{"id":10767,"date":"2018-03-14T15:04:34","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T19:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/?p=10767"},"modified":"2018-03-14T15:04:34","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T19:04:34","slug":"stephen-hawking-tourist-of-the-universe-dead-at-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/mundo\/stephen-hawking-tourist-of-the-universe-dead-at-76\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hawking, tourist of the universe, dead at 76"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PARIS \u2014 In his final years, the only thing connecting the brilliant physicist to the outside world was a couple of inches of frayed nerve in his cheek.<\/div>\n
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As slowly as a word per minute, Stephen Hawking used the twitching of the muscle under his right eye to grind out his thoughts on a custom-built computer, painstakingly outlining his vision of time, the universe, and humanity\u2019s place within it.<\/p>\n

What he produced was a masterwork of popular science, one that guided a generation of enthusiasts through the esoteric world of anti-particles, quarks, and quantum theory. His success in turn transformed him into a massively popular scientist, one as familiar to the wider world through his appearances on \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d and \u201cStar Trek\u201d as his work on cosmology and black holes.<\/p>\n

Hawking owed one part of his fame to his triumph over amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a degenerative disease that eats away at the nervous system. When he diagnosed aged only 21, he was given only a few years to live.<\/p>\n

But Hawking defied the normally fatal illness for more than 50 years, pursuing a brilliant career that stunned doctors and thrilled his fans. Even though a severe attack of pneumonia left him breathing through a tube, an electronic voice synthesizer allowed him to continue speaking, albeit in a robotic monotone that became one of his trademarks.<\/p>\n

He carried on working into his 70s, spinning theories, teaching students, and writing \u201cA Brief History of Time,\u201d an accessible exploration of the mechanics of the universe that sold millions of copies.<\/p>\n

By the time he died Wednesday at 76, Hawking was among the most recognizable faces in science, on par with Albert Einstein.<\/p>\n

As one of Isaac Newton\u2019s successors as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, Hawking was involved in the search for the great goal of physics \u2014 a \u201cunified theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a theory would resolve the contradictions between Einstein\u2019s General Theory of Relativity, which describes the laws of gravity that govern the motion of large objects like planets, and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which deals with the world of subatomic particles.<\/p>\n

For Hawking, the search was almost a religious quest \u2014 he said finding a \u201ctheory of everything\u201d would allow mankind to \u201cknow the mind of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA complete, consistent unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence,\u201d he wrote in \u201cA Brief History of Time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In later years, though, he suggested a unified theory might not exist.<\/p>\n

He followed up \u201cA Brief History of Time\u201d in 2001 with the sequel, \u201cThe Universe in a Nutshell,\u201d which updated readers on concepts like supergravity, naked singularities and the possibility of an 11-dimensional universe.<\/p>\n

Hawking said belief in a God who intervenes in the universe \u201cto make sure the good guys win or get rewarded in the next life\u201d was wishful thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut one can\u2019t help asking the question: Why does the universe exist?\u201d he said in 1991. \u201cI don\u2019t know an operational way to give the question or the answer, if there is one, a meaning. But it bothers me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawking often credited humour with helping him deal with his disability, and it was his sense of mischief that made him game for a series of stunts.<\/p>\n

He made cameo television appearances in \u201cThe Simpsons,\u201d \u201cStar Trek,\u201d and the \u201cBig Bang Theory\u201d and counted among his fans U2 guitarist The Edge, who attended a January 2002 celebration of Hawking\u2019s 60th birthday.<\/p>\n

His early life was chronicled in the 2014 film \u201cThe Theory of Everything,\u201d with Eddie Redmayne winning the best actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Hawking. The film focused still more attention on Hawking\u2019s remarkable life.<\/p>\n

Some colleagues credited that celebrity with generating new enthusiasm for science.<\/p>\n

His achievements, and his longevity, also helped prove to many that even the most severe disabilities need not stop patients from achieving.<\/p>\n

Richard Green, of the Motor Neurone Disease Association \u2014 the British name for ALS \u2014 said Hawking met the classic definition of the disease, as \u201cthe perfect mind trapped in an imperfect body.\u201d He said Hawking had been an inspiration to people with the disease for many years.<\/p>\n

