Scientific community left with void as cosmologist Stephen Hawking dies, aged 76

Stephen Hawking, the physicist, whose studies in cosmology have been considered legendary, has died aged 76, his family said in a statement.

DNA Web Team

Updated : Mar 14, 2018, 09:36 AM IST

Scientific community left with void as cosmologist Stephen Hawking dies, aged 76

Stephen Hawking, the physicist, whose studies in cosmology have been considered legendary, has died aged 76, his family said in a statement.

Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.

His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018. pic.twitter.com/nAanMySqkt
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 14, 2018

“His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.

“He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”

LOVE FOR SCIENCE TILL THE END

A few days ago, Professor Hawking had claimed that the big bang theory was the origin of the universe as we know it, and nothing existed before that.

The Big Bang theory proposes that a tiny speck of matter and energy began to grow, bringing about the birth of our universe about the universe billions of years ago. However, scientists are intrigued by what was there before the "explosion" when there was supposed to be nothing.

"There was nothing around before the Big, Big Bang," Hawking said. His theory is based on the assumption that the universe has no boundaries. "The boundary condition of the universe ... is that it has no boundary," Hawking told physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the "Star Talk" show aired on National Geographic Channel. The Big Bang theory holds that the universe in retrospective can shrink to the size of an extremely small "subatomic ball" known as the singularity.

According to Hawking, the laws of physics and time cease to function inside that tiny particle of heat and energy. The ordinary real time as we know now shrinks infinitely as the universe becomes ever smaller but never reaches a definable starting point. Hawking argued that before the Big Bang real ordinary time was replaced by imaginary time and was in a bent form, state run news agency Xinhua reported.

"It was always reaching closer to nothing but didn't become nothing," said Hawking. To help people better understand the abstract and confusing state, the physicist drew an analogy between the distorted time with Ancient Greek philosopher Euclid's theory of space-time, a closed surface without end.

"One can regard imaginary and real time beginning at the South Pole. There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang," Hawking said. "There was never a Big Bang that produced something from nothing. It just seemed that way from mankind's perspective," Hawking said. He said that a lot of what we believe is derived from a human-centric perspective, which might limit the scope of human knowledge of the world.