Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking

Even if you don't follow the developing theories in physics, you have probably heard of the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. Most known as a brilliant mind in a paralyzed body, he's prided himself on making his complex physical concepts accessible to the public and writing the bestseller, "A Brief History of Time."

And if you are a fan of Conan O'Brien, "The Simpsons" or "Star Trek," you might have seen him brandishing his cool wit during guest appearances on those shows.

Even if you are familiar with his academic work, however, there are many interesting facts you might not know about Hawking, stretching from his time at school and gradual development of disability to his opinions on the future of the human race.

Many find it surprising, for instance, that, despite his influential body of work, Hawking hasn't yet been awarded the Nobel Prize. We'll talk about some of the remarkable distinctions he has received, however.

Another interesting fact: Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942, which just happened to be the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death.

But this has just been the warm-up. Next, we'll delve into some fascinating and unexpected facts about Hawking, including some things about his profoundly inspirational story

These days, we know Hawking as a brilliant mind whose theories are difficult for a nonscientific mind to grasp. This is why it may come as a shock to learn that Hawking was a slacker when it came to his school studies.

In fact, when he was 9 years old, his grades ranked among the worst in his class [source: Larsen]. With a little more effort, he brought those grades up to about average, but not much better.

Nevertheless, from an early age he was interested in how stuff worked. He has talked about how he was known to disassemble clocks and radios. However, he admits he wasn't very good at putting them back together so they could work again.

Despite his poor grades, both his teachers and his peers seemed to understand that they had a future genius among them, evidenced by the fact that his nickname was "Einstein."

The problem with his mediocre grades was that his father wanted to send him to Oxford, but didn't have the money without a scholarship. Luckily, when it came time for the scholarship exams, he aced them, getting an almost perfect score on the physics exam.

Stephen Hawking took a liking to mathematics from an early age, and he would have liked to have majored in it. His father, Frank, however, had different ideas. He hoped Stephen would instead study medicine.

But, for all his interest in science, Stephen didn't care for biology. He has said that he found it to be "too inexact, too descriptive" [source: Larsen]. He would have rather devoted his mind to more precise, well-defined concepts.

One problem, however, was that Oxford didn't have mathematics as a major. The compromise was that Stephen would attend Oxford and major in physics.



In fact, even within physics, he focused on the bigger questions. When faced with deciding between the two tracks of particle physics, which studies the behavior of subatomic particles, versus cosmology, which studies the large universe as a whole, he chose the latter. He chose cosmology despite the fact that, at that time, he says, it was "hardly recognised as a legitimate field" [source: Hawking].

In explaining why, he said that particle physics "seemed like botany. There were all these particles, but no theory" [source: Larsen].

Biographer Kristine Larsen writes about how Hawking faced isolation and unhappiness during his first year or so at Oxford. The thing that seems to have drawn him out of this funk was joining the rowing team.

Even before being diagnosed with the illness that would eventually render him almost completely paralyzed, Hawking didn't have what one would call a large or athletic build. However, row teams recruited smaller men like Hawking to be coxswains -- a position that does not row, but rather controls steering and stroke rate.

Because rowing was so important and competitive at Oxford, Hawking's role on the team made him very popular. Remembering Hawking from those days, one fellow boatsman called him "the adventurous type" [source: Larsen].

But as much as the rowing team helped his popularity, it hurt his study habits. Occupied with rowing practice for six afternoons per week, Hawking started "to cut serious corners" and used "creative analysis to create lab reports" [source: Larsen].

As a graduate student, Hawking gradually started showing symptoms of tripping and general clumsiness. His family became concerned when he was home during his Christmas break from school and they insisted he see a doctor.

Before seeing a specialist, however, he attended a New Year's Party where he met his future wife, Jane Wilde. She remembers being attracted to his "his sense of humor and his independent personality."

He turned 21 a week later, and shortly after he entered the hospital for two weeks of tests to discover what was wrong with him. He was then diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, which is a neurological disease that causes patients to lose control of their voluntary muscles. He was told he'd probably only have a few years to live.

Hawking remembers being shocked and wondering why this happened to him. However, seeing a boy dying of leukemia in the hospital made him realize that there were others worse off than him.

Hawking became more optimistic and started dating Jane. They were soon engaged, and he cites their engagement as giving him "something to live for" [source: Larsen].

One of Hawking's major achievements (which he shares with Jim Hartle) was to come up with the theory that the universe has no boundaries in 1983.

