WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.259 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. This is the place 00:00:02.259 --> 00:00:04.780 where we go beyond the surface, really get into 00:00:04.780 --> 00:00:07.500 the source material, and try to build some genuine, 00:00:07.580 --> 00:00:10.539 high -level insight. We're not about summaries 00:00:10.539 --> 00:00:12.599 here. We're trying to understand the why. And 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:18.760 today, the why is focused on just an incredible 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:21.600 figure, one of the most recognizable and yet... 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:23.820 maybe one of the least truly understood people 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:26.199 of our time, Stephen William Hawking. Absolutely. 00:00:26.359 --> 00:00:30.199 He lived from 1942 to 2018. And he really had 00:00:30.199 --> 00:00:33.560 this singular, almost contradictory identity. 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:35.380 He did. On the one hand, you have the brilliant 00:00:35.380 --> 00:00:38.039 English theoretical physicist, the cosmologist, 00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:40.119 you know, the mind trying to unify the entire 00:00:40.119 --> 00:00:41.960 universe. And then on the other, you have this 00:00:41.960 --> 00:00:45.000 massive cultural icon who battled motor neuron 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:47.759 disease for more than 50 years and achieved, 00:00:47.759 --> 00:00:50.100 well, a level of fame no scientist had seen in 00:00:50.100 --> 00:00:52.409 generations. Right. And that's our mission for 00:00:52.409 --> 00:00:54.369 this deep dive. We're going to unpack that narrative, 00:00:54.429 --> 00:00:57.149 the connection between the intense academic rigor 00:00:57.149 --> 00:00:59.929 on a cosmic scale and, well, the profound physical 00:00:59.929 --> 00:01:02.509 collapse of the man himself. We've got biographies, 00:01:02.509 --> 00:01:04.209 articles, scientific papers right here, and we're 00:01:04.209 --> 00:01:06.109 looking for what explains it. How does someone 00:01:06.109 --> 00:01:09.500 get a terminal diagnosis at 21? And then go on 00:01:09.500 --> 00:01:12.280 to hold the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:15.760 Isaac Newton's old chair. Exactly. From 1979 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:19.439 all the way to 2009. It's a story that weaves 00:01:19.439 --> 00:01:22.140 together this really radical physics with an 00:01:22.140 --> 00:01:24.640 almost unimaginable personal struggle. So for 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:26.620 you listening, here's the plan. We're going to 00:01:26.620 --> 00:01:29.379 start at the beginning. His very unusual origins, 00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:32.620 that famous apathy he had as a student, and then 00:01:32.620 --> 00:01:35.299 the shock of the diagnosis that... really lit 00:01:35.299 --> 00:01:36.939 a fire under him. And we'll get straight into 00:01:36.939 --> 00:01:39.560 the physics, the really big ideas, singularity 00:01:39.560 --> 00:01:42.180 theorems, the famous black hole wars, and, of 00:01:42.180 --> 00:01:44.000 course, the breakthrough of Hawking radiation. 00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:46.599 And finally, we'll look at the man himself, his 00:01:46.599 --> 00:01:49.180 shift to global celebrity, the fierce, fierce 00:01:49.180 --> 00:01:51.900 independence he kept through it all, and his... 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:55.659 his pretty striking final views on AI, space, 00:01:55.879 --> 00:01:58.260 and really the future of all of us. It's quite 00:01:58.260 --> 00:01:59.799 a journey. Okay, let's start unpacking this. 00:01:59.939 --> 00:02:02.739 Where does a mind like Hawking's come from? And 00:02:02.739 --> 00:02:04.700 the sources point to a family that was, well, 00:02:04.739 --> 00:02:06.760 anything but conventional. That's a good way 00:02:06.760 --> 00:02:09.680 to put it. His parents, Frank and Isabel, were 00:02:09.680 --> 00:02:12.280 both Oxford graduates. Frank was a respected 00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:14.819 medical researcher in tropical diseases, and 00:02:14.819 --> 00:02:17.060 Isabel studied philosophy, politics, and economics. 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:20.319 you know, a very academic household. But not 00:02:20.319 --> 00:02:23.060 a wealthy one. That's a key detail. Not at all. 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:25.180 They were frugal. They lived in Highgate, London, 00:02:25.379 --> 00:02:28.360 then St. Albans. And the sources paint this picture 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:31.319 of a highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric 00:02:31.319 --> 00:02:34.199 family life. And that eccentricity, it seems 00:02:34.199 --> 00:02:36.539 crucial. It wasn't just being smart. It was a 00:02:36.539 --> 00:02:39.699 rejection of kind of normal social rules. Oh, 00:02:39.719 --> 00:02:42.039 completely. The classic story that gets repeated 00:02:42.039 --> 00:02:43.759 is about their family nails. They weren't spent 00:02:43.759 --> 00:02:46.169 talking. No. Each person had a book. They would 00:02:46.169 --> 00:02:49.090 just sit there in silence reading. I mean, can 00:02:49.090 --> 00:02:51.949 you imagine? And their family car, this really 00:02:51.949 --> 00:02:54.870 sums it up, was a converted London taxi cab. 00:02:55.090 --> 00:02:57.310 They bought it cheap. It was big enough for the 00:02:57.310 --> 00:02:59.610 family and all their books. This was an environment 00:02:59.610 --> 00:03:02.310 that prized independent thought above almost 00:03:02.310 --> 00:03:05.330 everything else. But maybe not discipline. Definitely 00:03:05.330 --> 00:03:07.349 not conventional discipline. And you see that 00:03:07.349 --> 00:03:10.289 immediately in his school years. It's actually 00:03:10.289 --> 00:03:12.729 really surprising. The future Lucasian professor 00:03:12.729 --> 00:03:15.770 was not a star student. He struggled to learn 00:03:15.770 --> 00:03:18.469 to read, didn't he? He did. He blamed the progressive 00:03:18.469 --> 00:03:21.270 methods of his school at the time. Said he didn't 00:03:21.270 --> 00:03:23.150 learn until he was much older than his peers. 00:03:23.409 --> 00:03:25.689 But his friends saw something else. His nickname 00:03:25.689 --> 00:03:29.530 was Einstein. Exactly. Because his raw aptitude 00:03:29.530 --> 00:03:31.710 was obvious, even if his grades were mediocre. 