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Post by swamprat on Jul 4, 2017 14:57:50 GMT -6
Stephen Hawking, like me, is a grumpy old man.....
Hawking says Trump's climate stance could damage Earth By Pallab Ghosh, Science correspondent, BBC News 2 July 2017
Stephen Hawking says that US President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement could lead to irreversible climate change.
Prof Hawking said the action could put Earth onto a path that turns it into a hothouse planet like Venus.
He also feared aggression was "inbuilt" in humans and that our best hope of survival was to live on other planets.
The Cambridge professor spoke exclusively to BBC News to coincide with his 75th birthday celebrations.
Arguably the world's most famous scientist, Prof Hawking has had motor neurone disease for most of his adult life. It has impaired his movement and ability to speak.
Yet through it all, he emerged as one of the greatest minds of our time. His theories on black holes and the origin of the Universe have transformed our understanding of the cosmos.
Prof Hawking has also inspired generations to study science. But through his media appearances what has been most impressive of all has been his humanity.
'Great danger' His main concern during his latest interview was the future of our species. A particular worry was President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement to reduce CO2 levels.
"We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid," he told BBC News.
"Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children."
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also highlights the potential risk of hitting climate tipping points as temperatures increase - though there are gaps in our knowledge of this topic.
In its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC authors wrote: "The precise levels of climate change sufficient to trigger tipping points (thresholds for abrupt and irreversible change) remain uncertain, but the risk associated with crossing multiple tipping points in the Earth system or in interlinked human and natural systems increases with rising temperature."
When asked whether he felt we would ever solve our environmental problems and resolve human conflicts, Prof Hawking was pessimistic, saying that he thought our days on Earth were numbered.
"I fear evolution has inbuilt greed and aggression to the human genome. There is no sign of conflict lessening, and the development of militarised technology and weapons of mass destruction could make that disastrous. The best hope for the survival of the human race might be independent colonies in space."
And on Brexit, he feared UK research would be irreparably damaged. "Science is a cooperative effort, so the impact will be wholly bad, and will leave British science isolated and inward looking".
I asked him what he would like his legacy to be.
"I never expected to reach 75, so I feel very fortunate to be able to reflect on my legacy. I think my greatest achievement, will be my discovery that black holes are not entirely black."
"Quantum effects cause them to glow like hot bodies with a temperature that is lower, the larger the black hole. This result was completely unexpected, and showed there is a deep relationship between gravity and thermodynamics. I think this will be key, to understanding how paradoxes between quantum mechanics and general relativity can be resolved."
When asked if money or practicality were no object, what his dream present would be, he said it would be a cure for motor neurone disease - or at least a treatment that halted its progression.
"When I was diagnosed at 21, I was told it would kill me in two or three years. Now, 54 years later, albeit weaker and in a wheelchair, I'm still working and producing scientific papers. But it's been a great struggle, which I have got through only with a lot of help from my family, colleagues, and friends."
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40461726
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Post by jojustjo on Mar 13, 2018 22:22:15 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Mar 14, 2018 0:35:59 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/obituaries/stephen-hawking-dead.html?partner=msft_msn Stephen Hawking, Who Examined the Universe and Explained Black Holes, Dies at 76A physicist and best-selling author, Dr. Hawking did not allow his physical limitations to hinder his quest to answer “the big question: Where did the universe come from?”By DENNIS OVERBYE / www.nytimes.com/by/dennis-overbye?action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&module=Byline®ion=Header&pgtype=articleMARCH 14, 2018 Stephen Hawking’s discovery that black holes are not really black and that they would eventually leak radiation and particles before exploding and disappearing turned scientists’ understanding of them upside down. CreditPaul E. Alers/NASAStephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76. His death was confirmed by a spokesman for Cambridge University. “Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview. Dr. Hawking did that largely through his book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988. It has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. The 2014 film about his life, “The Theory of Everything,” was nominated for several Academy Awards and Eddie Redmayne, who played Dr. Hawking, won the Oscar for best actor. Scientifically, Dr. Hawking will