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2 of 2: Universe, Big Bang, Black Holes, and Stephen Hawking’s A BRIEFER HISTORY OF TIME (Bantam Dell, October 2005)," Dialogue by Franklin & Betty J. Parker.
Conclusion: 2 of 2: Universe, Big Bang, Black Holes, and Stephen Hawking’s A BRIEFER HISTORY OF TIME (Bantam Dell, October 2005)," Dialogue by Franklin & Betty J. Parker. bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty: Further evidence of the Big Bang came by accident in 1965. An interesting story: radio astronomers Arno Penzias (1933-) and Robert W. Wilson (1936-), working at Bell Laboratory, NJ, measuring radio waves, heard steady static hiss through their receiving antennas, similar to the hiss our TVs make when the screen is snowy and the expected image not received.
Frank: Hearing the same puzzling hiss day and night from all points of the sky beyond our Milky Way galaxy, Penzias and Wilson asked colleagues what this strange static might be.
Betty: A friend told Penzias that two physicists at nearby Princeton, NJ, were searching for the radiation George Gamow had predicted still exists from the Big Bang.
Frank: Penzias and Wilson realized that they had stumbled on the cosmic microwave background of the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. They won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.
Betty: Some Big Bang doubters questioned the smoothness of the hiss heard by Penzias and Wilson. They said that the hiss should have been as turbulently lumpy as the original gas gushing forth at the instant of creation.
Frank: It was MIT physics Prof. Alan H. Guth (b. 1947) who in 1979 thus explained the smooth hiss: a split instant after the Big Bang the resulting hot gases doubled and redoubled many times, creating a rapid mammoth "Inflation" of the Universe. This gigantic inflation smoothed out the early Universe’s turbulent wrinkles, much as a limp balloon’s wrinkles are smoothed out when the balloon is inflated.8
Betty: More confirmation of the Big Bang came just 15 years ago in 1992 when the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s orbital telescope (called COBE) Cosmic Background Explorer took photos measuring the spectrum of Big Bang remnants. In Sept. 2006 COBE’s leading scientists, John Mather (b. 1946) and George F. Smoot (b. 1945), won the Nobel Prize in Physics for documenting this Big Bang evidence.9 John Mather, incidentally, was our own Mark Heald’s physics student at Swarthmore College, Penn., Class of 1968.
Frank: Now back to Hawking. In 1965, when Penzias and Wilson heard the Big Bang hiss, Stephen Hawking at age 23 was a Cambridge University graduate student looking for a Ph.D. dissertation topic. He had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in Jan. 1962, given 2 years to live, was despondent, but then encouraged to persevere by Jane Wilde, his future wife, an Oxford graduate student. They married in July 1965.
Betty: Encouraged by Jane Wilde and his Cambridge doctoral advisor, Hawking felt reasonably well, wanted to marry, needed a job, knew that to get a university teaching job he needed a Ph.D., and to finish his Ph.D. he needed a dissertation topic.
Frank: Hawking’s dissertation topic idea on Black Holes came from a 1965 paper by Oxford professor of mathematics Roger Penrose (b. 1931-).
Betty: Penrose, a member of Hawking’s Cambridge dissertation committee, showed, mathematically, that Black Holes first erupted with other debris during the Big Bang.
Frank: Penrose also showed that, since the Big Bang, when very large stars burn most of their hydrogen, they collapse, are ultimately crushed into a singularity, a point of infinite density, becoming invisible Black Holes, sucking in with incredible force everything near them: dust, meteorites, planets, galaxies. Black Holes seem to act as giant vacuum cleaners.
Betty: First belief was that nothing escapes a Black Hole, not even light, until Hawking in 1973 showed mathematically that Black Holes do emit absorbed material in garbled form. This emission is called "Hawking Radiation." Hawking affirmed that Black Holes erupted from the Big Bang as part of the unseen dark matter of the Universe and that Black Holes are still being created from very large burned-out stars. Black Holes’ purpose, still unknown, may be to redirect matter back into the Universe.
