Meet Stephen Hawking, the world's No. 1 astrophysicist

Stephen Hawking did not overcome the disease, but it did not defeat him. The bored young student suddenly discovered that life was worth living.

Stephen Hawking

On the occasion of the release of a simplified version of the Time History book entitled A Shorter History of Time (translated into 33 languages, Young Publisher is also about to release), author - astrophysicist The most famous planet Stephen Hawking, - agreed to receive a delegation of journalists from the popular science magazine Science et Vie (France) at Cambridge. Below is the article about that meeting and the interview

If the popularity is judged by the measure of the frequency of Internet appearances, Stephen Hawking has a very high ranking. Just if you type 'Stephen Hawking' into Google immediately you will get 1,670,000 entries, higher than either Zinedine Zidane (1,010,000) or Lady Di (540,000).

We were fortunate to have an opportunity to meet the world's most famous astrophysicist today. This happened in August last year.

The meeting has been held by Judith Croasdell, Stephen Hawking's assistant for two years, set at 15:30 local time. It was a tough woman, about 50 years old, with a powerful voice but still showing a kind heart. She immediately threatened: ' Stephen only gave a small interview. Now he is extremely busy and has very little time, so he can only give you 1 hour '.

An extraordinary person

The transcendent human S.Hawking on a high-tech trolley

A few days ago, in Paris we met Christophe Galfard, one of Hawking's six fellows. He spent 5 years studying black holes in Cambridge. He advised us: Prepare other questions that you just need to answer yes or no.

From what we know about him, it means that we are about to meet an extraordinary person. A resilient person doesn't seem to be afraid of anything. First of all, don't be afraid to live. And with death perhaps he was less afraid.

When doctors diagnosed him with paralysis, they thought he was lucky to live only a few years. It was in 1963. At that time he was only 21 years old, and although he boasted that he only worked 1 hour a day, his academic achievement was particularly outstanding in the natural sciences at Oxford University, where his father He also studied biology and medicine.

In 1993, in the Black Hole and the newborn universe, he mentioned that even at the age of 13, he knew what he was going to do: ' Physics and astronomy will bring hope to understand us from Where and why are we in this world? I want to explore the depth of the universe '.

Stephen Hawking did not overcome the disease, but it did not defeat him. The bored young student suddenly discovered that life was worth living.

Today, he is 65 years old, has 3 children (Robert, Lucy and Tim) and a niece. Hawking divorced Jane and married his second wife, Elaine Mason, one of his nurses. He used to be a guest of many great figures in the world.

The disease imprisoned him in silence and silence. He saved himself by fleeing into his childhood dream. In the book of Universe in the chestnut shell published in 2001, he borrowed Hhamlet's claim - the discontent prince because of the world's triviality around him: ' Even if confined to chestnut shells, I still consider yourself the lord of endless space '.

From the journey to discover the true nature of the universe, Hawking has found jewels. For example, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, it is imperative that there are singularities, ie black holes, where gravity distorts the space-time so strongly that they become indeterminate (1970). . Or black holes are not entirely black, they still emit very weak radiation called Hawking radiation (1974). As well as in the fight with disease, he found extraordinary power to continue to live and reason.

A cosmic model has touched poetry

Book cover History of time Born on January 8, exactly three centuries after Galileo's death, he was conferred on Professor Luca of mathematics at Cambridge University in 1970 (this was led by pastor Henry Lucas of the university). This study was founded in 1663), a very prestigious position that Newton held true . 3 centuries ago.

Like many physicists, Hawking also sought a theory of things that would unify Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum physics. But what he liked the most was the proof that the universe appeared from nothingness, spontaneously, without the intervention of any "bright" person, even without a particular initial condition. .

According to Galfard, his French graduate student: ' People have a habit of considering that God has taken away the question of' why ', but Stephen wants to answer that question. His physical approach is philosophy '. The intention to urge him to reach the most, which is the 'no boundary' model, built by him in the 1980s, a model that touches poetry. His passionate fans do not hesitate to compare him with Einstein.

And the meeting

We were finally allowed to enter his room. In addition to the fancy air purifier, the room was large and bright, no different from the other scientists' workrooms.