be best remembered for a discovery so strange that it might be expressed in the form of a Zen koan: When is a black hole not black? When it explodes. What is equally amazing is that he had a career at all. As a graduate student in 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was given only a few years to live. The disease reduced his bodily control to the flexing of a finger and voluntary eye movements but left his mental faculties untouched. He went on to become his generation’s leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits so deep and dense that not even light can escape them. That work led to a turning point in modern physics, playing itself out in the closing months of 1973 on the walls of his brain when Dr. Hawking set out to apply quantum theory, the weird laws that govern subatomic reality, to black holes. In a long and daunting calculation, Dr. Hawking discovered to his befuddlement that black holes — those mythological avatars of cosmic doom — were not really black at all. In fact, he found, they would eventually fizzle, leaking radiation and particles, and finally explode and disappear over the eons. Nobody, including Dr. Hawking, believed it at first — that particles could be coming out of a black hole. “I wasn’t looking for them at all,” he recalled in an interview in 1978. “I merely tripped over them. I was rather annoyed.” That calculation, in a thesis published in 1974 in the journal Nature under the title “Black Hole Explosions?,” is hailed by scientists as the first great landmark in the struggle to find a single theory of nature — to connect gravity and quantum mechanics, those warring descriptions of the large and the small, to explain a universe that seems stranger than anybody had thought. The discovery of Hawking radiation, as it is known, turned black holes upside down. It transformed them from destroyers to creators — or at least to recyclers — and wrenched the dream of a final theory in a strange, new direction. “You can ask what will happen to someone who jumps into a black hole,” Dr. Hawking said in an interview in 1978. “I certainly don’t think he will survive it. “On the other hand,” he added, “if we send someone off to jump into a black hole, neither he nor his constituent atoms will come back, but his mass energy will come back. Maybe that applies to the whole universe.” Dennis W. Sciama, a cosmologist and Dr. Hawking’s thesis adviser at Cambridge, called Hawking’s thesis in Nature “the most beautiful paper in the history of physics.” Edward Witten, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said: “Trying to understand Hawking’s discovery better has been a source of much fresh thinking for almost 40 years now, and we are probably still far from fully coming to grips with it. It still feels new.” In 2002, Dr. Hawking said he wanted the formula for Hawking radiation to be engraved on his tombstone. He was a man who pushed the limits — in his intellectual life, to be sure, but also in his professional and personal lives. He traveled the globe to scientific meetings, visiting every continent, including Antarctica; wrote best-selling books about his work; married twice; fathered three children; and was not above appearing on “The Simpsons,” “Star Trek: The Next Generation” or “The Big Bang Theory.” He celebrated his 60th birthday by going up in a hot-air balloon. The same week, he also crashed his electric-powered wheelchair while speeding around a corner in Cambridge, breaking his leg. In April 2007, a few months after his 65th birthday, he took part in a zero-gravity flight aboard a specially equipped Boeing 727, a padded aircraft that flies a roller-coaster trajectory to produce fleeting periods of weightlessness. It was a prelude to a hoped-for trip to space with Richard Branson’s VirginGalactic company aboard SpaceShipTwo. Asked why he took such risks, Dr. Hawking said, “I want to show that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.” CONTINUE READING: www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/obituaries/stephen-hawking-dead.html?partner=msft_msn
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Post by swamprat on Mar 14, 2018 8:23:12 GMT -6
Today, we celebrate the birthday of one of our heroes of science, Albert Einstein. How ironic that we are also celebrating the life of, and mourning the passing of, another hero of science.
Professor Hawking, you will be missed. Thank you for your courage, your hard fight for life, and your contributions to our world of knowledge.
www.bbc.com/news/uk-43396008
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Post by jojustjo on Mar 14, 2018 9:35:02 GMT -6
That really is very fitting. They said, he could see in more (5 I think) dimensions than we could..because he lived in his head. What a struggle it must have been for him but he made appearances on the Simpsons, the Big Bang and a lot of other shows. I have a couple of his books...zinging around over my head of course but I so envy the knowledge he had...and what a mixed blessing of a life. He truly did make use of what he had and how many of us ever do that?
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Post by plutronus on Mar 14, 2018 10:34:17 GMT -6
Who says God isn't merciful (or is it the Reptilians)? Finally let that poor man go. He'll be back in a blink of an eye in a brand-new temple, while in our scheme of time, it'll be 144 years.
Renew and Recharge Hawking, then come back and dazzle the World again!