Frank: Jane Wilde helped Hawking survive the loss of his neuromuscular control, helped him get his Ph.D. degree, helped in his academic career, and helped him rise to the top of his field as lecturer, author, and Black Hole explorer.
Betty: Jane Hawking’s memoir published in 1999 entitled Music to Move the Stars told of their three children and two grandchildren. She wrote that when Stephen was first in a wheelchair and could not dress himself, they had little outside help except from a few of his physics students in exchange for extra tutoring. They needed money for his care. She encouraged him to write his popular A Brief History of Time, 1988. The book’s success led to a film about the book; later a book was published about the film.
Frank: Their drift apart came with the success of his books, his rising fame, and his near pop-star status. Of their breakup she wrote: "Many factors—fame, fortune, diverging aspirations, priorities and outlook, as well as many people—[came] between [us]… I was cast aside in favour of someone who seemed to offer more constant and devoted nursing care and travel companionship…." 10
Betty: Jane, a devout Christian, was disturbed by Stephen’s agnosticism. They separated in 1991, divorced, both remarried, Stephen Hawking to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason in 1995. He is not an easy man to live with; his second marriage also ended in divorce after 11 years in 2006.11
Frank: Hawking often mentions God in his books and speeches. He says that he is not an atheist. He calls himself an agnostic and like Einstein he sees God in the orderliness of nature. Now, some short Hawking quotations.12
Betty: On God: To Einstein’s statement: "that God does not play dice," Hawking retorted, "God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."
Frank: On "divine inspiration:" "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."
Betty: On wars, viruses, floods, asteroids, other catastrophes: "I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space."
Frank: On his goal: "My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the Universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."
Betty: On humanity’s special place: "We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."
Frank: On nuclear weapons and climate change: "…we [scientists] foresee great peril if governments and society do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and prevent further climate change."13
Betty: On his disability: "It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life…. People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining." 14
Frank: Scientists say the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago wiped out everything that existed earlier and created our physics, space, time, gravity, and the Universe as scientists uncover its mysteries.
Betty: Some scientists speculate that the Big Bang formed more than one Universe, ours and others, each with a different physics and space-time. Hawking has a joke about co-existing multi-universes: if you happen to meet your double from another universe don’t shake hands—you might annihilate one another!
Frank: Co-existing multi-universes? Sound bizarre. So do the ideas of newer "String Theory" scientists. They believe that--besides electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and gluons—subatomic physics, called Quantum Physics, contains something even smaller--tiny flexible electro-magnetic vibrating strings; strings that loop in and out, connect and disconnect, moving through all matter. The still unknown function of vibrating strings may also be one of direction and control. But these newer theories await further evidence.
Betty: We humans live on a tiny, obscure planet Earth—one of 8 planets which--with Pluto, meteorites, asteroids, and debris orbit around our Sun. Our Sun, which is a second or third generation star, was formed from an outer arm of a swirling, whirling Milky Way Galaxy consisting of maybe billions of stars. And—keep in mind—that our Milky Way Galaxy is itself only one of unknown billions of other galaxies of stars.
Frank: Our Sun has been burning its hydrogen (92.1%) for 4.6 billion years. It has enough fuel for maybe another 5 billion years. As its life ends, its helium (7.8%) will fuse into heavier elements. Our Sun will swell, will swallow our Earth and our Moon, will likely collapse into a white dwarf and in time be absorbed by another galaxies. 15
Betty: Our Moon was formed, scientists think, about 4.5 billion years ago, when a large meteorite struck infant Earth with gigantic force, flinging up vaporized rock and debris, which in time formed a ball to orbit Earth as our Moon.
Frank: Our early Earth bubbled lifeless for a very long time, with gases hissing from cooling and slowly moving rock mantles. From these gases came carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor, but not yet oxygen essential for life.
