MOSCOW, March 14 - RIA Novosti, Tatyana Pichugina. The British theoretical physicist, who proved that black holes emit, and the author of bestselling popular science books about the origin of the Universe, Stephen Hawking, died at the age of 77. Erudition, the desire to get to the bottom of the truth, diverse scientific interests and, not least, the will to live brought him worldwide fame, comparable only to the fame of Albert Einstein.
One of the brightest scientists and thinkers of our time was born in 1942 in Oxford. Graduated Oxford University, where he studied physics and defended himself on the topic of the expanding Universe. Hawking was interested in cosmology and quantum gravity.
At a young age, he was diagnosed with a severe incurable disease - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The scientist found himself confined to a wheelchair and lost the ability to speak. Despite this, he continued to work, lecture, and write books.
Hawking studied the concept of a spacetime singularity—the point at the center of black holes—and used it to explain the origins of the universe. Together with mathematician Roger Penrose, he wrote the essay "Singularity and the Geometry of Spacetime", for which he received the Sam Adams Prize. Later proved that if the Universe obeys general theory Einstein's relativity, then it had to arise from a point with infinite density, that is, start from a singularity. However, quantum fluctuations led it to the Big Bang and rapid expansion.
Working with black holes (objects of enormous density that attract everything around), Hawking and his colleagues derived the laws of their mechanics by analogy with thermodynamics. And in 1975 he suggested that black holes emit photons. This contradicted the theory of relativity, but followed from quantum mechanics. Black holes glow like hot bodies, emitting energy and gradually “evaporating” (later, however, Hawking proved that the area of black holes does not change). This now fully proven phenomenon is called Hawking radiation.
Taking up the theory of inflation, according to which the rate of expansion of the universe slowed down over time, Stephen Hawking argued that the concept of the beginning of the universe may be uncertain because before big bang time did not exist. He also abandoned the concept of singularity as the moment of the birth of the Universe and introduced the term “pole”, that is, a place without boundaries at the beginning of the universe. These works comprised the book A Brief History of Time, published in 1988. It became a bestseller and made Hawking a world celebrity.
When describing the properties of black holes, two main ones collide physical theories- theory of gravity and quantum mechanics. You need to accept either one or the other. According to the theory of gravity, all bodies and particles falling into a black hole disappear into it, and along with them all information. However, this contradicts quantum mechanics, according to which information remains in the Universe forever, although it is practically impossible to count it (at least for now). Stephen Hawking tried to solve the information paradox in 2004, but was not very successful. He stated that information that disappeared in a black hole in one of the Universes appears in another - parallel one. He called the information paradox itself “the greatest mistake.”
Stephen Hawking has published many popular science books, many of which have been translated into Russian, including The World in a Nutshell, Big, Small and the Human Mind, The Future of Space-Time, and the series of children's books George and the Mysteries Universe."
The future of science through the eyes of Stephen Hawking
One of the most important and current problems modern natural science, from Hawking’s point of view, is the development of the Last Theory or Theory of Everything, as he himself calls it and the creation of which he has been dreaming of for many years.
In his book A Brief History of Time, he writes: “If we really discover the Last Theory, then in time its basic principles will become understandable to everyone, and not just to a few specialists. And then all of us, philosophers, scientists and simply ordinary people, we will be able to take part in a discussion about why it happened that we exist and the Universe exists. And if the answer to such a question is found, it will be a complete triumph of the human mind, for then God’s plan will become clear to us.”
Speaking about the Last Theory, Hawking meant the theory of “supergravity”, which we have already discussed in detail and which should unite all four fundamental interactions known to modern physics - electromagnetic, strong or nuclear, weak with the participation of neutrinos and gravitational. According to Hawking, such a theory has a 50-50 percent chance of being built in the next twenty years.
Hawking claims that the creation of the Last Theory will finally complete the orderly edifice of theoretical physics. “We will learn the fundamental laws that govern the Universe,” he said at the White House. – But I don’t think that having discovered these laws, we will stop at some level in their use. It follows from the Last Theory that there is no limit to the complexity of the systems that we can create, and it is in the direction of revealing this complexity that, in my opinion, the main development will go in the next millennium.
