We lose what we cherish. And we go on. Because we must. Because, in a way, it’s our job to do that, for a time.
And others will continue the work.
I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia
Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.
-Ptolemy
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
-Bertrand Russell
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
-Carl Sagan
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
While a terrible loss, we have to appreciate, as he did, that he got 49 years more than he was expected to. I chalk that up to pure intellectual curiosity. He was amazing, RIP.
@ACraigL exactly.
He was given 2 years to live way back in 1963, and he said that his disability in a way freed him to delve into the intellectual side in a way he probably wouldn’t have been able to if he hadn’t been affected by his disease.
@mike808 In the end, we are all humbled before death. The reaper cares not who you are, nor what you have done, when he comes; he treats all the same. This, too, is a truth.
Edit: That said, I think he would appreciate the humor of it being pi day.
I like his Hawking radiation idea, or at least my interpretation of it: Hawking radiation is the most elemental particle, or de-energized wave, forcibly expelled from the massive mass of mass that is a black hole. Once all matter and energy has been sucked into and leaked out of a black hole, yadda yadda yadda, and the big bang happens.
/image grid in space
I like his Hawking radiation idea, or at least my interpretation of it: Hawking radiation is the most elemental particle, or de-energized wave, forcibly expelled from the massive mass of mass that is a black hole. Once all matter and energy has been sucked into and leaked out of a black hole, it will be probably a fairly uniform but broadly dispersed sea of equally charged particles which coalesce, and the big bang happens.
/image yadda yadda yadda
@gsrivast S is the entropy of the black hole.
The units are energy per temperature, e.g. joules per kelvin.
I’ll try to simplify that. All things have some inherent fixed amount of entropy. It can neither be created nor destroyed. So, if you throw some mass into a black hole, how much does its entropy increase? So start with zero, and go from there, tossing mass into a black hole. Mass is energy, as we learned from Einstein. Add Boltzmann and Plank and we tie the entropy of a black hole to its mass, which ties to its event horizon radius (Schwartzchild), which ties to its event horizon surface area.
That’s why the only variable on the right-hand side is A, the surface area of the event horizon.
When you do this, lots of units cancel and simplify to the equation above for the entropy of any ‘size’ or ‘mass’ of a black hole.
So, S goes up if you toss matter (mass) into a black hole (forced by gravity), and one of Hawking’s contributions was that it goes down by radiating energy back to the surrounding spacetime, or ‘evaporating’.
I would guess this example would be not quite to Hawking’s taste.
Re Einstein:
There is no grave. According to Einstein’s wish his body was burned on the same day and the ashes were scattered after a simple ceremony at an unknown place.
The New York Times has published an article on Hawking’s intellectual history.
Stephen Hawking’s Beautiful Mind
The beginning of the article:
A brief history of Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking spent his scientific life exploring some of the deepest questions a human caught in the Einsteinian opera of space and time could ask.
Although Einstein himself never really accepted it, his general theory of relativity predicted that if enough mass or energy were concentrated at one point, space would sag like mattress and eventually close itself off, creating a black hole from which nothing, not even light, could ever escape.
It would be Dr. Hawking’s fate to explore these imagined monsters and ask what their presence portends for the universe, and for those of us who live inside it.
Oh god. Ursula Le Guin, and Kate Wilhelm, and now Hawking. I don’t think I can take much more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking
From the link posted by TC, a quote from his children is apropos:
“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.”
Me, too.
@Shrdlu “I know, Ursula Le Guin… I’m rereading The Dispososed and I just cry and cry” -Jen
@Seeds, @Shrdlu, & Jen (@PolkSaladAnnie?)
The Left Hand Of Darkness still knocks me off my feet.
We lose what we cherish. And we go on. Because we must. Because, in a way, it’s our job to do that, for a time.
And others will continue the work.
-Ptolemy
-Bertrand Russell
-Carl Sagan
-Marcus Aurelius
Thanks, SH.
