Hawking helps ordinary people tackle extraordinary questions
Stephen Hawking really is one of the world’s greatest minds because in his new PBS docu-series, “Genius by Stephen Hawking,” he manages to get ordinary people to understand some of the most complicated and seemingly unanswerable questions of the universe.
The six-part series, which launches with two episodes Wednesday and continues with two episodes a night for the next two Wednesdays, not only makes science accessible, it makes watching science fun.
The first episode asks: “Can We Time Travel?” And before you leap to the obvious conclusion that time travel is just the stuff of science fiction, three ordinary people walk several blocks in New York to prove you wrong.
It all has to do with considering time as a spatial dimension, and we can thank the great philosopher Rene Descartes for coming to that realization. Descartes was sickly as a kid and spent mornings in bed. He got to like hanging around in bed and thinking great thoughts, so he kept on doing it through the rest of his life.
Some of the show’s demonstrations are harder to grasp than others. The first episode takes the ordinary trio to Arizona, where they drive back and forth in DeLoreans to learn more about the possibilities, and cold realities, of time travel. The DeLoreans
are cute, but the intended lesson is elusive. No biggie. You always at least get the gist of what Hawking is talking about.
The second episode on Wednesday, “Are We Alone,” ponders whether Earth is the only planet in the galaxy that could support life. There are, as Carl Sagan said, billions and billions of stars, and the odds are some of them have just the right combination of factors to support life.
Water is the primary necessity. In general, only planets within a specified distance from their host stars were deemed possible life supporters for many years. The temperature had to be just right. But “Genius” shows us that there are mechanical ways that a planet or a planet’s satellite, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa, might be able to generate enough heat to keep water from freezing all the time.
The other topics in the miniseries include “Where Are We,” “What Are We,” “Why Are We Here” and “Where Did the Universe Come From.”
You may be able to figure out answers to some of the problems posed to those sets of ordinary people before they do. Others, not so much. But the point of the series is that we are more capable than we realize of understanding the fundamental questions of existence.
And even if we don’t get all the answers right away, “Genius” gives us reason to keep asking questions and trying to understand.