several of his books and papers, and while they are definitely very brilliant, he never produced a Principa Mathematica…

Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky.

I think GR is at Newton's level. They say most of Physics is very iterative, and if X didn't discover Z, the probably another person Y would have 5-10 yrs later. But this is not true for GR. GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. It was just Einstein sitting down, doing thought experiments about elevators in space, then a huge, incomprehensible (to me) mental leap to manifolds and tensors, and the Einstein equation. You can try this yourself: read his popular GR book (it's excellent), then pick up a GR textbook and read the first chapter, and see if you could get from the thought experiments to constructing the math.

It's hard to compare it to Newton, bc Newton also had to invent Calculus, but it's up there.

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#22

Post by mcny »

jacobush wrote: post #19
Sharlin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. He is a media darling, was a great science popularizer, and decidedly influential in his own sub-subfield of black hole cosmology, but in the greater context of physics "just another" accomplished researcher. On a purely personal level, of course, his career was quite remarkable given his condition.

And did a fantastic job popularising science. He even was in a Star Trek episode as himself! It brings a stupid happy smile to my face every time I think about it.

My favorite quote is that he sold more books on physics than Madonna did on sex.

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#23

Post by saalweachter »

dasil003 wrote: post #7
sombremesa wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One person's mundane work is another person's magical wizardry. Absolutely. Sometimes I get excited about a topic and try to learn as much as possible, but once you peek behind the curtain it's just as mundane as anything else. Most of the time an abstract is hard to understand because the concepts have been abstracted. If you just break it down and pick it apart, it's not hard to understand, though it can be time…

I'm tempted to believe that cosmology and astrophysics are the exception to that rule.

I mean, what's behind the curtain of most things is "a bunch of differential equations".

With things like astrophysics you also have "and computer simulations".

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#24

Post by cyphar »

Maro wrote: post #21
cyphar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same feeling, and I think people often mix his personal achievement (fighting a degenerative disease for so long and being a very large mind in the world of cosmology) with his scientific achievements (helping refine cosmology and think about black holes and their interactions). I've read several of his books and papers, and while they are definitely very brilliant, he never produced a Principa Mathematica…

Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. I think GR is at Newton's level. They say most of Physics is very iterative, and if X didn't discover Z, the probably another person Y would have 5-10 yrs later. But this is not true for GR. GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. It was just Einstein sitting down, doing thought experiments about elevators in space, th…

> Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky.

Yes, I've studied and done physics research (I have yet to finish my degree, but I've completed all of the physics topics). (My research topics were on astroseismology and non-linear optics -- not related to SR or GR, but we went through the derivations and reasoning of SR in class.)

> I think GR is at Newton's level.

I think you've misunderstood what I meant by "people over-complicate Einstein's work". My point wasn't that Einstein is somehow inferior to Newton, it was that a large part of Einstein's work is actually incredibly simple (compared to how it is pitched) which to me makes it all the more genius.

> GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then.

The core idea behind GR came from thought experiments trying to understand how SR might be extended to non-inertial frames. In many ways this is the most obvious thing to consider after you've come up with SR: "what if we start accelerating?"

Also, SR similarly wasn't required to explain anything important. Einstein was thinking very deeply about what does it mean to "measure" something, and the first section of his paper was discussions of synchronized clocks and how they relate to measurements (possibly the furthest thing from a "real" problem you can have).

> then a huge, incomprehensible (to me) mental leap to manifolds and tensors, and the Einstein equation.

In Einstein's case, he had quite a bit of help with the mathematics (again, not to detract at all -- but we should separate the mathematical derivation from intuition). Intuition is the driving force in physics (with mathematics fleshing out what the logical conclusion of an intuition must be), and so I find discussing the intuition to be far more critical when talking about physical theories.

The core genius was the realisation that acceleration changes how light beams look to observers -- and the intuition that acceleration must have an equivalence to gravity. Neither of these things are complicated, and you could explain them to anyone who has seen a projectile or stood in an elevator. But the conclusion you come to is far from obvious.

And that, to me, is the beauty of physics. Obviously the intuition is just the first step, and there is plenty of brilliance in all of the manifold and tensor equations (it's definitely above my pay-grade), but I think that over-hyping the mathematics isn't quite right either.

> It's hard to compare it to Newton, bc Newton also had to invent Calculus, but it's up there.

That is effectively what I was saying. Newton had Principa Mathematica and in many ways pioneered the mathematical viewpoint that we use in physics today.