And since the most complex of all systems known to us is man, then most likely the main practical task science will be the restructuring of its DNA in order to improve the human genome. And even if genetic engineering is formally prohibited, nothing will come of it, since genetic engineering of animals and plants will still be carried out. And sooner or later someone will transfer the experience gained to a person...
Hawking is convinced that improvement of the human genome is inevitable. The fact is that the development and improvement of computers obeys an exponential law - their complexity and speed double every 18 months. Thus, the evolution of computers occurs much faster than the evolution of biological systems.
In December 1999, the famous IBM company published a plan to create the world's fastest supercomputer, costing about $100 million, designed to study the processes that occur during the formation of proteins. This unique device, according to IBM, will finally make it possible to seriously study various diseases and create effective and harmless medicines.
The new RS/6000 supercomputer will be called Blue Gene and will perform more than one quadrillion operations per second! This is approximately 1000 times greater than the possibilities computer Deep Blue, which defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997!
Hawking suggests that between biological and electronic intelligent systems a struggle for leadership and intense competition will begin. “I expect,” he says, “that in both the biological and electronic spheres complexity will increase at a rapid rate, and on the basis of similar considerations he concludes that the coming era will inevitably be very dynamic, it “should be characterized by great changes, which will be accompanied by tension and instability.” Fundamental changes await us in the third millennium!
But humanity, Hawking warns, may not live to see this great era. For what lies ahead is fraught with danger. Our civilization is threatened by a population explosion, the depletion of mineral energy resources, as well as global ecological problem. “There is a very real danger,” says Hawking, “that we will destroy everything on this planet, since our technical power is sufficient to do this. And even if we do not exterminate ourselves, the possibility remains of falling into primitive and cruel barbarism.” However, Hawking hopes people will be able to cope with these dangers...
Scientists have long dreamed of creating the latest scientific theory. Descartes also believed that sooner or later it would be possible to formulate such “principles of science, from which all the truths that can be derived from them will be derived.” At the same time, Descartes believed that centuries would pass before such high level wisdom and perfection.
At the end XVIII century it seemed that this problem had been solved, since physicists managed to create a harmonious edifice of classical physics.
As we have already noted, a different point of view was held at the end of the 19th century by followers and supporters of classical mechanics. A. Legendre, for example, spoke of Newton like this: “He was not only the greatest, but also the happiest genius, because the system of the world can be established only once.”
However, subsequent discoveries forced scientists to abandon this idea. Thermodynamics, statistical physics, and theory appeared electromagnetic phenomena. These achievements literally revolutionized physical science and theory. And to end of the 19th century century, many physicists once again began to hope that their work was close to completion. There were only two unsolved problems - the distribution of energy in black body radiation and the difficulties encountered in attempts to detect the ether. In this regard, Professor Joliot advised his student Max Planck to choose a more interesting and promising occupation for himself than theoretical physics.
The irony of history was that it was Planck in 1900 who became one of the creators of quantum mechanics, which played a leading role in the science of the 20th century. And the solution to the ether problem led to the emergence of another fundamental direction - the theory of relativity.
At the same time, A. Einstein made an attempt, combining gravity with electromagnetism, to create the Last Theory.
Now Hawking dreams of the same thing. He believes that after this, physicists will only have to deal with its various applications, for example, in the field of so-called complex systems.
By the way, about complex systems. There is reason to believe that the theory of such systems, which in a certain sense stands above all other sciences, will play a special role in the science of the 21st century.
In his predictions, Hawking, by the way, proceeds from the fact that the world is fundamentally quite simple, and the complexity of its description is a drawback of modern fundamental scientific theories. However, it appears that “complexity” is no less a fundamental characteristic of the world around us than the basic types of physical interactions.
According to Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences L.V. Leskov, to create a Theory of Everything means to achieve such a fundamental level of description, from which all phenomena can be deduced in a purely logical way. However, such “absolute knowledge” would be timeless and transtemporal. But it doesn't match real world, one of the fundamental characteristics of which is the existence of the “arrow of time”.
