81ST BIRTH ANNIVERSARY
British cosmologist Stephen William Hawking was born in England on Jan 8, 1942. He attended University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, despite his father’s urging to focus on medicine. Hawking went on to Cambridge to research cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole. In early 1963, on his 21st birthday, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, more commonly known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). He was not expected to live more than two years. Completing his Doctorate did not appear likely, but Hawking defied the odds. He attained his PhD in 1966 and he went on to forge new roads into the understanding of the universe in the decades since. As the disease spread, Hawking became less mobile and began using a wheelchair. Talking grew more challenging and, in 1985, an emergency tracheotomy caused his total loss of speech. A speech-generating device constructed at Cambridge, combined with a software program, served as his electronic voice.
Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history. His work on the origins and structure of the universe, from the Big Bang to black holes, revolutionized the field, while his best-selling books have appealed readers who may not have Hawking’s scientific background. He is one of the most precious gems in the world of physics, who was ahead of his time. His disability of having unsteady feet and being diagnosed with degenerative disease couldn’t stop Stephen Hawking from becoming the world’s most famous and acclaimed scientist. Even his survival would have been a marvel to this world, but he lived amazingly till 76 years of age.
He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world. Stephen Hawking has made a long list of famous and well-known discoveries. Some famous discoveries or theories given by Stephen Hawking are the following:
Singularities
Singularities, or points where space-time appears to be infinitely curved, are also mentioned in Einstein’s theory of gravity. Hawking completed ground-breaking work on singularities and applied it to the entire Universe, claiming that singularities are caused by gravitation. He also stated that Einstein’s hypothesis, which was the big bang theory, predicted a singularity. In scientific terms, a gravitational singularity (or space-time singularity) is a location where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. In other words, it is a point in which all physical laws are indistinguishable from one another, where space and time are no longer interrelated realities, but merge indistinguishably and cease to have any independent meaning. The Hawking Singularity Theorem added to this by stating that a space-like singularity can occur when matter is forcibly compressed to a point, causing the rules that govern matter to break down. Hawking traced this back in time to the Big Bang, which he claimed was a point of infinite density. However, Hawking later revised this to claim that general relativity breaks down at times prior to the Big Bang, and hence no singularity could be predicted by it
Black Hole Mechanics Laws
The laws of black hole mechanics were discovered by Stephen Hawking. His first law asserts that the black hole’s total surface area will never shrink. The Hawking area theorem is another name for it. According to another law, black holes were extremely hot. Classical physics, on the other hand, states that black holes do not radiate heat. Another law is the black hole “no hair” theorem, which claims that black holes may be described by three numbers: mass, angular momentum, and charge. Radiation is emitted by black holes, which may persist until they run out of energy and dissipate. Hawking radiation is another name for this phenomenon. For his work “Black Holes,” he received the coveted Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971. Black holes radiate energy known as Hawking radiation, while gradually losing mass. This is due to quantum effects near the edge of the black hole, a region called the event horizon. He predicted the existence of mini-black holes at the time of the Big Bang. These tiny black holes would have been incredibly hot, shedding mass until they vanished – potentially ending their lives in a powerful explosion. Hawking showed in his thesis that the Steady State theory is mathematically self-contradictory. Stephen was one of the first to realize that black holes could form in the early universe owing to the great compression of the Big Bang.
Theory of Cosmic Inflation
In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation is a scenario in which the Universe expands exponentially soon after the big bang, as proposed by Alan Guth in 1980. Hawking was also one of the first to compute quantum fluctuations, which are minor deviations in the distribution of matter that can lead to the proliferation of galaxies in the Universe during inflation. Hawking radiation is widely accepted in current physics, although it is almost impossible to measure and therefore verify. Paradoxically, it is expelled in greater quantities by smaller, undetectable black holes; while the larger ones, those that astrophysicists can study directly, produce so little that it is indistinguishable from the Cosmic Background Radiation.
Model of the Universe’s Wave Function
He was interested in developing a quantum theory of gravity, but in 1983, he released a model called the Hartle-Hawking state with James Hartle. According to this idea, time did not exist before to the big bang explosion, and hence the concept of the universe’s beginning is meaningless. There are no original time or space limitations in the Universe.
Top-Down Cosmology Theory
In 2006, he and Thomas Hertog proposed the “top-down cosmology” theory, which asserts that the Universe consists of a superposition of many alternative initial circumstances rather than a single unique initial state.
A Universe has No Space-Time boundaries
Stephen Hawking researched quite a lot when it came to space and time. In some way or the other, this physicist proved that the universe has no space-time boundaries. He tried proving this theory using various mathematical calculations and physics experiments. In this discovery, he believed that you can’t have time or space before the Big Bang. As a result, this proved that the universe has no space-time boundaries.
The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang theory is a physical theory explained by none other than Stephen Hawking. This theory from Hawking describes how the whole universe expanded from an initial state to high density. On the other hand, the hypothesis in this theory states that all the matter in this universe came into existence at the same time. Now, the estimation of that could be 13.8 billion years ago.
Awards and recognition
Professor Stephen William Hawking holds 13 honorary degrees and received various awards and prizes which includw;- 1966 Adams Prize, 1975 Eddington Medal; Pius XI Medal, 1976 Maxwell Medal and Prize; Heineman Prize; Hughes Medal, 1978 Albert Einstein Award, 1985 Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal, 1987 Dirac Medal, 1988 Wolf Prize, 1989 Prince of Asturias Award, 1998 Andrew Gemant Award, 1999 Naylor Prize and Lectureship; Lilienfeld Prize; Albert Medal, 2006 Royal Society Copley Medal, 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2013 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award. Sadly, what will never come for Hawking is the Nobel Prize, which is not awarded posthumously and which the most popular scientist of his time never received, as it is only awarded for results in theoretical physics when they are experimentally verified.
Publication
His publications included The Large Scale Structure of Space, Superspace and Supergravity (1981), The Very Early Universe (1983), From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988), The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), A Briefer History of Time (2005), The Grand Design, Black Holes and Baby Universes, How to Make a Spaceship, A Brief History of Time (1988),
(M Ahmad is a regular writer for this newspaper and can be reached at [email protected])