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Post by auntym on Mar 14, 2018 13:37:14 GMT -6
www.aol.com/article/news/2018/03/14/stephen-hawking-died-on-a-day-that-is-cosmically-connected-to-albert-einstein-and-pi/23385679/ Stephen Hawking died on a day that is cosmically connected to Albert Einstein and PiBusiness Insider by Jeremy Berke / Mar 14th 2018 *Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76 on Wednesday morning. *March 14 is also Albert Einstein's birthday, and it's celebrated as Pi Day in the US. *Hawking is survived by his three children and remembered as a physicist who reshaped our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it. Stephen Hawking, the legendary theoretical physicist, passed away in his home in Cambridge early Wednesday morning at the age of 76. Coincidentally, Hawking died on Albert Einstein's birthday. Einstein, a venerated theoretical physicist from an earlier era, also passed away at age 76. March 14 is also celebrated as Pi Day in the US, in honor of the mathematical constant that whose first digits are 3.14. Stephen Hawking, the legendary theoretical physicist, passed away in his home in Cambridge early Wednesday morning at the age of 76. Coincidentally, Hawking died on Albert Einstein's birthday. Einstein, a venerated theoretical physicist from an earlier era, also passed away at age 76. March 14 is also celebrated as Pi Day in the US, in honor of the mathematical constant that whose first digits are 3.14. Hawking was known around the world for making discoveries that transformed the way scientists think about black holes and stellar systems. He was also beloved for his wit and humor in expressing profound concepts to the public. He's survived by his three children, Lucy, Robert, and Tim, who released a statement calling their father an "an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years." "He once said, 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him forever," their statement read. Popular physicists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss have also made statements today about their admiration for Hawking, who never let his ALS diagnosis impact his study of the cosmos. "His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake," Tyson said on Twitter. "But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure." www.aol.com/article/news/2018/03/14/stephen-hawking-died-on-a-day-that-is-cosmically-connected-to-albert-einstein-and-pi/23385679/
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Post by auntym on Mar 14, 2018 14:01:29 GMT -6
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Post by swamprat on Mar 14, 2018 14:18:17 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Mar 14, 2018 15:15:40 GMT -6
www.space.com/39980-stephen-hawking-death-celebrities-react.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social Celebrities Mourn Death of Stephen HawkingBy Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer March 14, 2018 Stephen Hawking poses with actor Jim Parsons on the set of "The Big Bang Theory." Credit: Sonja Flemming/CBS The world lost one of its most brilliant minds today (March 14) when the renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76. As a physicist, Hawking rose to fame for his work on black holes and the origins of the universe. He was also a stellar science communicator who authored several best-selling books that made astrophysics and cosmology accessible to people with no scientific background. But Hawking was also someone with a remarkable sense of humor, which he maintained even as he suffered from a degenerative nerve disease that left him bound to a wheelchair for life. Despite his physical limitations, Hawking traveled the world to share his love for science with the public. He even made a few cameos on TV shows like "The Big Bang Theory" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Friends and celebrities took to social media to mourn his death and celebrate his incredible life. Here are some of their most touching tweets. CONTINUE READING: www.space.com/39980-stephen-hawking-death-celebrities-react.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
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Post by swamprat on Mar 14, 2018 20:22:51 GMT -6
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Post by swamprat on Mar 15, 2018 9:58:49 GMT -6
Three who shaped the universe, Hawking, Einstein, Newton (and Data)!
Illuminating!
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Post by jojustjo on Mar 16, 2018 10:11:55 GMT -6
He very much exceeded his life expectancy..I suspect because he had so very much to share in that mind of his. He opened a lot of doors.
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Post by jcurio on Mar 16, 2018 12:29:06 GMT -6
He very much exceeded his life expectancy..I suspect because he had so very much to share in that mind of his. He opened a lot of doors. ————— Who says God isn't merciful (or is it the Reptilians)? Finally let that poor man go. Read more: theedgeofreality.proboards.com/thread/3412/stephen-hawking?page=2#ixzz59wBXE2mI************** And so, I find myself “offended” by the second statement. That now, I might waste another second of my life, pondering how many times Dr. Hawking pleaded to be “let go”.