Even if Hawking’s predictions come true and the Theory of Everything is developed, this still will not mean that scientific knowledge of the world around us is completely completed. According to Leskov, from the theory that Hawking considers as the Last, it does not follow that there is a limit to complexity as natural systems, as well as those systems that we ourselves can create. And most likely, it is along the path of revealing this complexity that the main direction of science in the 21st century will follow.
The fact is that the inclusion of irreversibility phenomena, as well as probabilistic processes, into the dynamics of the complex systems known to us, unfortunately, cannot be carried out on the basis of Hawking’s Last Theory.
The timeless laws of physics, I. Prigogine notes in this regard, cannot be considered “a true reflection of the fundamental truth of the physical world, for such a truth makes us strangers in this world and reduces many different phenomena that we observe to mere appearance.”
This means that a truly universal theory must necessarily take into account irreversibility in time and probabilistic processes (the so-called dynamic instability). A theory that does not take these factors into account cannot become the Theory of Everything, since the real Universe is evolving, and therefore irreversibility and probability are its fundamental properties.
A characteristic statement on this subject is the English astrophysicist Roger Penrose, who collaborates with Hawking, but nevertheless does not accept his atemporal vision of the Universe. In his book " New mind Emperor" he writes: "In my opinion, our modern painting physical reality, especially as regards the nature of time, is fraught with a tremendous shock, even more powerful than that caused by the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in their modern form.”
Moreover, the atemporal nature of Hawking's Last Theory in the form of supergravity is not the only reason why it cannot be considered universal. The point is also that traditional ideas about the four basic physical interactions, apparently, are not exhaustive. It's about about the existence of a fifth – “torsion interaction” associated with rotation and torsion, which we talked about above.
After a lecture at the White House, Hawking was asked what the most impressive scientific discovery could be expected in the foreseeable future? Such a discovery, he replied, would most likely be something that we do not expect, in other words, it should be an absolutely amazing discovery of the same type that in the past led to great revolutions in science!
But, according to Leskov, such a discovery has apparently already been made - this is the revelation of the amazing properties of the physical vacuum!
The last theory that Hawking dreams of will inevitably turn out to be powerless in the face of the problem of interaction between spirit and body, that is, the problem of consciousness. And, apparently, the solution to this problem will be directly related to the achievements modern theories physical vacuum. Meanwhile, the last theory that Hawking talks about has nothing to do with this area of natural phenomena. And for this alone it cannot be considered as a Theory of Everything...
Leskov refers to the statement of Hermann Hesse that from the thundering chaos of the surrounding world with all its frightening complexity, a person sometimes wants to hide behind clear and time-impervious pictures of simple myths. Isn’t the centuries-old dream of scientists about the Last Theory, which will finally put an end to the search for the Absolute, Hesse asks, a secret reflection of people’s desire for peace and stability?
Analyzing the choice of scientific problems that Hawking made and his approach to these problems, it can be assumed, Leskov believes, that at the subconscious level he was guided by precisely such motives.
But if any forecasts for the future of science are speculative and largely unreliable, then what is the point of such attempts? The German philosopher Karl Jaspers answered this question: “Forecasts should introduce us to the sphere of the possible, outline the starting points of our plan and our actions, open distant horizons to us, strengthen our sense of freedom with the consciousness of the possible.”
We will try to adhere to these principles when describing the possible paths that science will take in the new century.
[The Future of Science] B. FRANKLIN - J. PRISTLEPASSY, February 8, 1780 Dear Sir, Your kind letter of September 27th arrived only recently, as the bearer stayed for a long time in Holland. I'm always pleased to hear that you continue to engage in experimental research.
