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STEVEN HAWKING - COMMENTS

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Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), English physicist and cosmologist

Hawking is the author of several books and scientific papers, in the domain of theoretical physics and cosmology, which he dealt with and in those areas he gained world-wide reputation. In the book "Brief answers to the big questions", he answers several questions, of which I mention the following: Is there a God; How it all began; Is there any other intelligence in the universe; Can we predict the future; Will we survive on Earth; Shall we colonize the universe; Will artificial intelligence overcome us, and How will we shape the future?

People often ask big questions, such as: Where did we come from; How was the universe created and such? Even science cannot give exact answers to these and similar questions, and where there is no complete answer, it deals with assumptions, among which there is confusion. We know for sure that for now we have only one planet, our Earth, on which life exists.

IS THERE A GOD?

Many people believe that the entire universe was created by God. Normally, these are just imaginations, because there is no proof for it. Religion was the first to provide answers to these questions, as well as questions; Where did we come from? The answers of religion are mainly; God created everything. Science, today, gives much more convincing answers, although most of the world still leans towards religion. Scientific answers are increasingly being found that God is not the creator of the universe, and even that God does not exist at all.

Stephen Hawking, as a scientist, did not want to answer directly whether God exists or not, he tried to give explanations about the understanding of the universe. He searched for natural laws in his work.

Three hundred years BC Aristarchus was fascinated by the eclipse of the moon and was bold enough to ask; Is it the work of God's power? And, he started research, based on which he came to the conclusion that the lunar eclipse is the earth's shadow. He even drew the positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon. He thereby confirmed that the Earth is not the center of the universe either, but that the Earth rotates around the Sun. He proved that when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth, it is an eclipse of the Sun, because the Moon covers the Sun, and when the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon, it is the Earth's shadow on the Moon and it is an eclipse of the Moon. Aristarchus went further, he proved that the stars are actually other suns, just very far away. These are, therefore, the laws of nature, which are understandable to mankind and they are universal. And, if you believe in the laws of nature, then the existence of God can be interpreted in two ways, between science and religion. Many people imagine God as a man. However, Einstein and many other scientists consider God to be a law of nature. Hence, instead of the question about the existence of God, the more important question is; Who created and controls the universe? Stephen Hawking believes that the universe was created gradually, after the explosion of Big Ben. He wonders when space, matter and energy were created and from what? Einstein claimed that energy can be obtained from matter, and vice versa, according to his formula

E = m c2

According to Stephen Hawking, the secret lies in an unusual fact of the cosmos, the law of the existence of something he calls "negative energy". He explains it like this; Imagine digging a hole and using the excavated soil to make a hill, in the end you got both a hill and a hole at the same time. The hill is positive energy for you, and the hole is negative. He similarly explains Big Ben, when matter and energy were created, as positive, and empty space is negative energy. According to his interpretation, all cosmic bodies are positive energy, and interplanetary space is negative energy. This interpretation doesn't seem convincing to me and I don't accept the Big Ben theory, but that's just my opinion.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN?

Is the universe finite, or vast? Will it last indefinitely, or for a long time? Aristotle believed that the universe lasts forever, which I also agree with. If someone believes that the creation of the universe has its own beginning, then the question follows: And what happened before the beginning? The modern Edwin Hubbell’s telescope penetrates very far into the vastness of space, showing trillions and trillions of galaxies, of different sizes and shapes (elliptical, spiral, etc.), and each galaxy contains trillions and trillions of stars (suns), some of which also have their own planets. Hubbell confirmed that the universe is expanding, like an inflating balloon. Scientists Lifshitz and Khalatnikov concluded that the universe has no beginning, which is also acceptable to me, and which is contrary to Stephen Hawking's interpretation of Big Ben.

IS THERE ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE OF LIFE IN THE SPACE?

What are the chances of any other form of life in the universe? Some people ask the question: Can viruses also be considered a form of life, given that they are parasites and cannot live independently of a host. The question is also whether human life was created in the universe? An, if that is possible, then there would be the possibility of creating other forms of life. It is known that the existence of carbon molecules is necessary for the creation of organic compounds. There are interpretations according to which human life was brought from outer space. However, fossils have been found on Earth that are three and a half billion years old, which is only about 500 million years, after the cooling of the Earth, and that is the time since the origin of life on it is possible. Along with questions about the origin of man on Earth, there is certainly also a question about the origin of millions of different animals, including plants.

CAN WE PREDICT THE FUTURE?

In the distant earth's past, many different calamities occurred: floods, plagues, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the like. All this happened without notice. Primitive people attributed it to God, and some still believe it today, the French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace claimed that the future can be predicted, but only with certain limitations, with which various chaos can occur. But, finally, he did not explain his idea.

TIME TRAVEL

Einstein confirmed that time and light rays are bent, when passing by cosmic planets, due to the gravitational attractive forces of the planets. And, a straight line around the globe is a great circle. This is correct. To questions about time travel, he answered: If we had a ship in which we could travel faster than light, it would happen that we would return from the journey before we started on it.