Betty: As temperatures dropped and the Earth cooled, hot steam became heavy rains, primordial monsoons, filling ocean basins.
Frank: Some 3.8 billion years ago, after meteorite hits abated and oceans were formed, a threshold was reached, a miracle slowly occurred: chemical reaction produced molecules complex enough to reproduce themselves.
Betty: About 3.5 billion years ago single cell bacteria flourished on Earth, spread from cracks in ocean bottoms, from cracks on Earth’s rock mantle. Countless trillions of these microscopic bacteria transformed Earth. As plants they captured our Sun’s energy, to release oxygen as waste, and over millions of years turned Earth’s atmosphere into breathable air, allowing a diversity of plant and animal life to flourish.
Frank: Earth’s magnetic field and ozone layer shield us from most of our Sun’s solar winds and deadly rays. Earth's unique third position from the Sun limits catastrophic meteorite hits; permits water to exist in stages from ice to steam; shields life forms from the killing frost of planets beyond it: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (Pluto was reduced from planet status in 2006).
Betty: By Providence or Chance Earth is congenial for living things, congenial in Earth’s safe distance from the Sun, Earth’s modest size, the Earth’s gravitational spin for a 24 hour night and day cycle, the Moon’s control of ocean currents and tides, Earth’s seasonal changes, temperate climate, ozone layer, water, oxygen, and minerals needed for life.
Frank: Even the meteorite hit which killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was providential. For dinosaurs were Earth’s largest eaters of plants and animals. That meteorite hit which destroyed dinosaurs allowed mammals to flourish and humans to emerge.
Betty: Earth alone, so far as we know, has conditions and chemicals needed for human life. We humans are composed of water (75%), carbon (12.5%), oxygen (6.25%); nitrogen (2.5%); and calcium, iron, and other elements (3.75%).15
Frank: So far as we know, we humans on Earth are unique in the Universe, made of Big Bang star dust to which we must ultimately return.
Betty: We have maybe 4 or so billion years before our dying Sun makes Earth uninhabitable. We have much to do.
Frank: We must, very soon, stop wars, limit population growth, develop substitutes for fast depleting fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas), learn how to mine our oceans for food and medicines.
Betty: Conquer major killing diseases; make space travel safer, cheaper, and commercial so as to use raw materials from space.
Frank: We must seek possible intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe and become mutually supportive, for ultimately we will be forced to perpetuate human colonies on other younger, safer planets.
Betty: Frank, let’s end on: 1-the value of this book, 2-religion and the Big Bang, 3-our evaluation of Hawking, and 4-our final thoughts. Frank: Hawking's A Briefer History of Time is an eye opener, a humbling experience, making you want to read related works for deeper understanding. (See back tables for books, articles, internet sources we used on Hawking, astronomy, the Universe).
Betty: On religion: Genesis and the Big Bang have a lot in common if you lengthen a Biblical day to mean a long, long time. Religion and science are not in conflict if Divine Will, not Chance, is seen as the author of the Big Bang.
Frank: Also on religion: Most U.S. adults say they believe in a Supreme Being. Maybe half of U.S. adults attend church. The human search for meaning is universal and never ending.16
Betty: Scientific objectivity is as important as separation of church and state, freedom of thought, freedom of choice. It is an antidote to absolutists right or left, secular or religious.
Frank: Beware absolutists with political agendas. Yesterday’s anti-evolution Creationists (1970s), today’s anti-evolution Intelligent Design advocates want to rule over a dictatorial theocracy.
Betty: Beware the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells. Remember Lord Acton’s (1834-1902) quotation: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Frank: Hawking--and other science popularizers--Jules Verne (1828-1905), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), the late Carl Sagan (1934-96), others--make us think. They encourage young people to study and advance science.
Betty: Hawking is smart, even brilliant, though not yet up to Einstein's stature. He shows our need to educate children to understand science and the brightest of them to advance science.
