Stephen Hawking seeks life on other planets

[Disir]

Physicist Stephen Hawking has teamed up with a Russian billionaire to launch a new quest to discover life on other planets.


The celebrated scientist has given his backing to Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives project, which will provide £64m over the next decade to those searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Stephen Hawking seeks life on other planets - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

This is neat.

 

[waltky]

Dr. Hawking in the hospital in Italy...

Stephen Hawking hospitalized in Rome
Dec. 2, 2016 -- Physics and cosmology master Stephen Hawking was hospitalized in Italy's capital and underwent a series of tests, a spokesman for the academic said Friday.

Hawking was admitted to Rome's Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital on Thursday night, according to the representative -- a fact acknowledged by the Vatican, where the renowned professor visited with Pope Francis on Monday. Hawking also attended the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome this week. The spokesman said it was decided to take Hawking in for tests Thursday after the cosmologist said we didn't feel well. Hawking, 74, suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, which causes the death of motor neurons in voluntary muscles and ultimately leads to paralysis. The condition has confined Hawking to a wheelchair for the last 50 years.

A source at the hospital said Hawking will spend another night at Gemelli as a precautionary measure and depart, as scheduled, on Saturday. The hospital source said Hawking's condition is "under control." The Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital is one of Italy's best and is the primary medical facility used by the Vatican.

Hawking has already defied the odds by living for a half-century longer than doctors initially thought he would. When diagnosed with ALS in 1963, his physicians expected him to die within two years. Instead, he went on to become one of the world's most eminent scholars in the fields of theoretical physics and cosmology. The onset of ALS typically occurs late in life, but Hawking was diagnosed unusually early at the age of 21. The disease, which has no cure, ultimately affects patients' ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. Hawking has been able to speak with the assistance of a computer.

Stephen Hawking hospitalized in Rome

 

[Mac1958]

74 years old. Incredible.

 

[EverCurious]

That's interesting.

As I recall Hawking has traditionally not been too keen on "inviting" notice of alien lifeforms and kind of advocates the Earth take an "under the radar" approach - I've actually never agreed with him because frankly it's already too late, the radio waves are out there and we can't stop them. Anyway, he theorizes that there is no doubt that they would be more technologically advanced and, based on human behavior, he thinks it far more likely that they would overpower us - essentially a "locust" kind of species. To which I argue, that the earth offers almost nothing specifically special that one couldn't find else where, and more so if we speak of a "rape the planet and move on" kind of mentality, there is little on the earth to power such a thing and given the gravity it's a poor "collection" point vs other planets which such elements could be far more easily extracted sans gravity.

 

[waltky]

possum thinks it'd be fun to surf a light wave...

Stephen Hawking: Humans Should Ride a Beam of Light to Other Planets
June 22, 2017 - Humanity should focus its efforts on exploring other worlds that we might inhabit, and to get there, Earthlings may need to ride on a beam of light, famed physicist Stephen Hawking says.

Hawking made his remarks today (June 20) at Starmus, an arts and science festival in Norway whose advisory board he sits on. In his speech, he reiterated his belief that humans need to explore space to avoid the dangers of our own finite world. And then he described how humans could one day travel on a beam of light, harnessing the power of Einstein's theory of relativity to reach mind-bogglingly distant planets.

Earth in peril

The human imagination has led us to peer ever deeper into the universe with scientific tools, Hawking said. Yet despite this ability to investigate the most distant reaches of the universe without leaving our backyards, humans shouldn't be content with this sedentary approach. "Shouldn't we be content to be cosmic sloths, enjoying the universe from the comfort of Earth? The answer is, no," Hawking said in his address. "The Earth is under threat from so many areas that it is difficult for me to be positive."

Stephen Hawking has a long list of warnings about threats to humanity.​

What's more, humans are naturally curious explorers who are driven to push into the unknown. Hawking described the looming threats of a too-crowded world facing climate change, the collapse of animal species and the draining of physical resources. (Hawking has previously mentioned his conviction that humanity is doomed in the next millennium unless people can come up with an escape plan.) "When we have reached similar crises in our history, there has usually been somewhere else to colonize. Columbus did it in 1492 when he discovered the New World. But now there is no new world. No Utopia around the corner," Hawking said.