00:03:32.449 --> 00:03:34.849 He and his friends, with a little help from a 00:03:34.849 --> 00:03:38.050 math teacher named Dikran Tata, actually built 00:03:38.050 --> 00:03:40.969 a computer. Wait, a working computer? In the 00:03:40.969 --> 00:03:43.810 late 1950s? A working electromechanical computer 00:03:43.810 --> 00:03:46.770 that used old clock parts, a telephone switchboard, 00:03:47.009 --> 00:03:49.550 just recycled junk. And this wasn't for a class 00:03:49.550 --> 00:03:52.370 project or a grade. It was pure curiosity. It 00:03:52.370 --> 00:03:54.830 was a self -directed passion project. It showed 00:03:54.830 --> 00:03:57.590 he understood systems and logic in a way that, 00:03:57.610 --> 00:03:59.710 you know, his report card just couldn't capture. 00:03:59.870 --> 00:04:01.930 That's the classic sign of genius, isn't it? 00:04:01.990 --> 00:04:04.069 Not good at the rote learning, but brilliant 00:04:04.069 --> 00:04:06.110 at seeing the whole system. So when it came to 00:04:06.110 --> 00:04:10.060 university, he wanted math. He did. But his father 00:04:10.060 --> 00:04:12.680 wanted him to study medicine. And to complicate 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:15.800 things, University College at Oxford, his dad's 00:04:15.800 --> 00:04:18.139 old college, didn't offer a straight mathematics 00:04:18.139 --> 00:04:21.160 degree. So he chose physics and chemistry instead. 00:04:21.259 --> 00:04:24.540 A compromise. And he starts at Oxford in 1959. 00:04:25.079 --> 00:04:29.399 He's only 17. And he is... by all accounts, immediately 00:04:29.399 --> 00:04:32.360 bored and lonely. He found the work ridiculously 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:35.560 easy. That's the famous quote. His physics tutor, 00:04:35.720 --> 00:04:38.199 Robert Berman, said Hawking just needed to know 00:04:38.199 --> 00:04:40.079 that a problem could be solved and then he could 00:04:40.079 --> 00:04:42.360 figure it out himself without looking at how 00:04:42.360 --> 00:04:44.420 anyone else did it. That's incredible confidence, 00:04:44.759 --> 00:04:47.420 but it led to some terrible study habits. Terrible. 00:04:47.519 --> 00:04:50.240 He himself estimated he only studied for about 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:52.819 1 ,000 hours in his entire three -year degree. 00:04:53.079 --> 00:04:56.259 That's, what, an hour a day? Maybe. So he's bored, 00:04:56.519 --> 00:04:58.660 he's not being challenged, and he's looking for 00:04:58.660 --> 00:05:00.740 some kind of intensity. And he finds it in the 00:05:00.740 --> 00:05:03.579 University College Boat Club. He joins as a cox. 00:05:03.860 --> 00:05:06.139 The person who steers the boat and motivates 00:05:06.139 --> 00:05:08.879 the rowers. Right. And he becomes known for it. 00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:11.959 He develops this daredevil image, steering these 00:05:11.959 --> 00:05:14.639 really risky, tight courses, sometimes damaging 00:05:14.639 --> 00:05:17.579 the boats. It was his way of finding that intensity 00:05:17.579 --> 00:05:21.259 and becoming a more popular social figure. But 00:05:21.259 --> 00:05:23.819 then came finals, and those study habits almost 00:05:23.819 --> 00:05:26.879 cost him everything. They did. He needed a first 00:05:26.879 --> 00:05:29.240 -class degree to get into Cambridge for his graduate 00:05:29.240 --> 00:05:32.079 work in cosmology. And he was right on the borderline 00:05:32.079 --> 00:05:34.139 between a first and a second. So it all came 00:05:34.139 --> 00:05:37.680 down to the viva, the oral examination. This 00:05:37.680 --> 00:05:39.980 is where that audacity just shines. He doesn't 00:05:39.980 --> 00:05:41.980 go in there apologizing for his lack of work. 00:05:42.220 --> 00:05:45.240 He's completely pragmatic. The examiners ask 00:05:45.240 --> 00:05:47.420 him what his future plans are. And he basically 00:05:47.420 --> 00:05:49.680 gives them an ultimatum. He does. He says, if 00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:51.600 you award me a first. I will go to Cambridge. 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:54.100 If I receive a second, I shall stay in Oxford, 00:05:54.199 --> 00:05:56.540 so I expect you will give me a first. I mean, 00:05:56.540 --> 00:05:59.220 the nerve. But it wasn't just arrogance, was 00:05:59.220 --> 00:06:02.120 it? It was a calculated risk. A completely calculated 00:06:02.120 --> 00:06:06.459 gamble. And it worked. Berman, his tutor, later 00:06:06.459 --> 00:06:08.360 confirmed the examiners knew they were dealing 00:06:08.360 --> 00:06:10.879 with someone far cleverer than most of themselves. 00:06:11.519 --> 00:06:14.220 He got his first. He was off to Cambridge in 00:06:14.220 --> 00:06:17.430 1962. So he arrives at Cambridge ready to take 00:06:17.430 --> 00:06:20.430 on the universe, but it doesn't start well. No, 00:06:20.550 --> 00:06:23.050 it's a difficult start. First, he's disappointed 00:06:23.050 --> 00:06:25.389 he doesn't get the famous astronomer Fred Hoyle 00:06:25.389 --> 00:06:28.769 as his supervisor. Instead, he gets Dennis Sciamma. 00:06:29.050 --> 00:06:31.610 And he also realizes he's not prepared. Right. 00:06:31.730 --> 00:06:34.029 He feels his math skills from Oxford just aren't 00:06:34.029 --> 00:06:36.129 up to the task for general relativity. He feels 00:06:36.129 --> 00:06:38.170 completely lost in his early work. And then on 00:06:38.170 --> 00:06:40.589 top of all that professional uncertainty comes 00:06:40.589 --> 00:06:43.949 this life shattering personal crisis. In 1963, 00:06:44.269 --> 00:06:47.170 he's just 21 years old. He's diagnosed with an 00:06:47.170 --> 00:06:49.970 early onset, slow progressing form of motor neurone 00:06:49.970 --> 00:06:54.480 disease, ALS. The prognosis was just. The doctors 00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:56.819 gave him two years to live. I can't even begin 00:06:56.819 --> 00:06:58.680 to imagine what that does to you. He fell into 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:00.959 a deep depression. He felt there was no point 00:07:00.959 --> 00:07:02.800 continuing his studies, no point in anything. 00:07:03.079 --> 00:07:05.300 He had just listened to Wagner and shut himself 00:07:05.300 --> 00:07:07.939 away. But the disease didn't move as fast as 00:07:07.939 --> 00:07:10.660 they predicted. And that's the turning point, 00:07:10.740 --> 00:07:13.699 isn't it? The shock becomes a catalyst. It becomes 00:07:13.699 --> 00:07:15.899 the ultimate motivator. It wasn't that the physical 00:07:15.899 --> 00:07:18.100 limits focused his mind, although maybe that 00:07:18.100 --> 00:07:20.420 was part of it. It was the realization that time 00:07:20.420 --> 00:07:23.149 was finite. He needed a purpose, and he needed 00:07:23.149 --> 00:07:25.970 it now. And his supervisor, Sai Mom, encouraged 00:07:25.970 --> 00:07:29.290 him, pushed him to keep working. He did. And 00:07:29.290 --> 00:07:31.310 Hawking's own words on this are so powerful. 