Frank: Learning must be strengthened, lengthened to include peace, altruism, concern for others: and making Earth greener, cleaner, safer, more plentiful, more equitable.
Betty: I end with a quotation from a working man’s philosopher, Eric Hoffer (1902-83) who wrote: "the only legitimate end in [human] life is to finish God’s work, to bring to full growth the capacities and talents in all of us." 17
Frank: I end by saying that Hawking’s search to know the mind of God makes him more the Creator's helper than the Creator’s debunker. So ends our review and commentary. We learned a lot. We hope you have too. Thank you for being here. Jan Landis. Question-discussion time Footnotes 1 Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, A Briefer History of Time." N.Y.: Bantam Book, Oct. 2005, p. 142. 2 http://www.hawking.org.uk/ 3 Maugh, Thomas H., II. "Dig Provides clues about builders of Stonehenge." Tennessean (Nashville), Jan. 31, 2007, p. 2A. 4 Clark, Ronald W. Einstein: The Life and Times. NY: World Publishing, 1965, p. 208-209. 5http://www.time.com/time/searchresults?D=Science+%26+Technology&sid=10FF459DAD68&relsort=yes&Ntt=Science+%26+Technology&Ntk=WithBodyDate&internalid=endeca_dimension&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&N=46+4294935253&Nty=1 6SUNY physicist Michio Kaku, in: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/expe-text.html 7http://www.time.com/time/time/scientist/profile/hubble.html 8 http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/new/bigbang.htm 9 Stephen Hawking, A Briefer…, pp. 60-61. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992, pp. 20-21. Gerald E. Tauber, Relativitity: From Einstein to Black Holes. N.Y.: Franklin Watts, 1988, p. 92. 10http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23371424-details/Stephen+Hawking+to+divorce+second+wife/article.do 11(Hawking Quote, Jan. 18, 2007: http://www.dailyindia.com/show/104689.php/Hawking-warns-world-to-wake-up-to-impending-Armageddon 12(Hawking quotes): http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/stephen_hawking/ http://www.quotedb.com/authors/stephen-hawking http://www.creativequotations.com/one/542.htm 13 http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006600196,00.html 14 http://www.solarviews.com/eng/sun.htm 15 Weinstein, Albert, and Steven E. Smith. Cosmology Simplified: Highlights of the Evolution of the Universe. Y2K Edition. Part 2, "Evolution of Life," Chap. 8, Introduction, in: http://hometown.aol.com/aweinst819/cosmo2k.htm 16 ttp://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=707 17 Eric Hoffer, Ordeal of Change. NY: Harper & Row, 1963. google.com on Stephen Hawking lists 140,000 entries on 10 pages: http://www.google.com/custom?PHPSESS1D=7d66ba2487943cb41cc60fe5bad29ae6&q=Stephen+Hawking&client=pub-0968665462800740&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23000000%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BLH%3A35%3BLW%3A150%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianster.com%2Fctan%2Fihtml%2Fimages%2Fchristiansterlogo.jpg%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianster.com%3BFORID%3A1%3B&hl=en Other Books Consulted Aczel, Amir D. God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding University. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999. Asimov, Isaac. Mysteries of Deep Space: Black Holes, Pulsars, and Quasars. Milwaukee: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 1994. Ferguson, Kitty. Stephen Hawking: Quest for A Theory of Everything. N.Y.: Bantam, 1992. Ferris, Timothy. The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report. N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest fir the Ultimate Theory. N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 2003. Hawking, Stephen. The Universe in a Nutshell. N.Y.: Bantam Books, Nov. 2001. McEvoy, J. P. & Oscar Zarate. Introducing Stephen Hawking. Icon/Totem, 1995. Miller, Ron & William K. Hartmann. The Grand Tour: A Traveler’s Guide to the Solar System. N.Y.: Workman Publishing, Rev. 2005. Morris, Richard. The Fate of the Universe. N.Y.: Playboy Press, 1982. Strathern, Paul. Hawking and Black Holes. N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday [Big Idea Series], 1998. White, Michael & John Gribbin. Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science. Joseph Henry Press, 1992. Dutton, 1992. Plume, 1993. END. Bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty: Further evidence of the Big Bang came by accident in 1965. An interesting story: radio astronomers Arno Penzias (1933-) and Robert W. Wilson (1936-), working at Bell Laboratory, NJ, measuring radio waves, heard steady static hiss through their receiving antennas, similar to the hiss our TVs make when the screen is snowy and the expected image not received.