Explore the unknown

The easiest targets are the places closest to home: the moon and Mars, Hawking said in his Starmus address. The moon is nearby, but it's small, has no liquid water and lacks a magnetic field to shield people from radiation. Mars may once have had liquid water and an atmosphere, but no longer. But an even more promising idea is to explore some of the planets in the vicinity of our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, at a distance of about 4.5 light-years from Earth, where 1 light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (10 million kilometers). A planet circling Proxima Centauri, called Proxima Centauri b, may be somewhat similar to Earth, at least in a few respects, Hawking said. However, we'll never know how hospitable Proxima b is unless we can get there. At current speeds, using chemical propulsion, it would take 3 million years to reach the exoplanet, Hawking said. [Interstellar Space Travel: 7 Futuristic Spacecraft to Explore the Cosmos]

Thus, space colonization requires a radical departure in our travel technology. "To go faster would require a much higher exhaust speed than chemical rockets can provide — that of light itself," Hawking said. "A powerful beam of light from the rear could drive the spaceship forward. Nuclear fusion could provide 1 percent of the spaceship's mass energy, which would accelerate it to a tenth of the speed of light." Going faster than that would require harnessing matter-antimatter annihilation or as-yet-undreamed-of technology, he added. (When matter and antimatter come into contact, they annihilate, releasing gobs of energy.)

Tiny space probes

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd wonderin' if dey got womens in dat parallel universe?...

Stephen Hawking's last paper predicts parallel universes
March 19, 2018 -- Physicist Stephen Hawking worked up to his death last week and submitted a paper on the end of the universe, his co-author said.

Hawking's scientific paper "A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation," written with Thomas Hertog of Belgium's Leuven University, was revised from a July 2017 draft and submitted on March 4. Hawking died Wednesday at age 76.

The paper is archived by Cornell University's Arxiv.org and is under scholarly review. It offers a mathematical procedure for someday testing the theory of the existence of an infinite number of universes, known as the Multiverse Theory. It suggests that the universe we know will end when the stars run out of energy. It also theorizes that alternate universes could be found using probes on spacecraft.

Physicist Stephen Hawking's last scientific paper, submitted on March 4, predicts the end of the universe and the existence of parallel universes, co-author Thomas Hertog said.​

Hertog said Sunday that the theory, if provable, could have led to a Nobel Prize for Hawking. The world's highest-profile physicist until his death, the wheelchair-bound Hawking appeared as himself on the television programs Star Trek, The Simpsons and the Big Bang Theory.

"This was Stephen: to boldly go where Star Trek fears to tread," Hertog told the British newspaper Sunday Times. "He has often been nominated for the Nobel and should have won it. Now he never can." The Nobel Prize is awarded only to living recipients.

Stephen Hawking's last paper predicts parallel universes

 

[tyroneweaver]

Physicist Stephen Hawking has teamed up with a Russian billionaire to launch a new quest to discover life on other planets.


The celebrated scientist has given his backing to Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives project, which will provide £64m over the next decade to those searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Stephen Hawking seeks life on other planets - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

This is neat.

Another lib with no love for his fellow man

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Physicist Stephen Hawking has teamed up with a Russian billionaire to launch a new quest to discover life on other planets.


The celebrated scientist has given his backing to Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives project, which will provide £64m over the next decade to those searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Stephen Hawking seeks life on other planets - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

This is neat.

Another lib with no love for his fellow man

I always wonder why we keep searching for extraterrestrial intelligence when there are so many terrestrial libs here with none to show.

 

[Manonthestreet]

The search for alien life goes on, but our chances of hearing from extraterrestrial beings that are still alive are very slim, according to new research.

The problem is that civilisations likely don't last as long as signals travelling through space. Here's The Mind-Boggling Reason We Probably Won't Meet Aliens While They're Still Alive

 

[BulletProof]

People use to use spare CPU time for SETI number crunching. It looks like the pointless search for life on other planets has been hampered by bit-coin mining.

 

[tyroneweaver]

Physicist Stephen Hawking has teamed up with a Russian billionaire to launch a new quest to discover life on other planets.


The celebrated scientist has given his backing to Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives project, which will provide £64m over the next decade to those searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Stephen Hawking seeks life on other planets - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

This is neat.

Another lib with no love for his fellow man

I always wonder why we keep searching for extraterrestrial intelligence when there are so many terrestrial libs here with none to show.

That money would help a lot of poor people