NASA Honors Legacy of Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking

Not even top-notch astronomers.

He died in his home in Cambridge in the early hourse of Wednesday at the age of 76.

He won nearly every scientific honour available, wrote 15 books, including the wildly successful A Brief History of Time, and held several prestigious teaching engagements, including as one of the successors of Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. It has over 10 million copies sold. It’s been called “the least-read best-seller ever”.

In 2014, James Marsh directed “The Theory of Everything”, the biographical movie about Hawking’s life. He said, “I felt it was very unfair – why should this happen to me?” “He’s become an icon for a mind that is beyond ordinary mortals”.

The British Royal Society awarded Hawking its prestigious Copley Medal on November 30, 2006, for his contributions to theoretical physics and theoretical cosmology.

“No ethics no morals no sympathy!” angrily tweeted one sports fan, who added that he hoped Neymar loses “all his money”.

He explained that Hawking shined a light on an area of science that many people didn’t know about. ‘He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.

“I think it was Einstein who wrote The Theory of Relativity!”.

Hawking’s accomplishments are all the more remarkable, given his contributions were mostly made after he was diagnosed with ALS, under extremely hard circumstances, he said. He flew in a zero-gravity plane. So, if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. But then his mind and the “joy that he took in science” dominated.

He promoted the idea of a Big Bang that began with a singularity event. It always got a big laugh.

“As a person he’s an inspirational character”, said Shajid Haque, a physics lecturer at the University of Windsor. “I’ve been to talks Hawking has given and can not follow them myself”. Some physicists challenged and disagreed with Hawking’s views such as Leonard Susskind and John Preskill of the University of California.

But Hawking radiation in turn posed a new problem, the so-called “black hole information paradox”. “He made us laugh and we made him laugh”. Hawking made physics cool. “Work gives you meaning and goal, and life is empty without it”, Hawking reminded them at the time.

It was inspired by a young Reno man, who was on life support and only able to communicate by blinking.

His sense of adventure was also still intact, he said. In 1976, Hawking proposed that black holes radiate energy. “There are certain types of idealized black holes that you can construct in string-theory models, and there, it’s quite clear that there’s no loss of information”. I also reflect on my own thoughts and I realize that, though times can become tough and frustrating; I am in no position to complain. Anyway, The Theory of Everything, based on the book by Jane Hawking, the scientist’s first wife, and with a script by Anthony McCarten, was a risky enterprise.

The high-concept theory-making didn’t quite match the personality behind it. Colleagues often mention his off-the-wall humor, his big grin, his stubbornness.

Hawking also warned against announcing our presence to any alien civilisations, especially to those more technologically advanced than humans. “It goes well beyond the wheelchair”.

In the show, “Leaving Earth: Or How to Colonize a Planet”, Hawking says he thinks humanity needs to make plans now to be ready before a disaster threatens Earth, Space.com reported.