00:07:31.350 --> 00:07:34.089 He said, Before I got motor neuron disease, I 00:07:34.089 --> 00:07:36.949 was bored with life. But the prospect of an early 00:07:36.949 --> 00:07:39.250 death made me realize life was really worth living. 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:41.740 All that boredom, the daredevil stuff on the 00:07:41.740 --> 00:07:44.759 river. He was looking for stakes. And MND gave 00:07:44.759 --> 00:07:47.199 him the ultimate stakes. And that new focus produced 00:07:47.199 --> 00:07:50.420 incredible results incredibly quickly. By 1966, 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:53.759 he finishes his Ph .D. thesis, Properties of 00:07:53.759 --> 00:07:55.740 Expanding Universes. Which got him a research 00:07:55.740 --> 00:07:58.399 fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. And 00:07:58.399 --> 00:08:00.379 he shared the Adams Prize with Roger Penrose. 00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:03.699 That one year, 1966, was his arrival. He became 00:08:03.699 --> 00:08:05.980 a major force in physics and was born directly 00:08:05.980 --> 00:08:08.180 out of staring down his own mortality and refusing 00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:11.160 to give in. Okay, so that collaboration with 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:14.579 Roger Penrose really defined the first huge chapter 00:08:14.579 --> 00:08:17.339 of his scientific career. They started with the 00:08:17.339 --> 00:08:19.860 ideas in Hawking's thesis and just blew them 00:08:19.860 --> 00:08:22.759 up to a cosmic scale. Right. What Penrose had 00:08:22.759 --> 00:08:25.540 already shown was that if a massive star collapses, 00:08:25.620 --> 00:08:29.779 it leads inevitably to a singularity, a point 00:08:29.779 --> 00:08:32.440 of infinite density inside a black hole. But 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:35.049 that's for a star. The revolutionary step was 00:08:35.049 --> 00:08:37.710 applying it to the whole universe. Exactly. In 00:08:37.710 --> 00:08:40.990 1970, they published this joint proof. It said 00:08:40.990 --> 00:08:42.769 that if the universe obeys general relativity 00:08:42.769 --> 00:08:45.029 and if it's expanding in the way we observe, 00:08:45.330 --> 00:08:47.769 then it must have begun as a singularity. So 00:08:47.769 --> 00:08:49.870 they weren't just saying the Big Bang was a good 00:08:49.870 --> 00:08:51.789 theory. They were saying it was a mathematical 00:08:51.789 --> 00:08:54.750 necessity of the laws of gravity as we understood 00:08:54.750 --> 00:08:57.370 them. Precisely. And that was a huge blow to 00:08:57.370 --> 00:08:59.429 the competing steady state theory at the time. 00:08:59.450 --> 00:09:02.389 It provided the mathematical backbone for the 00:09:02.389 --> 00:09:04.649 Big Bang model. So what was the big hurdle they 00:09:04.649 --> 00:09:06.830 cleared? People thought singularities might just 00:09:06.830 --> 00:09:08.870 be, I don't know, mathematical quirks, right? 00:09:09.029 --> 00:09:12.450 They did. Critics argue that maybe if you factory 00:09:12.450 --> 00:09:15.049 in rotation or a more complex, messy start to 00:09:15.049 --> 00:09:17.309 the universe, you could avoid everything collapsing 00:09:17.309 --> 00:09:20.610 back to a single point. Hawking and Penrose proved 00:09:20.610 --> 00:09:23.110 that no, as long as gravity is always attractive, 00:09:23.529 --> 00:09:26.950 the singularity is inescapable. The past of our 00:09:26.950 --> 00:09:29.179 expanding universe had to have a beginning. From 00:09:29.179 --> 00:09:31.120 there, he zooms in on black holes themselves, 00:09:31.259 --> 00:09:34.740 and he starts with the laws of how they behave. 00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:37.480 Yes, in 1970, he comes up with the second law 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:40.120 of black hole dynamics. It's an elegant idea. 00:09:40.259 --> 00:09:42.700 It says that the surface area of a black hole's 00:09:42.700 --> 00:09:45.700 event horizon, the point of no return, can never 00:09:45.700 --> 00:09:47.980 get smaller. It can only get bigger or stay the 00:09:47.980 --> 00:09:50.240 same. Right. And working with others, they expand 00:09:50.240 --> 00:09:52.200 this into four laws of black hole mechanics, 00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:55.379 which strangely mirrored the laws of thermodynamics. 00:09:55.700 --> 00:09:57.299 Strangely, because black holes are supposed to 00:09:57.299 --> 00:09:59.659 be completely cold, right? Zero temperature, 00:09:59.879 --> 00:10:01.720 zero entropy, which is a measure of disorder. 00:10:02.039 --> 00:10:04.440 Exactly. So at the time, the analogy was just 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:07.320 a formal mathematical curiosity, but it laid 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:09.899 the groundwork for what came next. And that groundwork 00:10:09.899 --> 00:10:11.740 also supported something called the no -hair 00:10:11.740 --> 00:10:13.879 theorem. The no -hair theorem is just, I mean, 00:10:13.899 --> 00:10:16.700 it's one of the wildest ideas. It says that after 00:10:16.700 --> 00:10:19.419 a black hole forms, almost all the information 00:10:19.419 --> 00:10:22.259 about what created it is lost forever. So it 00:10:22.259 --> 00:10:24.639 doesn't matter if it was a star or a cloud of 00:10:24.639 --> 00:10:28.019 dust or a giant pile of encyclopedias. Doesn't 00:10:28.019 --> 00:10:30.080 matter. The resulting black hole is identical. 00:10:30.379 --> 00:10:33.340 It can only be described by three things. Its 00:10:33.340 --> 00:10:36.059 mass, its electrical charge, and its rotation. 00:10:36.549 --> 00:10:38.809 Or spin. All the other details. The hair gets 00:10:38.809 --> 00:10:42.549 shaved off. And that right there raises the massive 00:10:42.549 --> 00:10:44.529 question that would occupy him for the rest of 00:10:44.529 --> 00:10:46.610 his life. If the information is gone, where did 00:10:46.610 --> 00:10:48.769 it go? Okay, so up to this point, everything 00:10:48.769 --> 00:10:51.710 is based on classical general relativity. Black 00:10:51.710 --> 00:10:54.649 holes are perfect prisons. They only grow. But 00:10:54.649 --> 00:10:56.909 then Hawking decides to mix in quantum mechanics 00:10:56.909 --> 00:10:58.850 and everything changes. This is where it gets 00:10:58.850 --> 00:11:01.340 really fascinating. And it all started because 00:11:01.340 --> 00:11:03.519 he was trying to prove someone else wrong. Right. 