Stephen Hawking tickets needed

[ronin]

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

tia

[Superman]

Did you meet someone smart?

[arcsine]

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?

[RoninLB]

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.

[arcsine]

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.

[Nathans_Dad]

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.

[Rick Lee]

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.

[john walker's workshop]

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

[Z-man]

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.)

Superman
Did you meet someone smart?

Now that's funny!

-Z-man.

[ronin]

Originally posted by Superman
Did you meet someone smart?

umm, not yet

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

[arcsine]

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

[Superman]

Originally posted by ronin
umm, not yet

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

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.

[gassy]

I love cosmotology.

[RickM]

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)

[legion]

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.

[Rick Lee]

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.

[Rick Lee]

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.

[legion]

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

[targa911S]

Originally posted by ronin
umm, not yet

cosmology is a hobby of mine.

Is black a good color for me?

[Rick Lee]

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."