WILL WE SURVIVE ON EARTH?

Our planet Earth is too small for all of us, as many of us will soon be. Earth's physical resources are being depleted too quickly, at an alarming rate. In addition, man has changed the climate, thereby increasing the temperature, polluting the atmosphere and waters, the ice polar caps have decreased, the areas of the rainforest are decreasing, the population is increasing excessively, more and more vicious diseases are occurring, wars are becoming more frequent, drinking water is decreasing and similarly. Many of these problems are technically solvable, but the governments of many countries are not taking the necessary steps to achieve these goals.

Every person wants to have a car and a better standard of living, but it may be too late for everything. We are facing a nuclear disaster and dealing with the necessary climate change. Scientists work and have the task of informing the world about the situation and the necessary steps to solve all this, but, unfortunately, the responsible politicians do not put it into action. Here, the newly elected US President Trump, on the second day after the election, announces that he will withdraw from the signed obligations, according to the Paris Agreement on the protection of the human environment. And what can the world expect if only one man can decide?

Scientists know the horrors of nuclear weapons and what other effects these weapons can have on the Earth's climate. Unfortunately, numerous governments are not taking the necessary steps to avoid this, either. There are politicians who even deny the influence of man on the climate. The Amazon rainforest is shrinking every day and further increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Humanity has an obligation to fulfill the terms of the Kyoto 1997 agreement, but there are disobedient political leaders, whom the world cannot do anything about, and the lives of all of us depend on them.

It has been scientifically proven that a huge asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, when it destroyed all the dinosaurs. Such a possibility is still stated as always possible. Nuclear war is still the greatest danger to Earthlings. The great powers have sufficient quantities of nuclear weapons to destroy absolutely everything that exists on the globe, and in addition to them, there is also the possibility of terrorist organizations obtaining nuclear weapons and abusing them.

This is why space is being intensively explored to see if a planet could be found on which human life could begin. The melting of the ice polar caps is already underway, and this releases additional amounts of carbon dioxide, which goes into our atmosphere and further pollutes it, which increases the Earth's temperature.

ARE WE GOING TO COLONIZE SPACE?

A lot of people ask: Why should we conquer the universe, spending huge sums of money, and they only brought a few stones from the moon. Isn't it better to prevent all disasters on Earth, which is the only planet we have? Moving to other planets would otherwise cost an awful lot. It would be necessary to create means of transport of high speed and enormous size, and the journeys would take too long, considering the huge distances. Scientists claim that space research encourages many young people in the direction of research, and that it leads to the improvement of all types of technique and technology, medicine and the like. Venus is closer to us, for example, than Mars, but it is too warm, due to its proximity to the Sun, so human life on Venus is impossible. Jupiter and Saturn are gaseous and therefore inaccessible. And Jupiter's moon Europa has solid ground and frozen water, and it is being investigated whether the moon Europa has liquid water in its interior. Titan, Saturn's moon, is larger than our moon and has a thick atmosphere. True, it is very cold, because it is far from the Sun. There are planets similar to Earth in space, but they are inaccessible due to huge distances, some are even about 30 light years away. The closest planet to Earth is Proxima Centauri, about four and a half light years away, but even that is an unreachable distance for humanity. With current technology, it would take 70,000 years to reach it, which is unimaginable.

WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OVERCOME US?

Intelligence is central to what it means to be human. Everything that human civilization has created so far is a product of human intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to make good decisions, plans and relationships. Artificial intelligence is machine learning. Visible results have already been achieved in this field, such as: speech, recognition, classification, automation, machine translation of language texts and answers to questions. Artificial intelligence is considered to be a very big science, and a very big profit is expected from it. All this, after laboratory development, goes to technology development departments. However, there is also a danger of misuse, primarily for military purposes. This is why the United Nations is trying to keep artificial intelligence under strict control. It is very important who are its controllers.

WHAT FUTURE WE ARE SHAPING?

More is being invested in science now than ever before, so even greater progress can be expected. We need faster solutions for global warming, for disease epidemics, for cleaning the oceans, for fresh water, for food and travel. Humanity prepares for mining on the Moon, and the question of life on Earth remains, as well as finding a place to live in space. It is very urgent to remove the pollution, to solve the increased temperatures, to prevent the melting of the ice polar caps, and in addition to everything, humanity must not go into the next millennium with the same increase in population. About the former existence of other worlds, humanity still knows nothing with certainty. Maybe they existed somewhere, and their self-destruction with nuclear energy took place. It is known that we now have enough nuclear energy to completely destroy everything in existence. That is why there is a danger that this could happen, and that is why there are efforts to use nuclear energy exclusively for peacetime purposes, and to eliminate all types of terrorism. Science is trying to eliminate terrorism with the help of artificial intelligence too.

Stephen Hawking

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