00:11:03.620 --> 00:11:05.580 He had been talking to some Soviet physicists 00:11:05.580 --> 00:11:09.600 in Moscow in 1973. Yakov Eldovich and Alexei 00:11:09.600 --> 00:11:12.879 Starobinsky. They suggested that rotating black 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:14.639 holes should actually emit particles because 00:11:14.639 --> 00:11:17.659 of quantum effects. And Hawking was, by his own 00:11:17.659 --> 00:11:20.059 admission, annoyed by this. Because it would 00:11:20.059 --> 00:11:22.500 violate his own second law that the area can 00:11:22.500 --> 00:11:25.059 never shrink. Exactly. So he sets out to disprove 00:11:25.059 --> 00:11:27.580 it. And in the process of trying to prove them 00:11:27.580 --> 00:11:30.649 wrong. He proves them right, but in an even more 00:11:30.649 --> 00:11:33.330 profound way. So what did he find? He found a 00:11:33.330 --> 00:11:35.649 different mechanism that meant all black holes, 00:11:35.789 --> 00:11:38.590 not just rotating ones, must emit radiation. 00:11:39.149 --> 00:11:42.250 It's because of quantum fluctuations at the edge 00:11:42.250 --> 00:11:45.190 of the event horizon. Okay, break this down for 00:11:45.190 --> 00:11:46.950 us. This is a tough one to get your head around. 00:11:47.129 --> 00:11:49.580 So in quantum theory... Empty space isn't really 00:11:49.580 --> 00:11:52.080 empty. It's fizzing with what are called virtual 00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:55.639 particles, particle and antiparticle pairs that 00:11:55.639 --> 00:11:57.919 pop into existence for a fraction of a second 00:11:57.919 --> 00:12:00.179 and then annihilate each other. Okay, with you 00:12:00.179 --> 00:12:02.200 so far. Now imagine this happens right at the 00:12:02.200 --> 00:12:04.820 edge of a black hole's event horizon. Sometimes 00:12:04.820 --> 00:12:07.200 one particle will fall in and the other will 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:09.960 escape. And the one that escapes is what we see. 00:12:10.100 --> 00:12:13.379 Yes. A distant observer sees that escaping particle 00:12:13.379 --> 00:12:16.019 as real radiation. We call it Hawking radiation. 00:12:16.500 --> 00:12:19.149 But to conserve energy, If the escaping particle 00:12:19.149 --> 00:12:22.269 has positive energy, the particle that fell in 00:12:22.269 --> 00:12:24.809 must have had negative energy. Which means the 00:12:24.809 --> 00:12:27.149 black hole's total mass and energy just went 00:12:27.149 --> 00:12:29.990 down. Precisely. Black holes are not internal. 00:12:30.149 --> 00:12:33.789 They leak. They lose mass. They shrink. And over 00:12:33.789 --> 00:12:36.610 an almost unimaginable time scale, they will 00:12:36.610 --> 00:12:39.350 eventually evaporate completely. Which is a direct 00:12:39.350 --> 00:12:42.259 contradiction of his earlier work. It is. But 00:12:42.259 --> 00:12:44.700 it also brilliantly solved the puzzle of the 00:12:44.700 --> 00:12:47.139 thermodynamics analogy. It proved that black 00:12:47.139 --> 00:12:48.840 holes do have a temperature and they do have 00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:51.620 entropy. This was a monumental breakthrough. 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:54.379 The impact was immediate, and he was elected 00:12:54.379 --> 00:12:57.600 a fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, right 00:12:57.600 --> 00:12:59.340 after the announcement. And of course, we have 00:12:59.340 --> 00:13:01.700 to mention his first famous public wager, the 00:13:01.700 --> 00:13:04.779 one with Kip Thorne over Cygnus X -1. Ah, yes. 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:07.600 This was less about a deep principle and more 00:13:07.600 --> 00:13:10.559 about, you know, a real object in the sky. Hawking 00:13:10.559 --> 00:13:13.279 bet that this X -ray source, Cygnus X -1, was 00:13:13.279 --> 00:13:15.700 not a black hole. Which seems weird. Why bet 00:13:15.700 --> 00:13:17.759 against his own field? He called it an insurance 00:13:17.759 --> 00:13:20.399 policy. He joked that he'd done so much work 00:13:20.399 --> 00:13:22.259 on black holes, if it turned out they didn't 00:13:22.259 --> 00:13:24.000 exist, he would have felt pretty silly. This 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:25.799 way, at least he'd win the bet. And he lost, 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:29.230 right. He conceded in 1990. He did. The evidence 00:13:29.230 --> 00:13:31.950 became overwhelming. But it was that playful 00:13:31.950 --> 00:13:34.850 public engagement with the science that really 00:13:34.850 --> 00:13:37.950 started to build his public persona. So after 00:13:37.950 --> 00:13:40.570 revolutionizing black holes, he turns his attention 00:13:40.570 --> 00:13:43.750 back to the biggest question of all, the very 00:13:43.750 --> 00:13:47.230 beginning. In 1981, he goes to a conference at 00:13:47.230 --> 00:13:50.110 the Vatican of all places. And drops a bombshell. 00:13:50.169 --> 00:13:52.350 He proposes that the universe might not have 00:13:52.350 --> 00:13:55.970 a boundary, no beginning and no ending. This 00:13:55.970 --> 00:13:58.190 was the seed of the Hartle -Hawking state, which 00:13:58.190 --> 00:14:00.870 he published with Jim Hartle in 1983. Right. 00:14:01.070 --> 00:14:04.250 And to get there, they used a very complex mathematical 00:14:04.250 --> 00:14:07.850 tool called imaginary time. Okay, what does that 00:14:07.850 --> 00:14:10.129 mean in simple terms? Well, it's a way of treating 00:14:10.129 --> 00:14:12.110 the time dimension as if it were another dimension 00:14:12.110 --> 00:14:15.129 of space. And when you do that, the Big Bang 00:14:15.129 --> 00:14:17.309 singularity, that point of infinite density where 00:14:17.309 --> 00:14:19.649 the laws of physics break, it just disappears. 00:14:19.669 --> 00:14:22.110 It smooths out. This is where he uses that great 00:14:22.110 --> 00:14:24.289 analogy about the North Pole. It's the perfect 00:14:24.289 --> 00:14:26.309 way to explain it. You can't go any further north 00:14:26.309 --> 00:14:28.350 than the North Pole, but the pole itself is an 00:14:28.350 --> 00:14:30.610 edge or a boundary on the Earth's surface. It's 00:14:30.610 --> 00:14:32.850 just another point. So in this model, the Big 00:14:32.850 --> 00:14:35.490 Bang is like the North Pole, a starting point, 00:14:35.590 --> 00:14:39.289 but not a boundary where something had to exist 00:14:39.289 --> 00:14:43.090 before it to create it. Exactly. It suggests 00:14:43.090 --> 00:14:45.190 a universe that is completely self -contained. 00:14:45.419 --> 00:14:47.799 It doesn't need an external creator or a cause. 