Quotes from Stephen Hawking

I was lucky to lose my voice at the beginning of the personal computing age.

The final result was a joint paper by Penrose and myself in 1970, which at last proved that there must have been a big bang singularity provided only that general relativity is correct and the universe contains as much matter as we observe.

Newton gave us answers. Hawking gave us questions. And Hawking's questions themselves keep on giving, generating breakthroughs decades later. When ultimately we master the quantum gravity laws, and comprehend fully the birth of our universe, it may largely be by standing on the shoulders of Hawking." •

Stephen's answers to six of the questions are deeply rooted in his science. (Is there a God? How did it all begin? Can we predict the future? What is inside a black hole? Is time travel possible? How do we shape the future?).

La imitación es la forma más sincera de halago.

El principio antrópico dice que el universo tiene que ser más o menos como lo vemos, porque si fuera diferente no habría nadie para observarlo.

But physics and astronomy offered the hope of understanding where we came from and why we are here. I wanted to fathom the depths of the universe. Maybe I have succeeded to a small extent, but there's still plenty I want to know.

As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions, the theory survives and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

My father believed that his own lack of pose and connections had led him being passed over in his career in favor of people of less ability. He had a bit of a chip on his shoulder because he felt that other people who were not as good but who had the right background and connections had gotten ahead of him. He used to warn me against such people.

No entanto, a da tartaruga não é uma boa teoria científica porque prevê que as pessoas devem ser capazes de cair pela beirada do mundo. A experiência mostra que as coisas não são assim, a menos que venhamos a descobrir que essa é a explicação para as pessoas que supostamente desapareceram no Triângulo das Bermudas!

Rising temperatures, reduction of the polar ice caps, deforestation, over-population, disease, war, famine, lack of water and decimation of animal species; these are all solvable but so far have not been solved.

No entanto, se de fato descobrirmos uma teoria completa, todos acabarão compreendendo seus princípios amplos, não apenas alguns cientistas. Então, deveremos todos - filósofos, cientistas e pessoas comuns - ser capazes de tornar parte na discussão para saber o porquê de nós e o universo existirmos. Se descobrirmos a resposta para isso, será o triunfo da razão humana - pois, então, conheceremos a mente de Deus.

La inteligencia se caracteriza por la capacidad de adaptarse a los cambios. La inteligencia humana es el resultado de muchas generaciones de selección natural, de aquellos con la capacidad de adaptarse a circunstancias cambiantes. No debemos temer el cambio. Tenemos que hacer que funcione a nuestro favor.

When there's life, there's hope

The story that Newton was inspired by an apple hitting his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea of gravity came to him as he sat 'in a contemplative mood' and 'was occasioned by the fall of an apple.')

Laplace suggested that there should be a set of scientific laws that would allow us to predict everything that would happen in the universe, if only we knew the complete state of the universe at one time.

Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And

Aristarchus suspected that this was the case and believed that the stars we see in the night sky are actually nothing more than distant suns.

Hasta ahora, la mayoría de los científicos han estado demasiado ocupados con el desarrollo de nuevas teorías que describen cómo es el universo para hacerse la pregunta de por qué.

One has to be grown up enough to realize that life is not fair. You just have to do the best you can in the situation you are in.

if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe.

The notion that the laws of nature had to be intentionally obeyed reflects the ancients' focus on why nature behaves as it does, rather than on how it behaves.

We are all time travellers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit.

I'm happy if I have added something to our understanding of the universe.