Hawking\u2019s disability did slow the pace of conversation, especially in later years as even the muscles in his face started to weaken. Minutes could pass as he composed answers to even simple questions. Hawking said that didn\u2019t impair his work, even telling one interviewer it gave his mind time to drift as the conversation ebbed and flowed around him.<\/p>\n

His near-total paralysis certainly did little to dampen his ambition to physically experience space: Hawking savored small bursts of weightlessness in 2007 when he was flown aboard a jet that made repeated dives to simulate zero-gravity.<\/p>\n

Hawking had hoped to leave Earth\u2019s atmosphere altogether someday, a trip he often recommended to the rest of the planet\u2019s inhabitants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the long run the human race should not have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet,\u201d Hawking said in 2008. \u201cI just hope we can avoid dropping the basket until then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawking first earned prominence for his theoretical work on black holes. Disproving the belief that black holes are so dense that nothing could escape their gravitational pull, he showed that black holes leak a tiny bit of light and other types of radiation, now known as \u201cHawking radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came as a complete surprise,\u201d said Gary Horowitz, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. \u201cIt really was quite revolutionary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horowitz said the find helped move scientists one step closer to cracking the unified theory.<\/p>\n

Hawking\u2019s other major scientific contribution was to cosmology, the study of the universe\u2019s origin and evolution. Working with Jim Hartle of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Hawking proposed in 1983 that space and time might have no beginning and no end. \u201cAsking what happens before the Big Bang is like asking for a point one mile north of the North Pole,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 2004, he announced that he had revised his previous view that objects sucked into black holes simply disappeared, perhaps to enter an alternate universe. Instead, he said he believed objects could be spit out of black holes in a mangled form.<\/p>\n

That new theory capped his three-decade struggle to explain a paradox in scientific thinking: How can objects really \u201cdisappear\u201d inside a black hole and leave no trace when subatomic theory says matter can be transformed but never fully destroyed?<\/p>\n

Hawking was born Jan. 8, 1942, in Oxford, and grew up in London and St. Albans, northwest of the capital. In 1959, he entered Oxford University and then went on to graduate work at Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Signs of illness appeared in his first year of graduate school, and he was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease after the New York Yankee star who died of it. The disease usually kills within three to five years.<\/p>\n

According to John Boslough, author of \u201cStephen Hawking\u2019s Universe,\u201d Hawking became deeply depressed. But as it became apparent that he was not going to die soon, his spirits recovered and he bore down on his work. Brian Dickie, director of research at the Motor Neurone Disease Association, said only 5 per cent of those diagnosed with ALS survive for 10 years or longer. Hawking, he added, \u201creally is at the extreme end of the scale when it comes to survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965 and they had three children, Robert, Lucy and Timothy.<\/p>\n

Jane cared for Hawking for 20 years, until a grant from the United States paid for the 24-hour care he required.<\/p>\n

He was inducted into the Royal Society in 1974 and received the Albert Einstein Award in 1978. In 1989, Queen Elizabeth II made him a Companion of Honor, one of the highest distinctions she can bestow.<\/p>\n

He whizzed about Cambridge at surprising speed \u2014 usually with nurses or teaching assistants in his wake \u2014 travelled and lectured widely, and appeared to enjoy his fame. He retired from his chair as Lucasian Professor in 2009 and took up a research position with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.<\/p>\n

Hawking divorced Jane in 1991, an acrimonious split that strained his relationship with their children. Writing in her autobiographical \u201cMusic to Move the Stars,\u201d she said the strain of caring for Hawking for nearly three decades had left her feeling like \u201ca brittle, empty shell.\u201d Hawking married his one-time nurse Elaine Mason four years later, but the relationship was dogged by rumours of abuse.<\/p>\n

Police investigated in 2004 after newspapers reported that he\u2019d been beaten, suffering injuries including a broken wrist, gashes to the face and a cut lip, and was left stranded in his garden on the hottest day of the year.<\/p>\n

Hawking called the charges \u201ccompletely false.\u201d Police found no evidence of any abuse. Hawking and Mason separated in 2006.<\/p>\n

Lucy Hawking said her father had an exasperating \u201cinability to accept that there is anything he cannot do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI accept that there are some things I can\u2019t do,\u201d he told The Associated Press in 1997. \u201cBut they are mostly things I don\u2019t particularly want to do anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, grinning widely, he added, \u201cI seem to manage to do anything that I really want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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