Frank: Hearing the same puzzling hiss day and night from all points of the sky beyond our Milky Way galaxy, Penzias and Wilson asked colleagues what this strange static might be.
Betty: A friend told Penzias that two physicists at nearby Princeton, NJ, were searching for the radiation George Gamow had predicted still exists from the Big Bang.
Frank: Penzias and Wilson realized that they had stumbled on the cosmic microwave background of the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. They won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.
Betty: Some Big Bang doubters questioned the smoothness of the hiss heard by Penzias and Wilson. They said that the hiss should have been as turbulently lumpy as the original gas gushing forth at the instant of creation.
Frank: It was MIT physics Prof. Alan H. Guth (b. 1947) who in 1979 thus explained the smooth hiss: a split instant after the Big Bang the resulting hot gases doubled and redoubled many times, creating a rapid mammoth "Inflation" of the Universe. This gigantic inflation smoothed out the early Universe’s turbulent wrinkles, much as a limp balloon’s wrinkles are smoothed out when the balloon is inflated.8
Betty: More confirmation of the Big Bang came just 15 years ago in 1992 when the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s orbital telescope (called COBE) Cosmic Background Explorer took photos measuring the spectrum of Big Bang remnants. In Sept. 2006 COBE’s leading scientists, John Mather (b. 1946) and George F. Smoot (b. 1945), won the Nobel Prize in Physics for documenting this Big Bang evidence.9 John Mather, incidentally, was our own Mark Heald’s physics student at Swarthmore College, Penn., Class of 1968.
Frank: Now back to Hawking. In 1965, when Penzias and Wilson heard the Big Bang hiss, Stephen Hawking at age 23 was a Cambridge University graduate student looking for a Ph.D. dissertation topic. He had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in Jan. 1962, given 2 years to live, was despondent, but then encouraged to persevere by Jane Wilde, his future wife, an Oxford graduate student. They married in July 1965.
Betty: Encouraged by Jane Wilde and his Cambridge doctoral advisor, Hawking felt reasonably well, wanted to marry, needed a job, knew that to get a university teaching job he needed a Ph.D., and to finish his Ph.D. he needed a dissertation topic.
Frank: Hawking’s dissertation topic idea on Black Holes came from a 1965 paper by Oxford professor of mathematics Roger Penrose (b. 1931-).
Betty: Penrose, a member of Hawking’s Cambridge dissertation committee, showed, mathematically, that Black Holes first erupted with other debris during the Big Bang.
Frank: Penrose also showed that, since the Big Bang, when very large stars burn most of their hydrogen, they collapse, are ultimately crushed into a singularity, a point of infinite density, becoming invisible Black Holes, sucking in with incredible force everything near them: dust, meteorites, planets, galaxies. Black Holes seem to act as giant vacuum cleaners.
Betty: First belief was that nothing escapes a Black Hole, not even light, until Hawking in 1973 showed mathematically that Black Holes do emit absorbed material in garbled form. This emission is called "Hawking Radiation." Hawking affirmed that Black Holes erupted from the Big Bang as part of the unseen dark matter of the Universe and that Black Holes are still being created from very large burned-out stars. Black Holes’ purpose, still unknown, may be to redirect matter back into the Universe.
Frank: Jane Wilde helped Hawking survive the loss of his neuromuscular control, helped him get his Ph.D. degree, helped in his academic career, and helped him rise to the top of his field as lecturer, author, and Black Hole explorer.