In 1983, the effort to understand the nature and shape of the universe, Hawking and Hartle combined the concepts of quantum mechanics (the study of the behavior of microscopic particles) with general relativity (Einstein's theories about gravity and how mass curves space) to show that the universe is a contained entity and yet has no boundaries.

To conceptualize this, he tells people to think of the universe like the surface of the Earth. As a sphere, you can go in any direction on the surface of the Earth and never reach a corner, an edge or any boundary where the Earth can be said to "end." However, one major difference is that the surface of the Earth is two-dimensional (even though the Earth itself is three-dimensional, the surface is only two-dimensional), while the universe is four-dimensional.

Hawking explains that spacetime (see the sidebar on this page) is like the lines of latitude on the globe. Starting at the North Pole (the beginning of the universe) and going south, the circumferences get bigger until beyond the equator, when they would get smaller. This means that the universe is finite in spacetime and will re-collapse eventually -- however, not for at least 20 billion years [source: Hawking]. Does this mean that time itself would go backwards? Hawking grappled with this question, but decided no, because there is no reason to believe that the universe's trend from ordered energy into disordered energy will reverse [source: Hawking].

In 2004, the genius Hawking admitted he had been wrong and conceded a bet he made in 1997 with a fellow scientist about black holes. To understand the bet, let's backpedal a little to understand what black holes are in the first place.

Stars are gigantic -- they have so much mass that their gravity is always incredibly strong. This is fine, as long as the star continues to burn its nuclear fuel, exerting this energy outward, thus counteracting gravity. However, once a massive enough star "dies" or burns out, gravity becomes the stronger force, and causes that big star to collapse on itself. This creates what scientists call a black hole.

The gravity is so powerful in this collapse that not even light can escape. However, Hawking proposed in 1975 that black holes are not really black. Rather, they radiate energy.

But, he said at the time, information is lost in the black hole that eventually evaporates. The problem was that this idea that information is lost conflicted with the rules of quantum mechanics, creating what Hawking called an "information paradox."

American theoretical physicist John Preskill disagreed with this conclusion that information is lost in black hole. In 1997, he made a bet with Hawking saying that information can escape from them, thus not breaking the laws of quantum mechanics.

Hawking is such a good sport that he can admit when he's wrong -- which he did in 2004. While giving a lecture at a scientific conference, he said that because black holes have more than one "topology," and when one measures all the information released from all topologies, information isn't lost [source: Rodgers].

In his long career in physics, Hawking has racked up an incredibly impressive array of awards and distinctions. We don't hope to be exhaustive in this small space, but we'll go over some of the highlights.

In 1974, he was inducted into the Royal Society (the royal academy of science in the U.K., dating back to 1660), and a year later, Pope Paul VI awarded him and Roger Penrose the Pius XI Gold Medal for Science. He also went on to receive the Albert Einstein Award and Hughes Medal from the Royal Society.

Hawking had so well established himself in the academic world by 1979 that he attained the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in England -- a position he would keep for the next 30 years. The chair dates all the way back to 1663, and the second person to hold it was none other than Sir Isaac Newton.

In the 1980s, he was invested as a Commander of the British Empire, which is a rank in the U.K. just under being knighted. He also became a Companion of Honour, which is another distinction given in recognition of national service. There can no more than 65 members of the order at one time.

In 2009, Hawking was awarded the United States' highest civilian honor of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

All the while, Hawking attained at least 12 honorary degrees. However, the Nobel Prize continues to elude him.

One of the most unexpected facets of Stephen Hawking's resume is that of being a children's book author. In 2007, Stephen and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, collaborated to write "George's Secret Key to the Universe."

The book is a fiction story about a young boy, George, who rebels against his parents' aversion to technology. He begins to befriend neighbors, one of whom is a physicist with a computer. This turns out to be most powerful computer in the world, which offers portals to see and enter into outer space.

Of course, much of the book is meant to explain heavy scientific concepts, such as black holes and the origin of life, to children. In this context, it is very fitting that Hawking, who has always sought to make his work more accessible, would want to write such a book.

The book was written to be the first of a trilogy that would continue George's adventures. The next one in the series came out in 2009 and is called "George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt."

Considering all of Hawking's work in cosmology, people are understandably interested in his opinions on the possibility of alien life. During NASA's 50th anniversary celebration in 2008, Hawking was invited to speak, and he mentioned his thoughts on the subject.

He expressed that, given the vastness of the universe, there very well could be primitive alien life out there, and it is possible, other intelligent life.