00:14:48.179 --> 00:14:51.019 As Hawking himself said, it meant God would not 00:14:51.019 --> 00:14:53.440 have had any freedom to choose how the universe 00:14:53.440 --> 00:14:56.080 began. That is a profoundly philosophical statement 00:14:56.080 --> 00:14:58.700 coming from a physicist. It was. It was a radical 00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:01.620 idea, suggesting the universe's origin was governed 00:15:01.620 --> 00:15:03.919 purely by the laws of physics itself. And he 00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:06.220 kept refining this idea later in his life, right, 00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:09.019 with the top -down cosmology theory. He did, 00:15:09.159 --> 00:15:11.559 with Thomas Hertog. This was a later attempt 00:15:11.559 --> 00:15:13.720 to deal with some tricky problems, like why our 00:15:13.720 --> 00:15:15.899 universe seems so... perfectly fine -tuned for 00:15:15.899 --> 00:15:18.279 life. Instead of a single starting point, this 00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:20.440 theory suggests there were many possible starts. 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:23.159 A whole superposition of possible histories. 00:15:23.399 --> 00:15:25.879 And the idea is that our present observation 00:15:25.879 --> 00:15:27.620 of the universe, the fact that we are here to 00:15:27.620 --> 00:15:30.779 see it, effectively selects the past history 00:15:30.779 --> 00:15:33.220 that is consistent with our existence. So the 00:15:33.220 --> 00:15:35.740 present determines the past. In a quantum mechanical 00:15:35.740 --> 00:15:39.220 sense, yes. It's a very complex idea. But it 00:15:39.220 --> 00:15:41.340 was his way of trying to create a complete and 00:15:41.340 --> 00:15:44.429 self -contained picture of cosmology. So the 00:15:44.429 --> 00:15:46.889 science is established. The genius is recognized 00:15:46.889 --> 00:15:50.350 within the physics community. But the 1980s is 00:15:50.350 --> 00:15:52.669 when the rest of the world really discovers Stephen 00:15:52.669 --> 00:15:55.549 Hawking. And the reason for it was surprisingly 00:15:55.549 --> 00:15:58.149 practical. It came down to money. He needed to 00:15:58.149 --> 00:16:00.330 fund his children's education and his growing 00:16:00.330 --> 00:16:03.970 medical expenses. Right. So in 1982, he decides 00:16:03.970 --> 00:16:06.149 to write a popular science book, something for 00:16:06.149 --> 00:16:08.620 the general public. And the result was... A Brief 00:16:08.620 --> 00:16:11.679 History of Time, published in 1988. And it just 00:16:11.679 --> 00:16:15.200 became this absolute cultural phenomenon. The 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:17.600 success was unbelievable. It was on the Sunday 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:21.340 Times bestseller list for 237 weeks. That's over 00:16:21.340 --> 00:16:23.419 four and a half years. It sold something like 00:16:23.419 --> 00:16:25.940 nine million copies. A book about cosmology with 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:27.919 almost no equations in it. That was the key. 00:16:28.100 --> 00:16:29.820 Yeah. And a lot of credit for that goes to his 00:16:29.820 --> 00:16:31.940 editor, Peter Guzzardi. He was the one who kept 00:16:31.940 --> 00:16:34.500 pushing Hawking to simplify, to make it more 00:16:34.500 --> 00:16:36.679 accessible. The famous line was that... Every 00:16:36.679 --> 00:16:38.940 equation would have the readership. Exactly. 00:16:39.220 --> 00:16:41.779 And Hawking, though he got frustrated with the 00:16:41.779 --> 00:16:44.940 constant revisions, he stuck with it. And it 00:16:44.940 --> 00:16:48.000 worked. He became an instant celebrity. Newsweek 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:50.460 called him the master of the universe. He did. 00:16:50.679 --> 00:16:53.759 But that level of fame brought its own problems. 00:16:54.059 --> 00:16:56.539 It created some friction within the academic 00:16:56.539 --> 00:16:59.360 world. Some of his colleagues felt that the media 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:01.860 attention was more about his disability than 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:04.880 his science. That the visual of the man in the 00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:07.859 wheelchair was what made him a star, which, you 00:17:07.859 --> 00:17:10.339 know, kind of overshadowed the actual work. It's 00:17:10.339 --> 00:17:13.079 a complex issue. But that fame meant that his 00:17:13.079 --> 00:17:15.500 scientific debates, which usually happened behind 00:17:15.500 --> 00:17:18.259 closed doors and journals, were now playing out 00:17:18.259 --> 00:17:20.799 in public. And nothing was more public than the 00:17:20.799 --> 00:17:23.240 Black Hole War. Oh, this was the big one. This 00:17:23.240 --> 00:17:25.119 was the intellectual fight of his career. It 00:17:25.119 --> 00:17:27.400 all comes back to Hawking radiation. Right. If 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:29.279 a black hole evaporates, what happens to the 00:17:29.279 --> 00:17:31.180 information about all the stuff that fell into 00:17:31.180 --> 00:17:34.819 it? Hawking's initial position back in 1981 was 00:17:34.819 --> 00:17:37.240 that the information is completely and irretrievably 00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:40.279 lost. It just vanishes from the universe. And 00:17:40.279 --> 00:17:42.000 that's a huge problem for quantum mechanics. 00:17:42.339 --> 00:17:45.309 A universe -breaking problem. A core principle 00:17:45.309 --> 00:17:47.730 of quantum mechanics is that information is never 00:17:47.730 --> 00:17:50.430 truly destroyed. It can be scrambled, transformed, 00:17:50.869 --> 00:17:53.710 but it's always there. If Hawking was right, 00:17:53.809 --> 00:17:56.390 one of the fundamental pillars of physics was 00:17:56.390 --> 00:17:59.490 wrong. So you have general relativity clashing 00:17:59.490 --> 00:18:01.869 directly with quantum mechanics, and this led 00:18:01.869 --> 00:18:05.210 to a famous bet in 1997. Yes, Hawking and Kip 00:18:05.210 --> 00:18:08.250 Thorne bet against John Preskill. They bet that 00:18:08.250 --> 00:18:11.130 information was lost. Preskill bet that it was 00:18:11.130 --> 00:18:13.170 somehow preserved and that our understanding 00:18:13.170 --> 00:18:15.849 of black holes had to be wrong. And Hawking eventually 00:18:15.849 --> 00:18:19.529 conceded. He did in 2004. But his solution was, 00:18:19.670 --> 00:18:21.849 well, it was very subtle. He proposed that if 00:18:21.849 --> 00:18:24.089 you consider all the alternative histories of 00:18:24.089 --> 00:18:27.009 the universe, information loss in one is canceled 00:18:27.009 --> 00:18:29.349 out by others. It wasn't a simple answer. He 00:18:29.349 --> 00:18:31.910 even called his original idea his biggest blunder 00:18:31.910 --> 00:18:34.710 in 2014. It clearly bothered him for decades. 