Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSAis an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 January 1942
CityOxford, England
I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
I think the next [21st] century will be the century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws that govern matter and understand all the normal situations. We don't know how the laws fit together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I expect we will find a complete unified theory sometime this century. The is no limit to the complexity that we can build using those basic laws.
I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.
I think [contacting an alien civilization] would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low.
There are plenty of dead scientists I admire, but I can't think of any living ones. This is probably because it is only in retrospect that one can see who made the important contributions.
Think of our DNA. In the last million years, our DNA hasn't changed at all. It's really much the same as it was in the jungle, a million, two millions years ago. But in the last 200 years, our destructive capacities have increased many, many millions of times over. Why don't we see intelligent signals from outer space? Because in all likelihood, once the civilization reaches the point our civilization has reached, it destroys itself.
Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an ass.
To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,
I think the next century will be the century of complexity.
I think computer viruses should count as life,
Now, radical forward thinking is offering hope for the future: Replacement body parts to order. A team of scientists in California believe that if you can design them on a computer, you should be able to print them out.
I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space.