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Post by jojustjo on Mar 16, 2018 23:06:29 GMT -6
Many people have been protesting the conception of him 'being released'...many of those in wheel chairs. Hawking himself once said that like a man losing his sight and finding other senses more heightened...so it has been with his brain. That he saw in more dimensions than we could. I imagine it was humiliating and painful for him often but his courage and determination won him a lot of fame and he enjoyed his life. Wonder instead..how many finding themselves in that position might have just given up and prayed for an 'easy way out'. His life took more guts than most of us will ever know let alone understand. A lot like my friend who is quadriplegic other than two fingers of each hand. In a chair only 6 hours a day the rest of the time in bed. Drives a race car, is a brain mental health therapist, flew glider planes (until his wife put her foot down) and doesn't sit around praying for death. He's out lived his life expectancy by over 30 years and is grateful for all he's had. Life is precious....PERIOD. Since I do believe in reincarnation....I figure his next trip around might be a religious leader...to experience that which he did not this time.
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Post by plutronus on Mar 17, 2018 10:55:03 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Mar 17, 2018 10:57:46 GMT -6
www.newsweek.com/stephen-hawking-death-alien-contact-aliens-theory-ufo-search-breakthrough-844920
Stephen Hawking on Alien Life, Extraterrestrials and the Possibility of UFOs Visiting EarthBy Andrew Whalen 3/14/18 Physicist Stephen Hawking died at his home in Cambridge, England, on Wednesday. Hawking’s earliest astrophysics work posited the existence of singularities, mathematically conforming black holes with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Hawking established, along with Roger Penrose, the universe’s origin as a singularity, i.e., a point in spacetime where traditional physical laws break down and gravity becomes infinite. His later work in quantum mechanics, inspired by collaboration with Soviet scientists Yakov Zel’dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, would mathematically indicate the finite entropy and evaporation of black holes as they emitted particles that came to be known as Hawking radiation. Though widely accepted as a breakthrough in theoretical physics, Hawking radiation and its resulting micro black holes have yet to be observed in experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. His work in theoretical astrophysics (and the 1988 publication of his bestselling book A Brief History of Time) made Hawking a celebrity—including appearances on Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Simpsons and Futurama—which allowed Hawking a prominent public platform for his beliefs outside of physics. An atheist, anti-war activist, BDS supporter and anti-capitalist, the overlap between Hawking’s humanist politics and scientific interests found expression in his repeated public statements on the possibility of contact with extraterrestrial life. Hawking took a conflicted position on alien life, at once promoting the search for extraterrestrial life and warning about the potential dangers of first contact with an alien species. His position on extraterrestrial life advocates two approaches: collecting intel and keeping as quiet as possible. “There is no bigger question,” Hawking said, while announcing his support for Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million program to search for alien communications via radio wave and visible light observations of 1 million nearby stars and 100 galactic centers. “It is time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth.” In 2010, Hawking worried what that answer would bring, describing the dangers of first contact with aliens in a Discovery Channel documentary. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” Hawking says. “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.” “Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach,” Hawking said in the documentary, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. Absent knowledge about alien life, Hawking urged documentary viewers to analogize their likely behavior to ours. Hawking noted that first encounters throughout our own history rarely begin with: “I’ll pop the kettle on. Milk? Sugar?” He would reiterate this theme in a later documentary. “One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this," he says in Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places of the newly discovered world of Gliese 832c. “But we should be wary of answering back.” During the announcement for Breakthrough Listen, Hawking said: “We don’t know much about aliens, but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced. A civilization reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so, they will be vastly more powerful, and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.” While Hawking expresses near certainty that alien life exists in the universe, he does not believe aliens have visited Earth in UFOs or at any point in history. “Why hasn’t the Earth been visited, and even colonised?” Hawking wrote on his official website. “I discount suggestions that UFOs contain beings from outer space. I think any visits by aliens, would be much more obvious, and probably also, much more unpleasant.” In the essay Hawking describes some of the possibilities for the universe’s seeming silence, speculating that intelligence may be one of many possible evolutionary outcomes or, mostly darkly of all, the possibility that “intelligent life destroys itself.” “I very much hope it isn’t true,” Hawking wrote. www.newsweek.com/stephen-hawking-death-alien-contact-aliens-theory-ufo-search-breakthrough-844920
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Post by jojustjo on Mar 18, 2018 10:34:23 GMT -6
He figured that AI could be mankind's downfall and that we shouldn't be in any hurry to greet aliens. Jury was still out on his belief's in God. More and more I see that as a person gets older, their belief's 'widen' a bit...I call it the 'just-in-case' factor. Can't hurt. He did mention in one of his talks that I heard, that God was a possibility but not in the context that we imprint him with. Scientists..so literal minded and yet he could 'speculate' about black holes and multi-verses. We are born, we live we die...and as we age we look back and say...what did I accomplish? What was it all for? He had an amazingly full life sitting on his tail...just time to move on. I wonder who and when the next wunderkind...will be.