"Primitive life is very common," Hawking said, "and intelligent life is very rare." Of course, he threw in his characteristically sharp humor to say, "Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth" [source: Hawking]. He went on the say that humans should be wary of exposure to aliens because alien life will probably not be DNA-based, and we would not have resistance to diseases.

Hawking also did an episode on the possibility of aliens for "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" on the Discovery Channel (the parent company of HowStuffWorks.com).

In 2007, when Stephen Hawking was 65 years old, he got to take the ride of a lifetime. He was able to experience zero-gravity and float out of his wheelchair thanks to Zero Gravity Corp. The service involves an airplane ride in which sharp ascent and descent allows passengers to experience weightlessness in flight for several rounds, each about 25-seconds long.

Hawking, free from his wheelchair for the first time in four decades, was even able to perform gymnastic flips. Hawking also has booked a seat with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic to ride on a sub-orbital flight.

But perhaps most interesting about this is not what he was able to do, but why he did it. When asked about why he wanted to do this, he of course cited his desire to go into space. But his reasons for going and his overall support for space travel went deeper than that.

Due to the possibility of global warming or nuclear war, Hawking has said that the future of the human race, if it is going to have a long one, will be in outer space [source: Boyle]. He supports private space exploration in hopes that space tourism will become affordable for the public. He hopes that we can travel to other planets to use their resources to survive [source: Daily Mail].

விஷம் வைத்து கொலை?: யாசர் அராபத் உடலை தோண்டும் பணி ரமலாவில் துவக்கம்

பாலஸ்தீன விடுதலை இயக்கத்த தலைவர் யாசர் அராபத் மரணத்தில் சந்தேகம் எழுந்துள்ளதையடுத்து அவரது உடலைத் தோண்டி எடுக்கும் பணி துவங்கியுள்ளது. பாலஸ்தீன விடுதலை இயக்கத்த தலைவர் யாசர் அராபத் கடந்த 2004ம் ஆண்டு நவம்பர் மாதம் 11ம் தேதி பாரீஸில் உள்ள பிரான்ஸ் ராணுவ மருத்துவமனையில் தனது 75வது வயதில் இறந்தார். அவரது இறப்புக்கு இது தான் காரணம் என்று பிரான்ஸ் மருத்துவர்களால் தெரிவிக்க முடியவில்லை. ஆனால் அவர் இஸ்ரேலியர்களால் விஷம் வைத்துக் கொல்லப்பட்டார் என்றே பல பாலஸ்தீனியர்கள் நம்பினர். இந்நிலையில் அவரது மனைவி சுஹாவிடம் இருந்து அராபத்தின் உயிரியல் மாதிரிகளைப் பெற்று ஆய்வு செய்த சுவிட்சர்லாந்து நாட்டு ஆய்வகம் தனது அறிக்கையை வெளியிட்டு அனைவரையும் அதிர்ச்சிக்குள்ளாக்கியது. அதாவது அராபத் இறக்கும்போது அவரது உடலில் கொடிய விஷமான பொலோனியம் இருந்துள்ளது என்று அந்த அறிக்கையில் குறிப்பிடப்பட்டிருந்தது. இதையடுத்து அராபத்தின் மனைவி சுஹா கொடுத்த புகாரின்பேரில் பிரான்ஸ் அதிகாரிகள் அராபத் மரணம் குறித்த விசாரணையை கடந்த ஆகஸ்ட் மாதம் துவங்கினர். விசாரணையை மேற்கொள்ள ஏதுவாக பாலஸ்தீனத்தின் மேற்கு கரையில் உள்ள ரமலாவில் அடக்கம் செய்யப்பட்ட அராபத்தின் உடல் தோண்டி எடுக்கப்படுகிறது. அவரது கல்லறையை உடைத்து உடலைத் தோண்டி எடுக்கும் பணி நேற்று துவங்கியது. இந்த பணி முடிய 15 நாட்கள் ஆகும் என்று கூறப்படுகிறது. இந்த விசாரணை தொடர்பாக வரும் 26ம் தேதி பிரான்ஸ் மற்றும் சுவிட்சர்லாந்து நிபுணர்கள் பாலஸ்தீனம் வருகிறார்கள் என்று அந்நாட்டு அதிகாரிகள் தெரிவித்தனர்.
நன்றி: tamil.oneindia.in

ராம் ஜெத்மலானியின் முகத்தில் துப்பினால் ரூ.5 லட்சம் சன்மானம்!

