xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)

“There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary?”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. p. 444

“Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 2

“[on the possibility of contact with an alien civilization]: I think it 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.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Appearance in the National Geographic Channel program Naked Science: Alien Contact, as quoted in The New York Times (24 November 2004) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E2D8173EF937A15752C1A9629C8B63&sec=&spon= and a CNN transcript of an interview with Seth Shostak from Anderson Cooper 360 (26 November 2004) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0411/26/acd.01.html

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

BBC (2 December 2014) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540

“I now predict that I was wrong.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Attributed in the movie The Theory of Everything (2014)
Attributed

“If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

Stephen Hawking book Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays

Last lines. Hawking later wrote: "In the proof stage I nearly cut the last sentence in the book... Had I done so, the sales might have been halved.
Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)

“Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

As quoted in Stephen Hawking: A Biography (2005) by Kristine Larsen, p. 43

“I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in a state where it can not be easily recognized. It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, if one keeps the smoke and the ashes. But it is difficult to read. In practice, it would be too difficult to re-build a macroscopic object like an encyclopedia that fell inside a black hole from information in the radiation, but the information preserving result is important for microscopic processes involving virtual black holes.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

"Information Loss in Black Holes" http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507171 (July 2005)

“The Dreams that Stuff is Made of”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Title of a collection, by Hawking, of the most significant papers in Quantum mechanics: The Dreams That Stuff Is Made of : The Most Astounding Papers of Quantum Physics and How They Shook the Scientific World (2011)

“I regard [the many worlds interpretation] as self-evidently correct. [T. F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves. ] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering—is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Heard in person by this contributor when Hawking showed-up in a Caltech physics class taught by Robert Christy in 1980 or '81; when asked about collapse of the state-vector he whispered to his assistant Chris (surname unknown) something at which point Chris stood up and said 'Stephen is paraphrasing Herman Göring by saying "When I hear the words 'Schrödinger's Cat' I reach for my gun."'. <br class="br">Source: In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345 http://books.google.com/books?id=qjYbQ7EBAKwC&lpg=PA345&ots=F6VWymjiPx&dq=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&pg=PA345#v=onepage&q=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&f=false

“I used to think that information was destroyed in black holes. But the AdS/CFT correspondence led me to change my mind. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

"Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive interview" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328460.500-stephen-hawking-at-70-exclusive-interview.html in New Scientist, (4 January 2012). In his comment that he "used to think that information was destroyed in black holes", he is referring to the black hole information paradox.

“Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren't equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it's just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/story/0,6000,1579384,00.html (27 September 2005)

“The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe. …we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.”

Stephen Hawking book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time

with G.F.R. Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" (1973) Preface

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Stephen Hawking book The Grand Design

The Grand Design (2010)

“What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)

“Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)