On the wall hung a blackboard filled with equations. On the bookshelf place pictures of the children, Newton's Principles, Carl Sagan's works, and translations of different languages ​​of the History of Time and other physical books. The walls of Einstein, Newton, portraits of famous film directors Simpson and Steven Spielberg were also hung on the wall, and there was also a big picture of the famous film actress Marilyn Monroe.

Minutes beyond the galaxy

Stephen was wearing black pants, black boots, gray vests, checkered shirts sitting motionless in a high-tech trolley, turning to one side and looking at us with seemingly transparent blue eyes.

'Hello', responding to our greeting immediately is a metallic voice from a speech synthesizer. Judith invited us to sit down next to Stephen and start the interview.

' Our readers often ask two questions: What is outside the universe and what is before Big Bang? And we always give the same answer is nothing. That made them very disappointed. Do you have a better answer for them? '.

Stephen's face suddenly showed a strange smile. Or rather, the slight movement of the upper lip, one of the rare movements his body wanted to follow. Does this question make you happy or is it funny? Surely he thought about it and knew that there was no satisfactory answer. But he will answer it by the price of extraordinary efforts.

With an infinite patience, in the stillness and coldness of the room, he stared at a letter on the screen and blinked. Bip. The receiver is directed at his glasses and understands that he wants to talk about letters i. Bip . bip . There is a series of words on the screen, starting with the letter i. Another blink of an eye to choose the correct word. And Print appears on the screen.

Many minutes passed, only to hear a flat beep. Sit here and think like a dream. We all sat motionless, straining in effort like he did and staring at him: his face was smooth and strangely smooth, the throat hole, traces of open airway surgery. in 1985 made him lose his voice. Judith leaned behind him to record every word she then typed back to us.

Occasionally the nurse went to clean her mouth and erected her head. Stephen woke up. Time seemed to stop flowing. And finally the answer came after half an hour, when suddenly his eyes looked straight at us and a metallic voice broke the silence: ' In some modern theories, the universe is on one side in one. space has more dimension. I believe the question of what happens before Big Bang is no different from asking what happens north of the North Pole. Just because it is undefined '.

Is that all? We all intend to say. The answer seems too short. It may also be because we expect too much. Stephen Hawking is not a prophet. And the interview continued in the same way for 3 hours .

Pham Van Thieu

S. Hawking: I want to rewrite the history of the universe

Reporter: You have written a Brief History of Time and now a book A Shorter History of Time, has it ended? What else can be said about the universe?

This title is for fun. What I want to do is rewrite the history of the universe in a clearer and simpler way.

In his book many times referring to God, what is his exact meaning about God?

I use the word God in the impersonnel sense, as Einstein refers to the laws of nature.

Do you think your 'no boundary' model of the universe, in which there is no initial condition that governs the history of the universe, is always the best means to remove the question of beginning, even? even about the need to have a 'founder'?

- At the time of Big Bang, the universe is very small, very hot and very dense. It is difficult to imagine what initial conditions to apply to that situation. The means to approach this problem is to switch to virtual time, which is nothing more than a kind of spatial dimension and cosmological consideration without limits. That helps us avoid the need to resort to initial conditions. Then, when returning to normal time, we will observe a universe created spontaneously from nothingness.

If life exists even outside of Earth, then he thinks it will have the same form as we know or otherwise?

- If there is another life with wisdom, it will have to be very far from us. Otherwise they visited our Earth. And I suppose if we had visited, we would have known. That will be like in the movie Independence Day or Star Wars.

Of all the scientists, who brought him the most inspiration and why?

- Galileo and Einstein. Galileo was the first modern scientist to recognize the importance of observation; and Einstein is the greatest scientist, but one thing is certain, though, that he also has "blind spots", such as quantum mechanics and gravitational contraction.

If you met Galileo and Einstein, what would you say?

- Galileo will probably want to know all about modern science and I believe he will understand very quickly. As for Einstein, I would say that he was wrong about black holes.

His current intention?

- I'm working on black holes (Stephen is currently working with French graduate student Galfard on mathematical means to prove that information falling into a black hole will not be lost).