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#25

Post by gaius »

sombremesa wrote: post #6
warent wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. Sure, being a programmer and being Stephen Hawking are two very different things, but we still take an occasional dip in the ocean of abstract thinking when working deeply on complex, generalized problems in programming. One person's mundane work is another person's magical wizardry. Also, unfortunately there's no evidence that I know of that our knowledge is going…

> One person's mundane work is another person's magical wizardry. Absolutely. Sometimes I get excited about a topic and try to learn as much as possible, but once you peek behind the curtain it's just as mundane as anything else. Most of the time an abstract is hard to understand because the concepts have been abstracted. If you just break it down and pick it apart, it's not hard to understand, though it can be time…

once you peek behind the curtain it's just as mundane as anything else

So much of interesting computation is just matrix manipulation/linalg under the covers. Which is pretty cool actually: it means the skills are very transferrable, which it turns means it is worthwhile going deep.

This is a breath of fresh air compared to most sorts of computing, where the skill really is "memorize all the workarounds to the bugs", and all the time you know as soon as the next version comes out, all that is obsolete, so you try to avoid wasting too much time learning it.

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#26

Post by T-A »

Maro wrote: post #21
cyphar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same feeling, and I think people often mix his personal achievement (fighting a degenerative disease for so long and being a very large mind in the world of cosmology) with his scientific achievements (helping refine cosmology and think about black holes and their interactions). I've read several of his books and papers, and while they are definitely very brilliant, he never produced a Principa Mathematica…

Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. I think GR is at Newton's level. They say most of Physics is very iterative, and if X didn't discover Z, the probably another person Y would have 5-10 yrs later. But this is not true for GR. GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. It was just Einstein sitting down, doing thought experiments about elevators in space, th…

This is actually the subject of a long-running dispute. Fun fact: Hilbert submitted a paper with the field equations of GR before Einstein - but it was published later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute#Ge...

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#28

Post by IAmGraydon »

jaimehrubiks wrote: post #3

I wish I could understand the minds of these people. They lived with us and yet they are so much ahead in the comprehension of the universe. I've always loved science, I chose to do computers in the end though. I don't understand a single world of the abstract. I also wish I could just know what people in a thousand years learn about the universe. It seems like the knowledge we gain (science and technology) is expone…

Stephen Hawking would not have understood a single line of your code. The language of his and your profession are different and must be learned. Would you go to Japan and feel that the people there must be eons beyond your comprehension because you don’t speak Japanese? No! You would learn Japanese, and would find out that they’re just like you, but they just speak a different language which they spent many years perfecting.

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#29

Post by meekaaku »

cyphar wrote: post #24
Maro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. I think GR is at Newton's level. They say most of Physics is very iterative, and if X didn't discover Z, the probably another person Y would have 5-10 yrs later. But this is not true for GR. GR came out of the blue, it wasn't strictly required to explain anything important back then. It was just Einstein sitting down, doing thought experiments about elevators in space, th…

> Are you a physicist? Not trying to be snarky. Yes, I've studied and done physics research (I have yet to finish my degree, but I've completed all of the physics topics). (My research topics were on astroseismology and non-linear optics -- not related to SR or GR, but we went through the derivations and reasoning of SR in class.) > I think GR is at Newton's level. I think you've misunderstood what I meant by "people…

"SR similarly wasn't required to explain anything important"

Wasnt it the case that no one was able to explain Michaelson-Morley experiment? That speed of light was measured to be the same irresective of observer speed? Ppl came with all sorts of explanations (ether/lorentz tx etc), but it was Einstein who had the creativity to suggest that maybe time itself was slowing down. With that insight, the rest was beautifuly derivable.

And this is also why, Hilbert was able to (and otherws were racing to) derive the field equations before Einstein, since Einstein needed help from mathematicians (Grossman?), and Hilbert was an already excellent mathematician. SR and GR is derivable from beautifuly simple insights (time slowdown, gravity/acceleration equivalence).

One could say Einstein came with this insight out of the blue, but Poincare was also investigating time dilation, but stopped because it was too counter-intuitive.

Edit: typos

Re: Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper: How to Escape from a Black Hole

#30

Post by sridca »

jaimehrubiks wrote: post #3

I wish I could understand the minds of these people. They lived with us and yet they are so much ahead in the comprehension of the universe. I've always loved science, I chose to do computers in the end though. I don't understand a single world of the abstract. I also wish I could just know what people in a thousand years learn about the universe. It seems like the knowledge we gain (science and technology) is expone…

> They lived with us and yet they are so much ahead in the comprehension of the universe.

Aren't these people just theorists? Black hole is a theory and not a proven reality that can be directly observed.

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