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Post by swamprat on Mar 20, 2018 17:55:59 GMT -6
Sheldon visits Hawking:
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Post by swamprat on Mar 23, 2018 10:32:40 GMT -6
Someone posted this comment in our local paper; I thought it was cool!
"I read that Stephen Hawking’s ashes will be buried in Westminster Abbey near Isaac Newton’s grave. I assume they will be placed in a little black hole."
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Post by auntym on May 2, 2018 13:27:34 GMT -6
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43976977 Nick Pope Verified account @nickpopemod
Stephen Hawking's final paper: string theory, quantum mechanics, and parallel universes! Prof Stephen Hawking's multiverse finaleBy Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News 5-2-2018 DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image caption Artwork: The Big Bang may have created many universes Prof Stephen Hawking's final research paper suggests that our Universe may be one of many similar to our own. The theory resolves a cosmic paradox of the late physicist's own making. It also points a way forward for astronomers to find evidence of the existence of parallel universes. The study was submitted to the Journal of High-Energy Physics 10 days before Prof Hawking died. In the 1980s, the Cambridge scientist, along with US physicist James Hartle developed a new idea about the beginning of the Universe. This resolved a difficulty with Einstein's theory that suggested that the Universe began nearly 14 billion years ago but said nothing about how it began. Instead, the Hartle-Hawking idea used a different theory called quantum mechanics to explain how the Universe arose from nothingness. The idea tied up one loose end but created another - an infinite number some might say. As physicists analysed the idea it emerged that it carried with it the implication that the Big Bang would create not just one universe - but an endless supply. Some, according to the Hartle-Hawking theory, would be very like our own, perhaps have Earth-like planets, societies, even individuals similar to the ones in our Universe. Other universes would be subtly different - perhaps with Earth-like planets where dinosaurs were not wiped out. And there would be universes completely unlike our own, with no Earths, perhaps no stars and galaxies and different laws of physics. It sounds far-fetched, but the equations in this theory make such scenarios theoretically possible. A crisis arises because if there are infinite types of universes with infinite variations in their laws of physics then the theory cannot predict what kind of universe we should find ourselves in. Prof Hawking joined forces with Prof Thomas Hertog at KU Leuven in Belgium, who is funded by the European Research Council to try to resolve this paradox. "Neither Stephen nor I were happy with that scenario," he told BBC News. "It suggests that the multiverse emerged randomly and that we can't say very much more about that. We said to each other: 'Maybe we have to live with it'. But we didn't want to give up." NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image caption Prof Hawking's final paper may help researchers discover evidence of parallel universes Prof Hawking's final paper is the fruit of 20 years' work with Prof Hertog. It has solved the puzzle by drawing on new mathematical techniques developed to study another esoteric branch of physics called string theory. These techniques enable researchers to view physics theories in a different way. And the novel assessment of the Hartle-Hawking theory in the new paper has restored order to a hitherto chaotic multiverse. The new Hawking-Hertog assessment indicates that there can only be universes that have the same laws of physics as our own. That conjecture means that our Universe is typical and so observations we make from our viewpoint will be meaningful in developing our ideas of how other universes emerged. Mind-bending as these ideas are, they will be of real help to physicists as they develop a more complete theory of how the Universe came into being, according to Prof Hertog. "The laws of physics that we test in our labs did not exist forever. They crystallised after the Big Bang when the universe expanded and cooled. The kind of laws that emerge depends very much on the physical conditions at the Big Bang. By studying these we aim to get a deeper understanding of where our physical theories come from, how they arise, and whether they are unique." One tantalising implication of the findings, according to Prof Hertog, is that it might help researchers detect the presence of other universes by studying the microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang - though he says that he does not think it will be possible to hop from one universe to another. WATCH VIDEO: www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43976977
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