மத்தியப் பிரதேச மாநிலத்தைச் சேர்ந்த உள்ளூர் சன்னியாசி ஒருவர், பா.ஜ.க. எம்.பி.யும் புகழ்பெற்ற வழக்குரைஞருமான ராம் ஜெத்மலானியின் முகத்தில் காறி உமிழ்பவருக்கு ரூ. 5 லட்சம் சன்மானம் வழங்குவேன் என்று அதிரடியாக அறிவித்து பரபரப்பை ஏற்படுத்தியுள்ளார். அண்மையில், ராம பிரான் நல்லவர்தான், ஆனால் அவர் ஒரு நல்ல கணவர் இல்லை என்ற கருத்துப் பட ராம் ஜெத்மலானி பேசியிருந்தார். அவரின் இந்தக் கருத்து பெரும் சர்ச்சையைக் கிளப்பிய நிலையில், மத்தியப் பிரதேச மாநிலம் ஜபல்பூர் கீதாதம் ஆஷ்ரமத்தில் பேசிய மகாமண்டலேஸ்வர் சுவாமி ஷ்யாம்தாஸ் மகாராஜ் இந்த சன்மானத்தை அறிவித்தார்.

ராம் ஜெத்மலானி இவ்வாறு பேசியதில் இருந்து என் தொலைபேசிக்கு அழைப்புக்கு மேல் அழைப்பு வந்து கொண்டேயிருந்தது. சுவாமி இவ்வாறு ராம் ஜேத்மலானி பேசியிருக்கிறாரே... ஏன் யாரும் அவரை கண்டிக்கவில்லை என்று கேட்டவண்ணம் இருந்தனர். என் ஆஷ்ரம் பக்தர்களும் தொண்டர்களும் இவ்வாறு கேட்டுக் கொண்டே இருந்தனர். எனவேதான் இத்தகைய அறிவிப்பை நான் வெளியிடுகிறேன். இது அவருக்குக் கொடுக்கப்படும் அச்சுறுத்தல் அல்ல... எங்கள் மன உணர்வுகளை வெளிப்படுத்தும் ஒரு ஜனநாயகச் செயல் அவ்வளவுதான். என் அறிவிப்பில் எந்த ஹிம்சையும் இல்லை. ஜனநாயக உணர்வை வெளிப்படுத்தும் அஹிம்சையான அறிவிப்பைத்தான் நான் வெளியிட்டுள்ளேன் என்று அவர் விளக்கம் அளித்தார். இருப்பினும், சன்னியாசி ஒருவரின் இந்தக் கருத்து பெரும் சர்ச்சையை ஏற்படுத்தும் என்றே கருதப்படுகிறது.
நன்றி: தினமணி

Power Reading and Writing skills.

There is an over abundance of information in our age currently… It’s more a matter about
filtering and selecting relevant information… to keep up with current
Entering the communications age.

Top of people in any given field can read / write / and speak effectively.

Power READING:

Combinations of speed-reading and retention of the main ideas.
Your eye takes in information faster than your ear.
You don’t have to see every word on the page. If you only see the key words you would
improve your way the eye works. It is a series of skips. Often tempted to back skip, which cuts your
reading down to a third.
Choose a book you want to read.
1 Read two or three words in from the beginning of the line
2 Finish reading two or three words
3 Put your hand the page and sweep down the page as if you were brushing breadcrumbs
from under the printed material.
4 Discipline yourself to do this for 20 minutes at a time.

Why it works:

Prevents back skipping.
Prevents talking in your head.
Alters your perception of how fast that you can read.
Highway driving vs driving at 30kph