00:18:34.890 --> 00:18:36.250 I mean, it's really telling us that his very 00:18:36.250 --> 00:18:39.029 last research paper, published after he died, 00:18:39.150 --> 00:18:41.009 was still trying to solve this problem. It was 00:18:41.009 --> 00:18:43.190 called black hole entropy in soft hair. He was 00:18:43.190 --> 00:18:44.890 working on it right up to the end. He also had 00:18:44.890 --> 00:18:47.470 another very public bet that he lost, this one 00:18:47.470 --> 00:18:50.509 about the Higgs boson. Yes, he was very emphatic 00:18:50.509 --> 00:18:52.990 that the Higgs boson, the particle that gives 00:18:52.990 --> 00:18:55.869 other particles mass, would never be found. He 00:18:55.869 --> 00:18:57.529 had public debates with Peter Higgs himself. 00:18:57.990 --> 00:19:01.730 So why was he so sure? I think he felt it wasn't 00:19:01.730 --> 00:19:03.890 an elegant solution within the standard model. 00:19:04.289 --> 00:19:06.890 He hoped for something simpler, more fundamental. 00:19:07.470 --> 00:19:09.349 But, you know, the universe doesn't have to be 00:19:09.349 --> 00:19:11.450 elegant. And when CERN found the particle on 00:19:11.450 --> 00:19:15.349 2012, the evidence was undeniable. It was. And 00:19:15.349 --> 00:19:18.170 to his credit, he conceded immediately and gracefully. 00:19:18.430 --> 00:19:20.910 He publicly said Peter Haig should win the Nobel 00:19:20.910 --> 00:19:23.450 Prize for it, which he did the next year. It 00:19:23.450 --> 00:19:25.490 showed he loved the intellectual fight, but he 00:19:25.490 --> 00:19:27.670 always respected the evidence. So if we really 00:19:27.670 --> 00:19:29.849 want to understand his popular appeal, we have 00:19:29.849 --> 00:19:32.869 to look at this profound contrast. The mind that 00:19:32.869 --> 00:19:35.069 was expanding to fill the universe and the body 00:19:35.069 --> 00:19:37.480 that was collapsing. Let's talk about the reality 00:19:37.480 --> 00:19:40.319 of living with MND. The decline started in his 00:19:40.319 --> 00:19:42.500 last year at Oxford. Just some clumsiness, a 00:19:42.500 --> 00:19:45.200 few falls. After the diagnosis in 63, it was 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:48.519 slow, but just relentless. By the late 60s, he 00:19:48.519 --> 00:19:50.839 was on crutches, and by the mid -70s, he was 00:19:50.839 --> 00:19:53.180 in a wheelchair. And he didn't just use the wheelchair, 00:19:53.299 --> 00:19:55.980 did he? He was famous for his driving. Oh, notorious. 00:19:56.599 --> 00:19:59.099 The sources say he had a wildness to his driving. 00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:01.680 He'd zip around Cambridge, sometimes running 00:20:01.680 --> 00:20:04.119 over students' toes. It was a way of showing 00:20:04.119 --> 00:20:06.930 he was still in control. Still independent. That 00:20:06.930 --> 00:20:09.170 fierce independence seems to be the core of it 00:20:09.170 --> 00:20:11.589 all. He didn't want to be seen as a patient or 00:20:11.589 --> 00:20:15.109 a victim. No. He wanted to be seen as scientist 00:20:15.109 --> 00:20:19.190 first and a normal human being. That mental strength 00:20:19.190 --> 00:20:22.869 was what allowed him to keep working. As he lost 00:20:22.869 --> 00:20:25.789 the ability to write, he had to invent new ways 00:20:25.789 --> 00:20:28.630 to think. He started to see equations as geometry. 00:20:29.069 --> 00:20:31.890 Exactly. He developed these incredibly powerful 00:20:31.890 --> 00:20:35.710 visual methods. manipulating entire complex proofs 00:20:35.710 --> 00:20:39.009 in his head. The physicist Werner Israel compared 00:20:39.009 --> 00:20:41.650 it to Mozart composing a whole symphony in his 00:20:41.650 --> 00:20:44.269 mind without ever writing a note. So the disability 00:20:44.269 --> 00:20:46.430 in a way might have actually changed how he did 00:20:46.430 --> 00:20:48.950 physics, making it more abstract. It's possible. 00:20:49.109 --> 00:20:51.170 But the biggest change for his public identity 00:20:51.170 --> 00:20:54.430 came in 1985 when he lost his natural voice. 00:20:54.609 --> 00:20:56.869 From a bout of pneumonia, right? He needed a 00:20:56.869 --> 00:20:59.809 tracheotomy to save his life. It saved him, but 00:20:59.809 --> 00:21:02.289 it meant he could no longer speak. This was a 00:21:02.289 --> 00:21:04.690 critical moment. He needed round -the -clock 00:21:04.690 --> 00:21:07.509 care and a whole new way to communicate. And 00:21:07.509 --> 00:21:09.250 that's where the famous computer voice comes 00:21:09.250 --> 00:21:12.609 in, the Equalizer program. Gifted to him in 1986 00:21:12.609 --> 00:21:15.950 by a computer expert named Walter Woltos. At 00:21:15.950 --> 00:21:18.329 first, he used a handheld clicker to select words 00:21:18.329 --> 00:21:21.150 or letters from a screen. And that voice synthesizer 00:21:21.150 --> 00:21:23.950 had that distinct American accent. It did. A 00:21:23.950 --> 00:21:25.970 computer engineer named David Mason integrated 00:21:25.970 --> 00:21:28.430 the whole system onto his wheelchair. And as 00:21:28.430 --> 00:21:31.089 technology got better, people offered him newer, 00:21:31.170 --> 00:21:34.130 more natural sounding voices. But he always refused. 00:21:34.490 --> 00:21:37.289 Why? He said he identified with it. He felt it 00:21:37.289 --> 00:21:39.190 was his voice. He even said he could communicate 00:21:39.190 --> 00:21:42.009 better now than before I lost my voice because 00:21:42.009 --> 00:21:43.970 it forced him to be so clear and deliberate. 00:21:44.150 --> 00:21:45.869 But the disease kept progressing. Eventually, 00:21:45.890 --> 00:21:47.869 he couldn't even use his hands for the clicker. 00:21:47.910 --> 00:21:51.279 No. By 2005, he was down to controlling the entire 00:21:51.279 --> 00:21:54.220 system with just a single cheek muscle, detected 00:21:54.220 --> 00:21:57.359 by an infrared sensor on his glasses. His communication 00:21:57.359 --> 00:22:00.460 rate slowed to maybe one word per minute. That's 00:22:00.460 --> 00:22:02.700 terrifying, the prospect of being locked in. 00:22:02.900 --> 00:22:05.019 It was a real fear. So he started collaborating 00:22:05.019 --> 00:22:08.440 with Intel and a startup called SwiftKey on new 00:22:08.440 --> 00:22:11.119 software. An adaptive system. Right. They fed 00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:13.359 all of his books, lectures, and emails into the 00:22:13.359 --> 00:22:15.420 system so it could predict his next word with 00:22:15.420 --> 00:22:18.559 incredible accuracy. This custom -built software 00:22:18.559 --> 00:22:21.019 was absolutely essential for him to continue 00:22:21.019 --> 00:22:23.500 working and writing in his final