Stephen Hawking tickets needed
 

need Stephen Hawking tickets for Seattle appearance at the Paramount on Nov 16. call 206.683.2858 if you have two to spare

tia

Did you meet someone smart?

This is the physicist-savant Stephen Hawking right?

Definately one of the big minds of the last century and I would relish the opportunity to spend time with him but the Paramount? He is wheelchair bound and communicates by eye movement and a computer. He has thoughts that only a few humans can fully comprehend. Does he have a backup band? a lightshow?

Read his books. It's not fast reading but it is doable.

ps: it'll make it easy to relate combustion to electro magnetic particles. Although I never did understand how those particles can be particles and waves at the same time.

I have read the books and love the idea of rock-star scientists filling up the Paramount. Just seems to me Stephen would play better in a more intimate venue.

And while the wave/particle duality of EM radiation is a mind bender, I find gravity to rock my world more. Especially in the context of black holes.

Yeesh, I just Googled him and hopped over to his website. Read through his lecture on the beginning of the universe and time. Here is the last paragraph:

The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn't have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again. However, the contracting phase, will not have the opposite arrow of time, to the expanding phase. So we will keep on getting older, and we won't return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards, I think I better stop now.

My head hurts now.

He seems to have made a pretty big life given his physical limitations. I've read A Brief History and Black Holes & Baby Universes. I think his biggest regret in life is losing his vocal chords and the guy who designed the computer that speaks for him is an American, so the computer gives Hawking an American accent. Talk about adding insult to injury for a high-brow Brit.

you're gonna have to take some good LSD to interface him.

This thread rocks!

My senior physics paper in college was titled: "Five ways of viewing focce acting on a body. And possibly a sixth." It dealt with viewing F=ma from a specific relativity perspective. I got five of my views easily explained, but I had a difficult time explaining the 'time is now accelerating' concept. Got an "A" on the paper. Prof said I had good 'out of the box' thinking and good original content. <-- shameless plug.

I actually read some of Einstein's work - the difficult part was following his calculus - he'd start with at point 1, skip the 50 integration steps, and finish with the end. (Ex: here you see X. {skip 50 steps} and it can be easily seen that after the integration, we have Y.)

Now that's funny!

-Z-man.

umm, not yet http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/...ool_shades.gif

cosmology is a hobby of mine. I read A Brief History and many of Dr Hawking's lectures. sharing my interest (and many late-night conversations regarding the subject) with my daughter has also sparked a healthy interest in her for physics and astronomy. she was excited to hear that Dr Hawking was in town and her physics teacher told her that he'd give her extra credit if she attended the lecture, to boot. couldn't think of a better way to spend the evening with my girl ;)

Now that is a hot date. I hope this works out for you.

There may be hope for you. I'll look forward to the evolution of your political thinking.

In the meantime, congratulations on your daughter's interests. Have a fabulous time with her, listening to Dr. Hawking.

Oh, and I think the Paramount is the perfect place.

I love cosmotology.

I find the guy fascinating. Wasn't he taken to the cleaners by his female caretaker (read wife) a few years ago?


( I see you posted on Craigslist as well. Good thinking)

From what I understand, most high-level physicists don't have much regard for him. His ideas are not particularly groundbreaking, but he is good at explaining the complex world of physics.

Hawking is a celebrity because of what he's done despite his paralysis and always being told that he has another year or two to live. Like Carl Sagan, Hawking has been able to explain a lot of what we know about the universe in consise layman's terms. I believe Hawking's only major find was proving that black holes emit gamma rays. He's still working on his grand unified theory, which, if he lives long enough to see it pan out, will probably rival Einstein's theory of relativity. Though nothing could impress me as much as the fact that Einstein published that when he was in his early 20's.

Oh another awesome tidbit on Hawking - the last time he ever signed his own name is when he became the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge. He signed his name in the same book Isaac Newton when he held that same job. I also recall something about Hawking having the same birthday as Galileo and some other famous astronomer. Sorta like Thomas Jefferson dying on the fth of July.

Remind me again, what are the three forces that are currently unified, and which is the one that can't be unified?

Is black a good color for me?

No idea. I just remember his talking a lot about electromagnetic, weak and intermediate nuclear forces. I think Heisenberg's Uncertainty Princ. is the main stumbling block to Hawking's G.U.T. now.

BTW, a little quantum mechanics humor. Hear the one about Heisenberg getting pulled over for speeding?

Cop said "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg replied, "No. But at least I know where I am."

Can't be unified? BLACK AUDI WAGON!

This just in!

There is a massive BAW at the center of the universe!

Electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force are united. Gravity is the odd one out; it is extremely feeble but acts over huge distances.

Gravity is irrelevant to an atom, while the other 3 forces are not. Quantum equations and E-M equations do not work with gravity.

Black holes offer hope to unify, as they have massive gravity, and are extremely small at the same time. Nothing else has those 2 properties.

This kind of stuff really intrists me. I wish I could understand it better.

Read Brief History. It's thin and a fast read. Took me three reads to totally get it, but it's very valuable stuff. Read Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot too. It'll give you a great appreciation for how small and insignificant, yet arrogant, we really are.

This stuff is explained pretty well in Brief History. My favorite part of that book is his explanation of event horizons and light cones. Amazing stuff.

That's because he has written best-sellers, and they can't get a date.

Oh man, I would love to see Hawking....

If you get to go ronin, can you post about it?

"Event Horizon"... now there's a freaky movie... some people can't even watch the entire thing.

I think that was the name of the ship.

Hawking has a new book out, "A Briefer History of Time". It's supposed to be a little more understandable. I'm expecting a copy in the mail any day now, so I'll delve into that one soon. A very good book about all this stuff is "Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Green.

So who went to this event? How was it?