Betty: Jane Hawking’s memoir published in 1999 entitled Music to Move the Stars told of their three children and two grandchildren. She wrote that when Stephen was first in a wheelchair and could not dress himself, they had little outside help except from a few of his physics students in exchange for extra tutoring. They needed money for his care. She encouraged him to write his popular A Brief History of Time, 1988. The book’s success led to a film about the book; later a book was published about the film.
Frank: Their drift apart came with the success of his books, his rising fame, and his near pop-star status. Of their breakup she wrote: "Many factors—fame, fortune, diverging aspirations, priorities and outlook, as well as many people—[came] between [us]… I was cast aside in favour of someone who seemed to offer more constant and devoted nursing care and travel companionship…." 10
Betty: Jane, a devout Christian, was disturbed by Stephen’s agnosticism. They separated in 1991, divorced, both remarried, Stephen Hawking to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason in 1995. He is not an easy man to live with; his second marriage also ended in divorce after 11 years in 2006.11
Frank: Hawking often mentions God in his books and speeches. He says that he is not an atheist. He calls himself an agnostic and like Einstein he sees God in the orderliness of nature. Now, some short Hawking quotations.12
Betty: On God: To Einstein’s statement: "that God does not play dice," Hawking retorted, "God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."
Frank: On "divine inspiration:" "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."
Betty: On wars, viruses, floods, asteroids, other catastrophes: "I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space."
Frank: On his goal: "My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the Universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."
Betty: On humanity’s special place: "We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."
Frank: On nuclear weapons and climate change: "…we [scientists] foresee great peril if governments and society do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and prevent further climate change."13
Betty: On his disability: "It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life…. People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining." 14
Frank: Scientists say the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago wiped out everything that existed earlier and created our physics, space, time, gravity, and the Universe as scientists uncover its mysteries.
Betty: Some scientists speculate that the Big Bang formed more than one Universe, ours and others, each with a different physics and space-time. Hawking has a joke about co-existing multi-universes: if you happen to meet your double from another universe don’t shake hands—you might annihilate one another!
Frank: Co-existing multi-universes? Sound bizarre. So do the ideas of newer "String Theory" scientists. They believe that--besides electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and gluons—subatomic physics, called Quantum Physics, contains something even smaller--tiny flexible electro-magnetic vibrating strings; strings that loop in and out, connect and disconnect, moving through all matter. The still unknown function of vibrating strings may also be one of direction and control. But these newer theories await further evidence.
Betty: We humans live on a tiny, obscure planet Earth—one of 8 planets which--with Pluto, meteorites, asteroids, and debris orbit around our Sun. Our Sun, which is a second or third generation star, was formed from an outer arm of a swirling, whirling Milky Way Galaxy consisting of maybe billions of stars. And—keep in mind—that our Milky Way Galaxy is itself only one of unknown billions of other galaxies of stars.
Frank: Our Sun has been burning its hydrogen (92.1%) for 4.6 billion years. It has enough fuel for maybe another 5 billion years. As its life ends, its helium (7.8%) will fuse into heavier elements. Our Sun will swell, will swallow our Earth and our Moon, will likely collapse into a white dwarf and in time be absorbed by another galaxies. 15
Betty: Our Moon was formed, scientists think, about 4.5 billion years ago, when a large meteorite struck infant Earth with gigantic force, flinging up vaporized rock and debris, which in time formed a ball to orbit Earth as our Moon.
Frank: Our early Earth bubbled lifeless for a very long time, with gases hissing from cooling and slowly moving rock mantles. From these gases came carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor, but not yet oxygen essential for life.
Betty: As temperatures dropped and the Earth cooled, hot steam became heavy rains, primordial monsoons, filling ocean basins.
Frank: Some 3.8 billion years ago, after meteorite hits abated and oceans were formed, a threshold was reached, a miracle slowly occurred: chemical reaction produced molecules complex enough to reproduce themselves.