years. Through 00:22:23.500 --> 00:22:25.619 all of this, his personal life was obviously 00:22:25.619 --> 00:22:28.480 incredibly complicated. His engagement to Jane 00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:31.619 Wilde right after the diagnosis, he said it gave 00:22:31.619 --> 00:22:34.240 him something to live for. They married in 1965, 00:22:34.539 --> 00:22:37.859 had three children. And Jane's role in those 00:22:37.859 --> 00:22:41.220 early decades was just immense. The sources really 00:22:41.220 --> 00:22:43.579 stress the strain it put on their marriage, the 00:22:43.579 --> 00:22:45.779 constant nursing care, the demands of his health, 00:22:45.859 --> 00:22:48.099 on top of raising a family. And there was a fundamental 00:22:48.099 --> 00:22:50.960 difference in their worldview. A huge one. Jane 00:22:50.960 --> 00:22:53.440 had a very strong Christian faith. And Stephen, 00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:55.700 as his work progressed, became a more and more 00:22:55.700 --> 00:22:57.920 convinced atheist. That created a lot of tension. 00:22:58.180 --> 00:23:00.539 And the marriage eventually ended. He left Jane 00:23:00.539 --> 00:23:03.099 in 1990 and later married one of his nurses, 00:23:03.339 --> 00:23:06.670 Elaine Mason, in 1995. That second marriage lasted 00:23:06.670 --> 00:23:10.690 until 2006. But it was, well, it was troubled. 00:23:11.150 --> 00:23:13.809 There were reports in the early 2000s from family 00:23:13.809 --> 00:23:16.529 and staff about alleged physical abuse. And there 00:23:16.529 --> 00:23:18.750 were police investigations. Yes, but they were 00:23:18.750 --> 00:23:20.890 always closed because Hawking himself refused 00:23:20.890 --> 00:23:23.390 to make any complaint or cooperate. After he 00:23:23.390 --> 00:23:26.089 divorced Elaine in 2006, he seemed to grow closer 00:23:26.089 --> 00:23:28.589 again to Jane and his children. There was a reconciliation, 00:23:28.630 --> 00:23:31.910 yes. And that provided him with a lot of support. 00:23:32.319 --> 00:23:34.859 in his final years. It's that part of his life, 00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:37.180 that relationship with Jane, that was famously 00:23:37.180 --> 00:23:39.480 turned into the film The Theory of Everything. 00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:42.259 He also embraced his role as a public advocate, 00:23:42.380 --> 00:23:44.559 didn't he? Even if he was reluctant at first? 00:23:44.819 --> 00:23:47.160 He was. But he eventually accepted he was a role 00:23:47.160 --> 00:23:50.200 model, especially for disability rights. He campaigned 00:23:50.200 --> 00:23:52.359 for better accessibility in Cambridge, which 00:23:52.359 --> 00:23:54.440 with its ancient buildings was a real challenge. 00:23:54.660 --> 00:23:58.559 And he had this one huge, unfulfilled dream to 00:23:58.559 --> 00:24:01.730 go to space. He really wanted to. Richard Branson 00:24:01.730 --> 00:24:04.210 offered him a flight on Virgin Galactic. And 00:24:04.210 --> 00:24:07.190 to prepare, in 2007, he took a zero -gravity 00:24:07.190 --> 00:24:09.630 flight, the Vomit Comet. And the pictures of 00:24:09.630 --> 00:24:11.809 him on that flight, floating free from his chair? 00:24:12.029 --> 00:24:14.930 They're iconic. They became this incredible symbol 00:24:14.930 --> 00:24:17.549 of him, for a moment, transcending his physical 00:24:17.549 --> 00:24:20.970 limitations. He passed all the tests, but sadly, 00:24:21.190 --> 00:24:23.450 commercial flights didn't begin in his lifetime. 00:24:23.670 --> 00:24:25.950 He also wasn't afraid to be political. He used 00:24:25.950 --> 00:24:28.869 his platform. He was a lifelong supporter of 00:24:28.869 --> 00:24:31.529 the UK's Labour Party. He was very outspoken. 00:24:31.529 --> 00:24:34.289 He called the Iraq war a war crime. He campaigned 00:24:34.289 --> 00:24:36.670 against nuclear weapons. And he was a massive 00:24:36.670 --> 00:24:39.130 champion for universal health care. He credited 00:24:39.130 --> 00:24:42.869 the NHS, the UK's health service, with his survival. 00:24:43.009 --> 00:24:45.109 He said flatly that without them, he would have 00:24:45.109 --> 00:24:48.150 died decades earlier. And he issued these very 00:24:48.150 --> 00:24:50.690 stark warnings later in life about Brexit, about 00:24:50.690 --> 00:24:53.529 Donald Trump's climate policies. He feared we 00:24:53.529 --> 00:24:56.150 were on a path to turning Earth into a Venus 00:24:56.150 --> 00:24:58.740 -like planet. hot and uninhabitable. In those 00:24:58.740 --> 00:25:00.960 later years, he really did turn his mind to these 00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:04.619 biggest of big questions, philosophy, God, humanity's 00:25:04.619 --> 00:25:06.539 future. And he wasn't shy about his opinions. 00:25:06.759 --> 00:25:10.319 In 2011, he famously declared that philosophy 00:25:10.319 --> 00:25:12.720 is dead. That's a bold statement. What was his 00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:14.740 reasoning? He basically argued that philosophers 00:25:14.740 --> 00:25:17.779 hadn't kept up with modern science. He felt that 00:25:17.779 --> 00:25:19.940 the big questions that used to belong to philosophy, 00:25:20.220 --> 00:25:22.299 what is the nature of existence, where did the 00:25:22.299 --> 00:25:24.660 universe come from, were now being answered by 00:25:24.660 --> 00:25:27.980 physicists. He saw scientists as the bearers 00:25:27.980 --> 00:25:30.720 of the torch of discovery now. And his own views 00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:33.759 on a creator, on God, they evolved quite a bit. 00:25:33.940 --> 00:25:36.180 They really did. In a brief history of time, 00:25:36.359 --> 00:25:38.740 he uses that famous metaphor about wanting to 00:25:38.740 --> 00:25:41.640 know the mind of God. A lot of people interpreted 00:25:41.640 --> 00:25:44.240 that in a religious sense. But later on, he left 00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:46.859 no room for doubt. None at all. In his last decade, 00:25:47.059 --> 00:25:50.119 he was explicitly and proudly an atheist. He 00:25:50.119 --> 00:25:52.509 said, I'm an atheist. His view was that the universe 00:25:52.509 --> 00:25:55.509 is governed by the laws of physics, period. The 00:25:55.509 --> 00:25:57.769 Hartle -Hawking model supported that. A universe 00:25:57.769 --> 00:26:00.390 with no boundary needs no creator. He even described 00:26:00.390 --> 00:26:02.869 the brain as a computer. Right. A computer that 00:26:02.869 --> 00:26:04.950 will stop working when its parts fail. Yeah. 00:26:05.029 --> 00:26:07.609 And he called the afterlife a fairy story for 00:26:07.609 --> 00:26:10.369 people afraid of the dark. His final view was 00:26:10.369 --> 00:26:13.130 that no one created the universe and no one directs 00:26:13.130 --> 00:26:16.650 our fate. And that worldview, based on physics 00:26:16.650 --> 00:26:19.690 and probability, led him to some pretty stark 00:26:19.690 --> 00:26:22.349 conclusions about our survival. He thought a 00:26:22.349 --> 00:26:24.329 global catastrophe in the next thousand years 00:26:24.329 --> 00:26:28.390 was almost inevitable. A nuclear war, a genetically 00:26:28.390 --> 00:26:33.690 engineered virus, an asteroid. Something. Which 00:26:33.690 --> 00:26:36.130 is why he was such a proponent of space colonization. 