Good times, here and there.
While a terrible loss, we have to appreciate, as he did, that he got 49 years more than he was expected to. I chalk that up to pure intellectual curiosity. He was amazing, RIP.
@ACraigL exactly.
He was given 2 years to live way back in 1963, and he said that his disability in a way freed him to delve into the intellectual side in a way he probably wouldn’t have been able to if he hadn’t been affected by his disease.
Yeah… sucks, though it had to happen eventually. For some reason, I thought he was older than 76.
And now the space aliens are definitely coming, if only to get his body.
He’s finally got the answer to the one big question, and he can’t share.
@karamazovsdevil
This seems to be a common dilemma of our kind.
(Altho it is not strictly provable that he experienced the receipt of an “answer”.)
On top of everything else, he was hilarious on Big Bang Theory.
Here’s a John Oliver interview w Hawking.
On π Day. RIP.
Humble pie for me.
@mike808 In the end, we are all humbled before death. The reaper cares not who you are, nor what you have done, when he comes; he treats all the same. This, too, is a truth.
Edit: That said, I think he would appreciate the humor of it being pi day.
@mike808 Also Einstein’s birthday. Well played Mr. Hawking, well played…
@cinoclav @mike808 Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death and died on the 139th anniversary of Einstein’s birth.
@2many2no @cinoclav @mike808 @Durango Looks like he wanted to be transcendental.
@mehcuda67 Durango?
@Durago Spell checker
/tts will never be the same without him to use it.
Link was supplied to me by another:
The Mighty Stephen Hawking,
Commander of the Most Excellent Order.
I like his Hawking radiation idea, or at least my interpretation of it: Hawking radiation is the most elemental particle, or de-energized wave, forcibly expelled from the massive mass of mass that is a black hole. Once all matter and energy has been sucked into and leaked out of a black hole, yadda yadda yadda, and the big bang happens.
/image grid in space
I like his Hawking radiation idea, or at least my interpretation of it: Hawking radiation is the most elemental particle, or de-energized wave, forcibly expelled from the massive mass of mass that is a black hole. Once all matter and energy has been sucked into and leaked out of a black hole, it will be probably a fairly uniform but broadly dispersed sea of equally charged particles which coalesce, and the big bang happens.
/image yadda yadda yadda
@eonfifty
Whoa there.
Was that some infomashun???
@f00l
Yes, I am a Seinfeld fan.
/image Seinfeld is that a titleist
Black Hole Thermodynamics
S = π A k c^3 / 2 h G
@mike808 but what about S?
@gsrivast S is the entropy of the black hole.
The units are energy per temperature, e.g. joules per kelvin.
I’ll try to simplify that. All things have some inherent fixed amount of entropy. It can neither be created nor destroyed. So, if you throw some mass into a black hole, how much does its entropy increase? So start with zero, and go from there, tossing mass into a black hole. Mass is energy, as we learned from Einstein. Add Boltzmann and Plank and we tie the entropy of a black hole to its mass, which ties to its event horizon radius (Schwartzchild), which ties to its event horizon surface area.
That’s why the only variable on the right-hand side is A, the surface area of the event horizon.
When you do this, lots of units cancel and simplify to the equation above for the entropy of any ‘size’ or ‘mass’ of a black hole.
So, S goes up if you toss matter (mass) into a black hole (forced by gravity), and one of Hawking’s contributions was that it goes down by radiating energy back to the surrounding spacetime, or ‘evaporating’.
Newton’s Tomb in Westminster Abbey
I would guess this example would be not quite to Hawking’s taste.
Re Einstein:
http://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/faq-e.html
/image galaxy
This is older. Interesting that he passed on Albert’s birthday.
The New York Times has published an article on Hawking’s intellectual history.
Stephen Hawking’s Beautiful Mind
The beginning of the article:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/science/stephen-hawking-timeline.html