Betty: About 3.5 billion years ago single cell bacteria flourished on Earth, spread from cracks in ocean bottoms, from cracks on Earth’s rock mantle. Countless trillions of these microscopic bacteria transformed Earth. As plants they captured our Sun’s energy, to release oxygen as waste, and over millions of years turned Earth’s atmosphere into breathable air, allowing a diversity of plant and animal life to flourish.
Frank: Earth’s magnetic field and ozone layer shield us from most of our Sun’s solar winds and deadly rays. Earth's unique third position from the Sun limits catastrophic meteorite hits; permits water to exist in stages from ice to steam; shields life forms from the killing frost of planets beyond it: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (Pluto was reduced from planet status in 2006).
Betty: By Providence or Chance Earth is congenial for living things, congenial in Earth’s safe distance from the Sun, Earth’s modest size, the Earth’s gravitational spin for a 24 hour night and day cycle, the Moon’s control of ocean currents and tides, Earth’s seasonal changes, temperate climate, ozone layer, water, oxygen, and minerals needed for life.
Frank: Even the meteorite hit which killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was providential. For dinosaurs were Earth’s largest eaters of plants and animals. That meteorite hit which destroyed dinosaurs allowed mammals to flourish and humans to emerge.
Betty: Earth alone, so far as we know, has conditions and chemicals needed for human life. We humans are composed of water (75%), carbon (12.5%), oxygen (6.25%); nitrogen (2.5%); and calcium, iron, and other elements (3.75%).15
Frank: So far as we know, we humans on Earth are unique in the Universe, made of Big Bang star dust to which we must ultimately return.
Betty: We have maybe 4 or so billion years before our dying Sun makes Earth uninhabitable. We have much to do.
Frank: We must, very soon, stop wars, limit population growth, develop substitutes for fast depleting fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas), learn how to mine our oceans for food and medicines.
Betty: Conquer major killing diseases; make space travel safer, cheaper, and commercial so as to use raw materials from space.
Frank: We must seek possible intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe and become mutually supportive, for ultimately we will be forced to perpetuate human colonies on other younger, safer planets.
Betty: Frank, let’s end on: 1-the value of this book, 2-religion and the Big Bang, 3-our evaluation of Hawking, and 4-our final thoughts. Frank: Hawking's A Briefer History of Time is an eye opener, a humbling experience, making you want to read related works for deeper understanding. (See back tables for books, articles, internet sources we used on Hawking, astronomy, the Universe).
Betty: On religion: Genesis and the Big Bang have a lot in common if you lengthen a Biblical day to mean a long, long time. Religion and science are not in conflict if Divine Will, not Chance, is seen as the author of the Big Bang.
Frank: Also on religion: Most U.S. adults say they believe in a Supreme Being. Maybe half of U.S. adults attend church. The human search for meaning is universal and never ending.16
Betty: Scientific objectivity is as important as separation of church and state, freedom of thought, freedom of choice. It is an antidote to absolutists right or left, secular or religious.
Frank: Beware absolutists with political agendas. Yesterday’s anti-evolution Creationists (1970s), today’s anti-evolution Intelligent Design advocates want to rule over a dictatorial theocracy.
Betty: Beware the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells. Remember Lord Acton’s (1834-1902) quotation: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Frank: Hawking--and other science popularizers--Jules Verne (1828-1905), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), the late Carl Sagan (1934-96), others--make us think. They encourage young people to study and advance science.
Betty: Hawking is smart, even brilliant, though not yet up to Einstein's stature. He shows our need to educate children to understand science and the brightest of them to advance science.
Frank: Learning must be strengthened, lengthened to include peace, altruism, concern for others: and making Earth greener, cleaner, safer, more plentiful, more equitable.
