Roll in Peace Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

On March 14, 2018, famed astrophysics and author, Steven Hawking, quietly passed away. The legendary scientist possessed twelve honorary degrees and was seated at the most prestigious academic post in the world, the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a position once held by Isaac Newton. The author of several books on time and the universe, Hawking suffered from ALS, a debilitating disease which eventually robbed him of the use of his limbs and speech. Communicating through a computer interface, Hawking took minutes to select a letter making writing a book a colossal endeavor. His life was unfathomably difficult, but he soldiered on against extraordinary hardship to become regarded as one of the world's foremost thinkers.

News coverage of Hawking's passing was called out on social media for mentioning how he overcame his disability. Some people decried the reporting as "ableist," a term that describes the prejudice physically challenge people often experience. To some, the mentioning of Hawking's disability along with his many achievements perpetuates a stereotype that disabled people are less than an able bodied person. Many obituaries and news stories said things like Hawking "overcame his disability," or was a brilliant thinker "despite his physical ailments." This angered many readers.

The issue I always had with Professor Hawking is that his assertions about the heavens, so revered by intellectuals and laypeople, never actually benefitted mankind. In fact, all you have to do to be successful in theoretical astrophysics is just blast off some wild assertion then back it up with a little hokey math, preferably partial differential equations, after which everyone thinks you're a genius. Hawking's big contribution to our understanding of the universe came in 1974 when he theorized that black holes emit radiation. It's known as the "coolest thing ever" or Hawking Radiation. So black holes emit radiation. Who gives a mu meson?

He once theorized that the expansion of the universe from the big bang would eventually come to a halt after which the universe would contract and time would run backwards. After mathematically proving this theory, he later mathematically refuted it. The idea was nuts, but at least he admitted it was incorrect. The worst part about intellectualizing mundane nonsense is that wannabe intelligencia and laypeople alike suck it right up. A colleague of mine was always espousing the musings of Stephen Hawking. He was a music major tasked with evaluating the aesthetics of our software user interfaces. There was nothing technical about this guy, but somehow he embraced Hawking as his intellectual savior. In meetings, he would often quote from one of Hawking's books like,

"Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases."

As if he understood what the quark Hawking was talking about. I had a friend who took up Hawking's literature after he finished his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. He once told me that he submitted a paper to Professor Hawking in which he "non-dimensionalized intelligence" and found that cats were smarter than some people. My friend, a cat lover, was a phenomenal thinker before he became a doctorate when he shifted his focus from understand the world to establishing his place in it.

Carl Sagan

When I was young, I was captivated by the astronomer, author, cosmetologist and astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, who co-wrote and narrated the award winning 13 part PBS television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Sagan ensured that his mug, gazing at the heavens, was interjected in the series as many times as possible. He said things like "star stuff" and "billions" a lot as in,

"We are made of star-stuff," and

"Billions and billions of particles in one great cosmic soup."

My twelve year old mind inhaled this shit. Carl Sagan was a god to me even though he was an atheist. In several episodes, Carl cruised around in "the ship of imagination" which was modeled after a dandelion seed. He stopped by a black hole for a quick lesson on how cool those things were because back then worm holes hadn't been invented yet. In what was some of the clunkiest graphics of the '80's, Carl exited the ship of imagination and slid into the black hole. Sagan was perhaps the first showman, egghead, celebrity nerd, gaining tremendous worldwide fame from his on screen techno explanations of things like gravity, black holes and special relativity. We all felt special ourselves because we understood what this way smart dude was talking about even though everyone knows one cannot survive a trip down a black hole because tremendous cosmic forces tend to remove your pancreas via your nose. 

Pioneer 10 Plaque

As I climbed into high school then college, my affinity for Carl Sagan waned as I saw him more interested in promoting Carl Sagan than advancing the knowledge of humankind. I once defended the syndicated comedic columnist, Dave Barry, who wrote a hilarious piece suggesting that we should send Carl out to retrieve the plaque off Pioneer 10 which gives aliens directions on how to find earth. It was Sagan's idea to include the map on the spacecraft. Barry's article made many jokes about how often Sagan said, "billions and billions." A reader of the local newspaper named, Mark D. Bonnie, commented on Barry's article. Bonnie wrote,

"Barry's timing was impeccable since the article appeared the week Professor Sagan almost died in the hospital from a ruptured appendix."