00:26:36.329 --> 00:26:38.670 It was an imperative for him. Don't keep all 00:26:38.670 --> 00:26:40.750 of humanity's eggs in one basket. We have to 00:26:40.750 --> 00:26:43.049 become a multi -planet species to guarantee our 00:26:43.049 --> 00:26:45.450 long -term survival. And if we do meet anyone 00:26:45.450 --> 00:26:48.309 else out there, he had a strong warning. A very 00:26:48.309 --> 00:26:51.539 strong warning. Avoid contact. He feared that 00:26:51.539 --> 00:26:54.180 an advanced alien civilization would likely be 00:26:54.180 --> 00:26:57.160 nomadic, looking for resources. He compared it 00:26:57.160 --> 00:26:59.200 to Columbus arriving in America. Which, as he 00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:01.099 said, didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. 00:27:01.279 --> 00:27:03.279 Exactly. He thought the risk was far too great. 00:27:03.500 --> 00:27:05.700 And finally, his warnings on artificial intelligence. 00:27:05.759 --> 00:27:08.380 He saw it as possibly the biggest event in our 00:27:08.380 --> 00:27:11.160 history, but also maybe the last. And his fear 00:27:11.160 --> 00:27:13.920 wasn't about AI becoming evil like in the movies. 00:27:14.059 --> 00:27:17.960 His fear was about AI becoming competent. Competent, 00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:19.859 but with goals that aren't aligned with ours. 00:27:20.299 --> 00:27:23.200 Precisely. If a super intelligent AI is programmed 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:27.410 to, say, maximize paperclip production. It might 00:27:27.410 --> 00:27:29.349 turn the whole planet into a paperclip factory, 00:27:29.470 --> 00:27:31.410 not out of malice, but just because that's its 00:27:31.410 --> 00:27:33.730 goal. And humans would just be in the way. He 00:27:33.730 --> 00:27:36.190 also saw the immediate economic threat. Oh, absolutely. 00:27:36.549 --> 00:27:38.910 He argued that if machines are creating all the 00:27:38.910 --> 00:27:40.990 wealth, that wealth has to be redistributed. 00:27:41.210 --> 00:27:43.490 Otherwise, you'd have catastrophic inequality 00:27:43.490 --> 00:27:46.390 that would tear society apart long before the 00:27:46.390 --> 00:27:49.069 AI took over. Even in his final days, his mind 00:27:49.069 --> 00:27:51.130 was still working, still publishing. It was. 00:27:51.269 --> 00:27:54.470 His last book, Brief Answers to the... Big questions 00:27:54.470 --> 00:27:56.950 came out after his death, summarizing all these 00:27:56.950 --> 00:27:59.390 final thoughts. And his final research papers 00:27:59.390 --> 00:28:01.349 were still tackling the biggest mysteries in 00:28:01.349 --> 00:28:06.490 cosmology. He died at 76 on March 14, 2018. And 00:28:06.490 --> 00:28:08.750 the recognition he received in death was just 00:28:08.750 --> 00:28:11.309 immense. He was interred in Westminster Abbey. 00:28:11.390 --> 00:28:13.490 His ashes were placed right between the graves 00:28:13.490 --> 00:28:15.950 of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. It's a statement. 00:28:16.029 --> 00:28:17.990 It puts him in that tiny pantheon of figures 00:28:17.990 --> 00:28:20.650 who fundamentally changed how we see the universe 00:28:20.650 --> 00:28:23.170 and our place in it. And his memorial stone has 00:28:23.170 --> 00:28:26.230 an equation on it. That's his epitaph. The Bekenstein 00:28:26.230 --> 00:28:29.130 -Hawking entropy equation. He specifically requested 00:28:29.130 --> 00:28:31.849 it 15 years before he died. It looks incredibly 00:28:31.849 --> 00:28:34.869 complex. Why that one equation? What does it 00:28:34.869 --> 00:28:37.069 represent? It represents his entire life's work, 00:28:37.210 --> 00:28:41.230 his ultimate synthesis. The equation links the 00:28:41.230 --> 00:28:44.009 entropy or information content of a black hole 00:28:44.009 --> 00:28:47.349 to the area of its event horizon. But the key 00:28:47.349 --> 00:28:49.809 is in the constants, right? The letters in the 00:28:49.809 --> 00:28:52.309 equation. The key is in the constants. To make 00:28:52.309 --> 00:28:55.200 it work, you need the Adler. the gravitational 00:28:55.200 --> 00:28:57.220 constant from Einstein's general relativity. 00:28:57.500 --> 00:29:00.220 You need the piezo, the speed of light, also 00:29:00.220 --> 00:29:04.009 from relativity. And you need D -Otter. Planck's 00:29:04.009 --> 00:29:06.349 constant, which is the fundamental constant of 00:29:06.349 --> 00:29:08.609 quantum mechanics. So it's the one place in the 00:29:08.609 --> 00:29:11.150 universe where all the great theories have to 00:29:11.150 --> 00:29:13.089 come together. It's the one equation that proves 00:29:13.089 --> 00:29:15.349 that gravity, relativity, and quantum mechanics 00:29:15.349 --> 00:29:18.690 are all deeply and fundamentally connected. It's 00:29:18.690 --> 00:29:20.849 the perfect capstone for a man who spent his 00:29:20.849 --> 00:29:23.390 life trying to build that bridge between the 00:29:23.390 --> 00:29:26.289 immense cosmic world and the tiny quantum one. 00:29:26.410 --> 00:29:29.509 A staggering final statement. So as we wrap up 00:29:29.509 --> 00:29:31.430 this deep dive, what's the final thought for 00:29:31.430 --> 00:29:34.829 you, the listener? Hawking's life was this incredible 00:29:34.829 --> 00:29:38.450 synthesis of the immense and the intimate. He 00:29:38.450 --> 00:29:41.009 was uniting cosmology and quantum mechanics while 00:29:41.009 --> 00:29:43.809 his own body was collapsing. So if his Hartle 00:29:43.809 --> 00:29:46.069 Hawking state is right, if the universe has no 00:29:46.069 --> 00:29:48.710 boundary in time, no true beginning, then how 00:29:48.710 --> 00:29:51.609 should we value this one finite life we've been 00:29:51.609 --> 00:29:54.390 given? And what grand synthesis should you be 00:29:54.390 --> 00:29:56.750 striving for in your own deep dives to unite 00:29:56.750 --> 00:29:58.490 the different parts of your own knowledge and 00:29:58.490 --> 00:30:00.670 your own life? A challenge worthy of the man 00:30:00.670 --> 00:30:02.630 himself. Thank you for joining us for the deep 00:30:02.630 --> 00:30:03.789 dive. We'll see you next time.