Betty: I end with a quotation from a working man’s philosopher, Eric Hoffer (1902-83) who wrote: "the only legitimate end in [human] life is to finish God’s work, to bring to full growth the capacities and talents in all of us." 17
Frank: I end by saying that Hawking’s search to know the mind of God makes him more the Creator's helper than the Creator’s debunker. So ends our review and commentary. We learned a lot. We hope you have too. Thank you for being here. Jan Landis. Question-discussion time Footnotes 1 Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, A Briefer History of Time." N.Y.: Bantam Book, Oct. 2005, p. 142. 2 http://www.hawking.org.uk/ 3 Maugh, Thomas H., II. "Dig Provides clues about builders of Stonehenge." Tennessean (Nashville), Jan. 31, 2007, p. 2A. 4 Clark, Ronald W. Einstein: The Life and Times. NY: World Publishing, 1965, p. 208-209. 5http://www.time.com/time/searchresults?D=Science+%26+Technology&sid=10FF459DAD68&relsort=yes&Ntt=Science+%26+Technology&Ntk=WithBodyDate&internalid=endeca_dimension&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&N=46+4294935253&Nty=1 6SUNY physicist Michio Kaku, in: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/expe-text.html 7http://www.time.com/time/time/scientist/profile/hubble.html 8 http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/new/bigbang.htm 9 Stephen Hawking, A Briefer…, pp. 60-61. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992, pp. 20-21. Gerald E. Tauber, Relativitity: From Einstein to Black Holes. N.Y.: Franklin Watts, 1988, p. 92. 10http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23371424-details/Stephen+Hawking+to+divorce+second+wife/article.do 11(Hawking Quote, Jan. 18, 2007: http://www.dailyindia.com/show/104689.php/Hawking-warns-world-to-wake-up-to-impending-Armageddon 12(Hawking quotes): http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/stephen_hawking/ http://www.quotedb.com/authors/stephen-hawking http://www.creativequotations.com/one/542.htm 13 http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006600196,00.html 14 http://www.solarviews.com/eng/sun.htm 15 Weinstein, Albert, and Steven E. Smith. Cosmology Simplified: Highlights of the Evolution of the Universe. Y2K Edition. Part 2, "Evolution of Life," Chap. 8, Introduction, in: http://hometown.aol.com/aweinst819/cosmo2k.htm 16 ttp://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=707 17 Eric Hoffer, Ordeal of Change. NY: Harper & Row, 1963. google.com on Stephen Hawking lists 140,000 entries on 10 pages: http://www.google.com/custom?PHPSESS1D=7d66ba2487943cb41cc60fe5bad29ae6&q=Stephen+Hawking&client=pub-0968665462800740&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23000000%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BLH%3A35%3BLW%3A150%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianster.com%2Fctan%2Fihtml%2Fimages%2Fchristiansterlogo.jpg%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.christianster.com%3BFORID%3A1%3B&hl=en Other Books Consulted Aczel, Amir D. God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding University. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999. Asimov, Isaac. Mysteries of Deep Space: Black Holes, Pulsars, and Quasars. Milwaukee: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 1994. Ferguson, Kitty. Stephen Hawking: Quest for A Theory of Everything. N.Y.: Bantam, 1992. Ferris, Timothy. The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report. N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest fir the Ultimate Theory. N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 2003. Hawking, Stephen. The Universe in a Nutshell. N.Y.: Bantam Books, Nov. 2001. McEvoy, J. P. & Oscar Zarate. Introducing Stephen Hawking. Icon/Totem, 1995. Miller, Ron & William K. Hartmann. The Grand Tour: A Traveler’s Guide to the Solar System. N.Y.: Workman Publishing, Rev. 2005. Morris, Richard. The Fate of the Universe. N.Y.: Playboy Press, 1982. Strathern, Paul. Hawking and Black Holes. N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday [Big Idea Series], 1998. White, Michael & John Gribbin. Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science. Joseph Henry Press, 1992. Dutton, 1992. Plume, 1993. END. Bfparker@frontiernet.net
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