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§ 56. The question of the scope of phenomenological reduction. Sciences of nature and sciences of spirit By excluding the positing of the world, of nature, we used this methodological means to make it generally possible to turn our gaze towards transcendentally pure consciousness. Now,
(h) Through the eyes of a designer, Evolution as a creator is an incomparable juggler, performing acrobatic acts in a situation that is extremely difficult due to its technological limitations. And, undoubtedly, she deserves something more than just admiration - she deserves,
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THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE A comprehensive study of the qualities and properties of human consciousness will open up new opportunities for improvement; New scientific achievements will come to the aid of ethics. Medicine, chemistry, the science of cosmic rays, and a number of other fields of knowledge will prove that
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The Future of Science This primitive overview of the processes behind the numbers gives general idea about mathematics and physics. Imagine that you lived in those times when numbers were discovered or invented. Imagine that you lived thousands of years ago. If you knew about the basic
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The book is based on reports given by world-famous scientists and science popularizers on June 3, 2000, in honor of Kip S. Thorne's 60th birthday. They discuss fundamental issues related to the nature of space-time, including the possibility of time travel, and also make predictions about future discoveries.
Review of "Private Correspondent"
It’s not like every dog here knows who Kip S. Thorne is. But everyone knows who Stephen Hawking is. Therefore, it is not surprising that on the cover of the collection dedicated to the sixtieth anniversary of the first physicist, the surname of the second appears nevertheless - as if Hawking was the only author of the book, and everyone else was just smoking nearby. Let's forgive the publisher this little trick. Moreover, the book is very good.
Good, although uneven. It consists of an extensive introduction and five articles. In the first two, Igor Novikov and Stephen Hawking discuss whether a time machine is possible. In the third, Kip S. Thorne gives forecasts for the development of science over the coming decades. The final two - by Timothy Ferris and Alan Lightman - are respectively devoted to the problem of popularizing science and comparing the nature of the talent of a physicist and a writer.
These last ones are, unsurprisingly, the least interesting. There seems to be no point in arguing that science needs popularization. (Although, perhaps, in a country where they are going to spend a damn lot of money on teaching religion in schools, and at the same time not a penny is spent on promoting science - in such a country the Minister of Education should just be given Ferris's article to read, eh? ) Laitman's article about physicists and lyricists is rather naive.
But the introduction, written by Richard Price, deserves close attention. No, of course, the one who is able to quickly derive the Lorentz transformations and fully understands why special theory relativity differs from general relativity, he will miss it. But the book is not for this titan of spirit, but for a person who only knows about Einstein that he stuck out his tongue in front of the camera.
From a profane point of view, the most impressive thing in the collection is the articles by Novikov and Hawking on time travel. If wormholes exist in space, Novikov says, then travel to the past is possible and, most importantly, the “grandfather problem” (someone goes back in time and kills his grandfather before his father was born) is in principle solvable. Hawking does not argue with Novikov, but clarifies that the appearance of wormholes in space is unlikely - less than 1:10 with five trillion zeros.
And the most interesting and important article in the book is Thorne’s text on the prospects for the development of science: it is from it that it becomes clear what modern physics does not know. (After all, after discussing the curvatures of space, it may seem to an unprepared person that everything else is already clear.) What is in the very heart black hole? What happened in the first second of the existence of the Universe? And most interestingly, how do relativity theory and quantum mechanics relate? Physicists don’t know any of this, but, according to the author, they will soon find out.
The feeling of healthy patriotism only makes one regret that it is, apparently, not Russian physicists who recognize this, but European and American ones (well, or ours, who have long since moved abroad). But never mind, let's hope they tell us. They will write another good book, and we will translate and read it.
This week, at the age of 77, perhaps one of the most famous physicists of our time, Stephen Hawking, passed away. Stephen Hawking gained worldwide love and fame thanks to the fact that he wrote a book about the history of the Universe, which the entire planet read, thanks to his will to live (Hawking experienced weightlessness and was planning to fly into space when diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and the absence of fear of death. Stephen Hawking was actively involved in popularizing science and became a real pop culture hero. In April 1988, the book “A Brief History of Time” was published, which became a bestseller, then the books “Black Holes and Young Universes” (1993) and “The World in a Nutshell” (2001) appeared. In 2005, a new edition was published “ Brief history...”, however, the scientist has much to his credit more books. We decided to recall all of Hawking’s books, which today can be found in the public domain in Russian, and also tried to understand what place the book occupied in the biography of the outstanding scientist.
