Prospering in the face of adversity
AS SOMEONE who was forthright in seeking a rational explanation for the universe and its workings, Stephen Hawking may have been given pause for thought had he known he would pass away on the date of Albert Einstein’s birthday – March 14.
Compounding the irony is the fact that Hawking was born on the anniversary of Galileo’s death – January 8.
Galileo introduced Relativity Theory, explaining how different observers should compare their individual measurements of physical phenomena.
Between 1905 and 1915, Einstein investigated the profound consequences of this seemingly innocuous theory: his Special and General Relativity theories initiated a revolution in our understanding of the nature of space, time and gravitation – and opened the door to the concept of black holes, the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe and the phenomenon of gravitational waves.
Einstein also played a central role in the development of the other great revolution of 20th century physics – Quantum Theory. And it is General Relativity and Quantum Theory that provided the arena within which Hawking made his remarkable discoveries.
After attending Oxford as an undergraduate, Hawking began work towards his PhD at Cambridge in the early 1960s.
His first major achievement came soon after when he developed a means of applying mathematical ideas due to Roger Penrose (who had been studying the formation of singularities inside black holes) to the study of the universe as a whole.
Hawking was able to conclude that the universe must have begun with an initial singularity – a point of infinite density and temperature.
This work provided compelling evidence for the validity of the Big Bang model of the universe. The Big Bang concept raises as many questions as it answers – what does it mean for space and time to have a beginning? – and Hawking returned to this idea repeatedly throughout his career.
Perhaps his most notable work in this area is the development (with James Hartle) of the so-called No Boundary Proposal, which provides a quantum theory of the origin of the universe (and which remains one of the few viable such models).
Hawking’s best-known work relates to black holes. A black hole forms when a star burns up all of its fuel and collapses to a state that is so small and so dense nothing can escape its gravitational field – not even light. Hence, it appears black.
However, in 1974 Hawking proved black holes are not so black after all: in a remarkable and ground-breaking application of Quantum Theory to General Relativity, he showed black holes emit thermal radiation.
This is universally known as Hawking Radiation. As for the Big Bang, so with Hawking Radiation: the concept raises new questions while answering others.
The issue now is with the fate of all the information that was eaten up by the black hole in its formation.
According to Quantum Theory, this information should be (in a technical sense) preserved. But Hawking Radiation, somewhat like the fuzz of interference on a TV screen, contains no information.
This so-called Information Paradox has led to much headscratching and indeed controversy, not least when Hawking announced
a solution at a conference held in the RDS in July 2004. However, that wasn’t the end of the story, and the debate continues.
This announcement and Hawking’s lecture at the RDS excited great media interest, something he enjoyed thoroughly.
IN this sense, he was Einstein’s successor: Einstein was the first global scientific superstar, particularly after 1919 when a key aspect of General Relativity was confirmed by observations.
The period of Hawking’s media super-stardom began with the publication and mass sales of ‘A Brief History Of Time’, his popular account of the theories of space, time and the quantum that occupied his professional life.
Hawking wrote the book to make money: his illness generated a huge financial burden that could not be met by his academic salary or the public health services.
Hawking suffered from a massively debilitating illness, diagnosed shortly after his 21st birthday.
Motor neuron disease chipped away at his physical capacities, confining him to a wheelchair from the late 1960s.
However, he remained adamant he was “a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person”.
His life and science (of which the examples above provide a snapshot) are legacy to the fact these were not empty words, and are a monument not just to an extraordinary intellect, but to a remarkable example of people’s capacity to thrive in the face of adversity.