Stephen Hawking · 176 pages
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“What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“It's the gravity that shapes the large scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest of four categories of forces.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Stephen Hawking”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“The uncertainty principle signaled an end to Laplace's dream of a theory of science, a model of the universe that would be completely deterministic. We certainly cannot predict future events exactly if we cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely!
We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determine events completely for some supernatural being who, unlike us, could observe the present state of the universe without disturbing it. However, such models of the universe are not of much interest to us ordinary mortals. It seems better to employ the principle of economy known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory that cannot be observed.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball more than eight miles wide.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“Yet if there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions—so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“an elipse is an elongated circle”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“El siglo XX también vio nacer otra gran teoría parcial de la naturaleza: la mecánica cuántica. Esta teoría trata los fenómenos que se producen a escalas muy pequeñas. Nuestra concepción del big bang nos indica que debió de haber un momento en que el universo muy primitivo era tan pequeño que, incluso al estudiar su estructura «a gran escala», no es posible ignorar los efectos de pequeña escala de la mecánica cuántica.
Nuestra mayor esperanza de obtener una comprensión completa del universo desde su principio hasta su final implica combinar estas dos teorías parciales en una sola teoría cuántica de la gravedad. [...] Cuando se combina la relatividad general con el principio de incertidumbre de la mecánica cuántica surge la posibilidad de que tanto el espacio como el tiempo sean finitos, pero sin tener bordes ni fronteras. Y es posible que las leyes ordinarias de la ciencia se cumplan en todos los sitios, incluida la región inicial del tiempo, sin necesidad de que haya en ella singularidad alguna.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“Por lo tanto, la mecánica cuántica introduce en la ciencia un elemento inevitable de impredecibilidad o aleatoriedad. Einstein se opuso rotundamente a ello, a pesar del importante papel que había desempeñando en el desarrollo de estas ideas. [...]
La prueba de una teoría científica es su capacidad de predecir los resultados de un experimento. La teoría cuántica limita nuestras posibilidades. ¿Limita la teoría cuántica la ciencia? Para progresar, la manera en que hacemos ciencia debe ser dictada por la naturaleza. En este caso, la naturaleza exige que redefinamos lo que entendemos por predicción: quizá no podamos predecir exactamente el resultado de un experimento, pero podemos repetirlo muchas vces y confirmar que los diversos resultado posibles ocurren con las probabilidades predichas por la teoría cuántica. Así, a pesar del primer principio de incertidumbre, no es necesario abandonar la creencia en un mundo regido por leyes físicas.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“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, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“Dios no solo juega a los dados, a veces los tira donde no se pueden ver.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“(Alexander) Friedmann sólo dedujo un modelo de universo, pero, si sus suposiciones son correctas, hay en realidad tres posibles tipos de soluciones de las ecuaciones de Einstein, es decir, tres diferentes tipos de modelos de Friedmann, y tres diferentes comportamientos del universo.
1. En el primer tipo de solución (el que descubrió Friedmann) el universo se expande con suficiente lentitud como para que la atracción gravitatoria entre las galaxias vaya frenando la expansión hasta llegar a detenerla, tras lo cual las galaxias empiezan a aproximarse las unas a las otras y el universo se contrae.
2. En el segundo tipo de solución, el universo se expande tan rápidamente que la atracción gravitatoria no puede llegar a frenarlo nunca, aunque sí va reduciendo su ritmo de expansión.
3. Finalmente, en un tercer tipo de solución, el universo se expande con el ritmo justo para impedir que se vuelva a colapsar. La velocidad con que las galaxias se separan va disminuyendo progresivamente, pero nunca llega a alcanzar el valor cero.
[...]
Otras observaciones recientes indican que la expansión del universo en realidad no se está frenando, sino que se está acelerando.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
Stephen Hawking
Born place: in Oxford, The United Kingdom
Born date January 8, 1942
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“Ако оцеляването ѝ зависи от вярата ѝ, че живее на Луната, тогава ние трябва да приемем нейната реалност, а не тя нашата.”
― Timothy Findley, quote from Pilgrim
“Maybe it’s not metaphysics. Maybe it’s existential. I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it’s all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it’s not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than “die,” “pass away,” the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday—’
‘And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what—a hundred years? two hundred?—and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from The Pale King
“He can’t stay here.” I’m putting my foot down. I won’t allow this to happen. “I’ll leave, Dad. I swear to God, if you try to make me do this, I’ll disappear again.” Dad sits back, looking smug. “You know, I got a call from Matt’s doctor the other day.” Dad stares direct at Logan. “They said your brother is ready for phase two of the treatment. And they asked if I would be providing the funds.” Logan’s arm falls from around my waist, and he lumbers to his feet very slowly. He looks down at me and presses a finger to my lips. His finger trembles. “Mr. Madison,” he says. He nods at my dad, and then at my mom. “Mrs. Madison. It was wonderful to meet you. I will say good-bye now.” He starts toward the door. “And as far as the treatment is concerned, if Emily’s freedom is the price, you can take your money and shove it up your ass.” He stops at the door. I’m latched onto his arm like a Velcro monkey. “Please don’t walk out,” I beg. “Not like this. I can fix this.” He peels me off of his arm. “I know you can.” He kisses my forehead, his lips lingering there as he breathes in deeply, his eyes closed. Then he pushes me back from him. “I need to go,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “I’ll talk to you later.” “I’m going to deal with this, and then I’ll come find you. I promise.” He nods. Then he steps out the door and closes it softly behind him. There’s a thud on the other side of the wall and I know Logan waited until he got outside to smash something.”
― quote from Smart, Sexy and Secretive
“People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it ot the bank they're thinking ill.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from High Noon
“If Jesus Christ treated me like you do, I’d drive in the nails myself.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm
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