Source: telegraph.co.uk
"Large-scale structure of spacetime"
In 1973, the book “Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time” was published, which Hawking published together with cosmology professor George Ellis. The work was first published by the University of Cambridge, but later it was reprinted many times. In the book, Hawking and Ellis try to describe the essence of space as a whole, as well as reveal the nature of the endless expansion of the Universe and the formation of black holes. Hawking famously wrote the book while a postdoc at Cambridge University, based on his 1966 Adams Prize-winning essay “Singularities and the Geometry of Spacetime.” At the time of the publication of the first book, Hawking was 31 years old.
In the later and much more famous 1988 A Brief History of Time, the scientist himself describes the book "Large-Scale Structure of Spacetime" as "extremely technical" and incomprehensible to the average reader, even with a scientific background. Nevertheless, today this work is considered a classic book on general relativity, as well as an outstanding monograph in the mathematical direction of describing Lorentzian geometry in general.
Collections of articles
"Black Holes", "General Relativity" and "Geometric Ideas in Physics" - collections of articles that were published from 1975 to 1983. All three collections are the result of collective work of foreign scientists, intended primarily for researchers, graduate students and senior students. Thus, the collection “Black Holes” contains articles on classical and quantum physics black holes. The articles are devoted to issues related to quantum processes near black holes, thermodynamics and possible astrophysical manifestations of black holes. "General theory of relativity", in turn, is collective monograph, created by a group of famous theoretical physicists of the USSR, USA and Great Britain, which discusses the theoretical and experimental foundations of the general theory of relativity, alternative relativistic gravitational theories, problems of modern astrophysics and cosmology, including the physical nature of quasars, pulsars and black holes. The collection “Geometric Ideas in Physics” talks about new geometric approaches in quantum field theory.
All three collections did not become available to the masses, since their goal was not to popularize scientific knowledge, which Hawking will come to later.
While working on his papers, Hawking first taught the theory of gravity at the University of Cambridge (1975-1977), after which he became professor of gravitational physics (1977-1979), and from 1979 - professor of mathematics. It is noteworthy that, being a professor of mathematics, Hawking did not receive mathematics education. In his first year teaching at Oxford, Hawking read a textbook two weeks ahead of his own students. In 1979, Hawking became Lucasian Professor at Cambridge University. He held this position until 2009.
In 1973, the scientist visited the USSR, during his stay in Moscow he discussed the problems of black holes with Soviet scientists Yakov Zeldovich and Alexei Starobinsky. In 1981, Hawking returned to Moscow to take part in an international seminar on the quantum theory of gravity.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Perhaps one of the most famous works scientist. In the book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988, Hawking tells everyone about the origin of the Universe and its possible fate, about the nature of space. Starting from the very basics (the structure of the Universe), Hawking tells about what happened to the Universe from the first seconds after the so-called Big Bang. In essence, the scientist resorts to telling the course of physics and astronomy, which we, one way or another, mastered at school, but in the most accessible and understandable form. For many, this book was the start scientific activity- the motivation turned out to be so strong. It is no coincidence that the book became a bestseller from the moment it was published - more than 10 million copies were sold in 20 years.
The scientist worked on the book at a time when his health had deteriorated significantly. In 1985, Hawking became seriously ill with pneumonia. After a series of operations, he underwent a tracheostomy (throat surgery) and Hawking lost the ability to speak. Then friends gave the scientist a speech synthesizer, which was installed on his wheelchair. Only the index finger retained some mobility. right hand Hawking. Subsequently, mobility remained only in facial muscle cheek, opposite which the sensor is attached. With its help, the physicist controlled a computer that allowed him to communicate with others.
Black holes and young universes
The book is a continuation of the dialogue with the reader begun in the book “A Brief History of Time.” For the first time, a lecture entitled “Black Holes and Young Universes” was given at the University of California at Berkeley. Supplemented by Stephen Hawking's thoughts on this and related topics, it forms part of this collection of 13 essays and extensive interviews, first published in 1993. In this work, the most famous astrophysicist of our time interprets the most probable models of the structure of the Universe. The author discusses imaginary time, how black holes can give birth to young universes, and the attempts of scientists, begun by Albert Einstein, to find a unified field theory that could make the macrocosm predictable.