POWER READING TECHNIQUE:
1 Over view, skim and scan the entire book.
5-10 minutes.
Ask questions, who was author, note credits, predominance in the field,
publication date. Look at table of contents. Glance at reference in the index. Get a feel for the structure of the book.
Fastest way to deal with reading is to not read a book that isn’t worth your time.
2 Preview: glance quickly through each chapter.
3 minutes per chapter. (30 minutes for the book)
Scan read at 7 sec per page.
Look to see if it will add to your knowledge.
3 Sketch out what you already know about this topic.
Alerts your mind to what is coming.
3 min / chapter. (30 minutes)
4 Create questions so that you read with purpose when you begin.
Be clear about what you want to get out of the book
What are the main ideas in this book?
What supporting evidence is there?
Are the facts up to date?
What’s in it for me in learning this material?
What’s new about this material?
What can I use from this material?
3 minutes / chapter. (30 minutes)
5 Read for key ideas… read the text one chapter at a time.
15-20 seconds per page.
Underline new ideas, put ticks or question marks or explanation marks in the
margin
8 minutes per chapter (80 minutes for the book)
6 After view, for the pattern of the material and the difficult ideas.
Re read the chapters stop at difficult sections
Look for the pattern for the argument
Figure out how all the information related to each other.
Read allow sections that you didn’t
10 minutes per chapter (100 minutes)
7 Make Notes and learning maps on the book.
In learning map
10 minutes / chapter (100 minutes)
8 Review your Notes, next day, next week and next month.
5-10 minutes reviewing the notes a day later.
A week later.
A month later.
(30 minutes total)
Total time 6.5 hours for a serious 250 page text book.
This technique is done 2 times faster than regular reading and you will have over 10
times the comprehension.
Power reading is not about reading every word it’s about getting the idea from the book.
Variable speed speed reading
HOW TO CHOOSE READING MATERIAL.
1 Read only material that is interesting and important to you.
Refuse to read things that aren’t valuable to you at the moment.
Use skim and scan to read magazines and News Papers.
Go straight to the article and rip it out. Throw the rest of the magazines away.
Always read with a colour pen or highlighter.
2 Reflection and Clarifying of the material after you read it.
-stop and re-read the key points and see if you understand them for yourself.

POWER WRITING. (20 minutes into cassette)
The better you can write:
The better you can think
The more you can accomplish
The better decisions you can make
The more respect you get from others.
The more control
Concentrate more on “the what” than “the How”.
Free your creative powers.
Cannot write and edit at the same time.
Write freely first… then go back and edit it.
Consider it as two separate functions. Writing and editing.
Use Learning maps.
Sequence of preparation
1 look up all learning maps that you currently have on the topic
2 make more notes off of any reference material that you require for the project.
3 put the subject in the middle of the blank page.
4 make a branching mind map of all your thoughts on the
do a free flow mind map
put down all idea’s even silly ones.
5 look at the mind map
6 create a new mind map of themes… and learning clusters.
7 Now write in a fluid form…
don’t judge or critizise or edit… just write it all out very quickly
move from one cluster to the next very quickly.
8 Do Nothing. Let it sit in your subconscious for a time. Incubate on the topic for a
while.
9 Next day or longer go back to it and edit it. Now be critical on style. Early in the
morning is a good place to start. Is the meaning clear, is there a flow to the writing. Did
you set up your basic argument, then prove it then conclude with a short summary. Look
for aquard area’s. Conversational tone to most writing. And Personal from on friend to
another.
Revision Stage:

GETTING YOUR POINT ACROSS. (33minutes into tape)

Opening line and paragraph is the most important. It grabs them very quickly.
There is perpetual clutter with information in our culture today. 11 to 15 words wich
shape a persons attitude for all that follows. Give them a reason to be interested in all
that follows. What’s in it for them??? Write from the reader’s point of view.
4 Keep it short punchy sentences.
5 Always chose the simplist word to convey your point… use concreate words rather than
abstractions.
6 Make it look inviting in formatting. Make it fun and easy to read
7 Close with a bang.

Courtesy: Brian Tracy

Factoids - I

Ants

There are 11,000 species of ants. The oldest ant fossil is more than 90 million years old. Ants are closely related to bees and wasps. They are so numerous that in some habitats - the Amazon forest, for instance - their combined weight is four times the combined weight of all other animals in the area. Ants have brains. The main nerve - similar to our spine - runs along the bottom of the ant's body. Ants smell, taste and touch with their antennas. Their cylinder-like heart pumps colorless blood throughout their body.

Ants digest only liquid food or food rendered liquid with their digestive juices. Ants share digested food with each other. They can carry 15-20 times their body weight. Only the colony's queen breeds. Unfertilized eggs develop into males. The queen also lives much longer - up to 10 years, compared to worker ants which survive on average 50-150 days and up to 2 years in the tropics.

Some ant varieties create no nests. Instead, worker ants link their legs to form a living fabric on which the queen resides and performs her functions.

http://www.lingolex.com/ants.htm

Barbie

Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler in 1959. It was modeled on a minuscule German sex doll called "Lilli”. Barbie was the nickname of Ruth's daughter, Barbara. Ruth proceeded to found Mattel with her husband, Elliott. It is now one of the world's largest toy manufacturers (Revenues - c. $5 billion annually, a third of which in Barbie sales). More than 1 billion Barbie’s were sold by 1996.

Mattel commemorated this event by manufacturing a "Dream Barbie".

http://www.barbiecollector.com/ http://www.barbie.com/?utm_source=mattel.com&utm_medium=global%20header&utm_campaign=2011%20new%20header