Being a consummate dick even in my youth, my response appeared in print the following week,

"I don't think Mr. Barry meant anything personal in his article. He never even mentioned that Sagan's appendix burst into billions and billions of pieces."

I don't blame Hawking for his efforts in self promotion because unlike Sagan, Hawking was confined to a wheelchair in which his own limbs where not under his control. He was a master at convincing people of his superior intellect which was certainly buoyed by his plight. Hawking himself said his disability freed him from teaching and correcting papers allowing him time to conjure up fantastical assertions which he packaged for public consumption, one letter at a time in his best selling books.

His disability was a large part of his success. Americans love an underdog and Hollywood loves a genius slacker. Hawking jumped on the Good Will Hunting genius slacker concept when he said that in his three years at Oxford he probably put in only an hour a day, about 1000 total, as he skipped lectures and blew off assignments. The rest of us require 10,000 hours to become an outlier, but not Stephen. He got there by barely trying.

Hawking's first wife, Jane, which he met while at Cambridge put her own graduate studies on hold to marry Hawking even after she knew of his medical prognosis. She raised their two children and took care of her husband for years. During his acceptance speech when Hawking received a prestigious award, he failed to mention his wife. Eventually, he divorced her for one of his caregivers, Elaine Mason, who dumped her husband, the guy who hooked up Stephen with the computer allowing him to communicate. Being discarded for a paralyzed dude in a wheelchair must have been a hard pill for Mason's ex-husband to choke down. I always wondered what he said when she broke the news to him. It was probably something along the lines of,

"Good luck with that."

Hawking's second wife allegedly beat the living shit out of him, breaking his wrist and one time leaving him in the sun for hours until he almost croaked from too much Hawking Radiation. He denied any abuse but divorced his second wife anyway only to be taken under care by Jane, who had remarried. Stephen was fond of porn as depicted in the award winning biopic, The Theory of Everything. He also frequented high end strip clubs. I don't blame the guy for seeking whatever sexual gratification he could discover because along with not having to correct undergraduate student papers, he also couldn't spank his own carrot.

Just before he died Hawking was at it again declaring that earth will become a "ball of fire" in 600 years with global warming accelerating to its logical Hollywood conclusion. He didn't present any facts to back up his assertions. Hawking just made the claim which was picked up by many major news outlets. It doesn't matter that the trillion dollar federal debt will bankrupt the nation long before the globe burns up, people are more concerned about global warming because an egghead, geek showmen said it from his wheelchair. To think, it probably took a couple of hours for Hawking to type that drivel.

The strangest thing that emanated from Hawking's synthesizer was back in 2016 when he declared,

“I don’t feel like a true pop culture icon until I’ve been on the Kardashians.”

It's odd that Hawking would have an affinity for the Kardashians. Let's face it. If you draw a circle around Stephen Hawking and another around the Kardashians, they would intersect at Kim's sex tape. Hawking's true brilliance is that he leveraged our own stupidity against us, and in doing so carved out the best possible life for himself. Hawking once eloquently said,

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

And that's what it has been, an illusion. Two weeks before Hawking handed in his lunch pail, he completed a paper, co-written by Professor Thomas Hertog, of KU Leuven University in Belgium. In the piece submitted to a leading scientific journal Hawking made the groundbreaking prediction that our universe would eventually fade into blackness as the stars run out of energy, kind of like your car rolling to a stop when you run out of gas. He also claimed that parallel universes were created in our universe, each with their own separate big bang. The radiation from which should be detectable from instruments mounted on a spacecraft. Hertog was quoted in the news as saying,

"He has often been nominated for the Nobel and should have won it. Now he never can.”

Hertog suggested Hawking should win the coveted award posthumously for this last paper, appropriately entitled A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation. Perhaps Hawking left this as a clue, providing a glimpse of reality. We'll never know. In the end I guess it's fitting that the title of Hawking's final work pretty much sums up his extraordinary life.

Editor's Note: Originally published on March 20, 2018.