The path to heaven

The most famous physicist of our time with a bright and difficult fate died. A person who managed to turn his ailment for the good. By good I understand, first of all, his educational mission. Many good physicists were engaged in enlightenment, but did not perceive anyone with such attention as Stephen Hawking. The very fact that articles, books and performances come from a person who is not able to move.

If we take a purely scientific component of his activities, then hoking is an outstanding physicist, but not a genius, as it is represented by the general public from the screens of TVs and pages of books. Rather, a hero than a genius. Actually, he has one bright and truly famous result-Hawking radiation: black holes are slowly “evaporating”, emitting photons, and in the end explode. Of course, he has many other important works that would have the honor of any physicist - ten of his articles were quoted more than a thousand times each, but the most famous about the radiation of Hawking - more than 6 thousand times.

The second in citation, the article is also associated with the radiation of black holes - about their stormy explosive evaporation in the finale - more than two thousand citation. Still - this is a beautiful and potentially observed effect. Black holes weighing 1015 g evict just during the life of the universe. The pace of evaporation grows as the mass decreases. If they were born together with the universe (primary black holes), now they explode, releasing a million megaton bombs in the last tenth of a second, emailing particles of high energies. Of course, such explosions are looking for, but so far unsuccessfully.

The effect is very beautiful. In fact, he is simple and obvious (however, it now seems so). Here, quantum mechanics are involved in might and main, which states that the vacuum consists of zero vibrations of all fields. In some cases, zero vibrations can turn into real ones. Such situations arise in strong fields that can put energy into a couple of virtual particles in order to translate them into real ones (this is a terribly vulgar but generally accepted form of presentation). In this case, the gravitational field of the black hole works. If you take a couple of particles (photons) - one outside the horizon of events, the other inside - then from the point of view of the external observer the first has positive energy, the second - negative. So they are born on the border - the first goes to infinity, the second remains in a black hole, its negative energy is summarized with a mass of black hole, which as a result is slightly reduced. For astrophysical black holes, this radiation is very weak, it has the appearance of long radio waves, and the wavelengths are comparable to the size of the black holes themselves. The time of evaporation of the black hole of star origin is 1060 years. However, the energy of radiated particles is inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole, and the intensity is inversely proportional to the fourth degree of mass. That is why evaporation ends with an explosion, where not only electromagnetic radiation is involved, but also all existing particles.

Hawking was not exchanged for trifles and dealt with the deepest questions: how the universe arose, what it was, is it possible to describe it with a quantum -mechanical wave function, does information in black holes disappear, does black holes lead to other universes, what is the “arrow of time”? Is it possible to make a time machine in the form of a mole burr that violates causality with gravity? He tried to approach quantum gravity, formulated the connection between black holes and thermodynamics.

Very important events in cosmology occurred in the early 1980s-a kind of revolution. For a couple of years, a mechanism (more precisely, scenario) of cosmological inflation was developed, in general terms explaining the origin of the universe with its galaxies. It was a collective assault, and Hawking actively participated in it. He “held a hand on the pulse”, went to all significant conferences, organized them himself, quickly responded to what was happening with his articles. Of course, he made a significant contribution to the theory of cosmological inflation. How to determine this contribution to other researchers? The place in the three potential nominees for the Nobel Prize (which, in my opinion, has already deserved the theory of inflation), he would not belong to him, but somewhere in the six leaders of this breakthrough he is precisely included.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he often came to Moscow-Zeldovich’s cosmological school was one of the strongest in the world. He performed at conferences and seminars, talked with the people. Andrei Linde recalls a funny episode. Hawking made a report in one of the institutes. Each of his phrase “translated” into an English graduate student, then Andrei translated the phrase into Russian. And Hawking began to explain why the mechanism proposed by Andrei Linde in the last article would not work. And Andrei translated everything - Zeldovich and other classics sat in the hall, and he was forced to smash his work. After the seminar, Hawking and Linda disappeared. It was a real commotion! In the end, they were found in one of the audiences, where Andrei explained to Steven that he was still right. And he seemed to explain.

Colleagues say that at one of the conferences organized by Zeldovich in Moscow, Hawking took and danced a waltz in his chair, driving them with two fingers that still obeyed him. He not only thought in his chair, but also lived and had fun! He had everything in order with a sense of humor, with potency (three children, two wives). He traveled a lot in his chair - both in conferences and as a tourist. He experienced a minute weightlessness on an airplane on the hill. He was very sociable, despite communication problems. The above episode with Andrei Linda ended with the fact that Hawking invited him to the hotel, where they continued the dispute, and then spoke late for himself and his family, showed pictures 1 .

Hawking wrote articles almost until the end of his life. Three articles with co-authors are published in 2017. Recent articles without co -authors - in 2014 and 2015. They are devoted to the information paradox of black holes: whether information is lost about what has fallen in them. Does information fly to another universe or returns in the form of Hawking radiation? Perhaps the largest number of articles are devoted to this issue, which seems to have no connection with reality, but the answer is needed to understand the foundations of the world order.

Most of his works are search engines. They do not have a clear universally recognized result “for centuries”, as in his own work on the radiation of black holes, rather there is a statement of important issues. The mass media put him on a par with Einstein, which, of course, is wrong. Hawking is not a “physical genius”. This is a hero of a different type. And, perhaps, its main result is different - in public activity.

If he was just a physicist, and even healthy - he would stand in a general series of outstanding physicists of the last third of the 20th century. But in trouble (his own) and fortunately (society), he got a much brighter role. Thanks to the amazing power of the spirit, Hawking has become a world celebrity. He ordered his glory very well. What he did in terms of enlightenment, in my opinion, outweighs his contribution to science. Hawking wrote excellent books, the most famous of which is “A Brief History of Time”. Probably, from it the largest number of people learned about modern cosmology and other fundamental things. Perhaps, when compared with other books, this one will turn out to be a champion in the number of youth recruited in science.

Stephen Hawking has become a real phenomenon of culture. Man-meme, man-brand. It is not easy to calculate how many films and popular programs he appears - either performed by an actor, then performed by himself. For example, in one of the Star Trek series Newton, Einstein and Hawking play cards. The first two, of course, are played by the actors, and he plays Hoking, sitting in his chair and moving cards with the help of a mechanical hand.

Many thought about the future of the human race, about the war and the world, about the place of man in the universe precisely thanks to his broad -flowing statements. People believe more to his warnings than the statements of politicians. Personally, I am very close to Hawking’s statement about the role of space - its development is necessary primarily in order to eliminate the real risk of a person’s complete disappearance, or even all life on Earth.

Great glory has its own costs - it is often abused by it. It seemed to me many times that other people abuse the glory of hoking. It was depicted as prestigious furniture in some second-rate science-science transmission, then the journalists oversaw his words for the sake of a catchy title. For example, there is a powerful shaft of headlines: "Hawking said that there is no black holes." You will dig up in amazement, you are convinced that he did not say anything like that, but said completely different, you calm down and explain to people. Of course, it was very difficult for him to control everything that was happening around his name. However, these are trifles that cannot spoil the necrologist of a person of this scale.

Boris Stern

A short version of the article is published in The Insider

1 Andrey Linde, Boris Stern. How in half an hour the world has changed // TRV-hunger, No. 152 of April 22, 2014.