The nature of space and time
Hawking was a famous debater (his most famous debate was with astrophysicist Kip Thorne in 1975. Then scientists argued about the nature space object Cygnus X-1: Thorne believed that Cygnus X-1 was a black hole, and Hawking denied this, although according to his own calculations the object was a black hole). The book, first published in 1996, is based on six lectures by scientists Hawking and Roger Penrose and a discussion between them on several issues related to the nature of the Universe. In 1994, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose gave a series of public lectures on general relativity at the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Two years later, Princeton University Press published a book called The Nature of Space and Time, which compares the views of these two scientists. Although they both belong to the same school of physics (Penrose assisted doctoral dissertation Hawking in Cambridge), their views on the role of quantum mechanics in the evolution of the universe are very different from each other. In particular, Hawking and Penrose have different ideas about what happens to the information stored in a black hole, and why the beginning of the universe is different from its end.
The world in a nutshell
In 2001, the book “The World in a Nutshell” (or “The Universe in a Nutshell”) was published - one of the popular scientific works of the famous theoretical physicist, which becomes a kind of continuation of the author’s previous bestseller “A Brief History of Time”. A year later, Hawking received the Aventis Prize for this work as the best author writing in English. scientific topics. In the book, the scientist talks about the scientific achievements achieved in the world of physics since then. On the pages of the book, scientific problems are presented in popular language, such as the areas of application of Gödel's theorem on incompleteness and string theory, quantum theory and supergravity. Together with the readers, the author is trying to get closer to the Theory of Everything - a fundamental theory that could explain all phenomena in the Universe.
Brief history time 2005 year
Release of the book "A Brief History of Time" - a revised edition of "A Brief History of Time" » . Major changes have been made to the text regarding scientific discoveries recent years. Hawking was helped in writing the book by an American physicist, as well as an author of popular science books and a scriptwriter for popular science television programs. Leonard Mlodinow.
George and the Secrets of the Universe
Hawking also has children's works to his credit. Thus, Stephen Hawking, his daughter Lucy and former graduate student (science popularizer Christophe Galfard) in September 2007 presented their first book for children about the adventures of George and his friends in the Universe. In this fun book, they taught children about fantastically interesting objects - black holes, quasars, asteroids, galaxies and parallel universes. The authors emphasized that they wanted to “present a modern view of cosmology from the Big Bang to the present, without any magic.” The only magical character in the book is a supercomputer that opens the door to the Universe for George and his friends. This is a story about space adventures that friends go on to learn more about the world in which they live. It is also a story about the laws of physics that govern this world. But above all, this is the story of a lonely boy named George and how his life has changed since the day he met his new neighbors Annie and Eric.
NASA KC-135. Adam Rogers
Stephen Hawking's calculations helped show that as the young Universe expands and grows, fluctuations in the quantum scale—the smallest possible gradation of matter—become the galaxies we see around us.
Perhaps the most famous physicist on Earth, Stephen Hawking, who died Wednesday in Cambridge at the age of 76, was wrong enough. For some time he thought that black holes destroy information. He thought that Cygnus X-1, an X-ray emitter more than 6,000 light-years away, would not turn out to be a black hole (but it was). He believed that no one would ever find the Higgs boson, a particle of matter indirectly responsible for the existence of mass in the Universe (Researchers from CERN found it in 2012).
But Hawking was also partly right. He and physicist Roger Penrose described singularities, speculative physical concepts in which relativity and quantum mechanics were combined - like matter in a black hole. A place that no one will ever see with their own eyes; event horizon in time and space. But Hawking's mind was strong enough to see it, or at least imagine it.
His calculations helped show that as the young Universe expands and grows, fluctuations in the quantum scale—the smallest possible gradation of matter—become the galaxies we see around us. No man will ever visit another galaxy, and the quantum field is hardly of interest to technology, but Hawking foresaw this breakthrough. And he calculated that black holes can sometimes explode.
