Posted on 06/15/2006 6:41:00 AM PDT by edpc
Acclaimed British physicist Stephen Hawking has said that humanity is finally getting close to understanding the origin of the universe.
Speaking at a lecture in Hong Kong, Hawking said that despite some theoretical advances in the past years, there are still mysteries as to how the universe began.
"Despite having had some great successes, not everything is solved. We do not yet have good theoretical understanding of the observation of the expansion of the universe," he told an audience of 2,500 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Thursday.
"Without such understanding, we cannot be sure of the future of the universe.
"New observational results and theoretical advances are coming in rapidly; cosmology is a very exciting subject. We are getting close to answering these old questions: why are we here, where did we come from?"
The 64-year-old also said his unfulfilled ambitions, among many, were to find out what happens inside black holes, how the universe began and how the human race can survive in the next 100 years.
Above all, he joked, he wants to understand women.
On Tuesday Hawking said the human race should reach for the stars to survive as the Earth is at risk of being wiped out by a disaster.
He believes humans should settle in space, predicting a lunar settlement within 20 years and a Martian colony in 40.
Hawking, a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, speaks with a voice synthesiser and has been in a wheelchair since developing motor neurone disease.
During his Hong Kong visit he also revealed he is writing a children's book with his daughter about theoretical physics.
Hawking is the author of international best seller "A Brief History of Time", which attempted to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory.
He is on a six-day visit to Hong Kong and will meet Chief Executive Donald Tsang Friday before heading to Beijing Saturday where he will give a lecture on string theory.
And his taste in nurses is above reproach.
You seem pretty good with quoting scripture, could you tell us what God and Jesus have said about being self-righteous?
Carl Sagan was a TOOL of the scientific establishment.
Hawking admits that he was dead wrong about "black holes."
Why should I give a blank what he has to say about anything else?
Hawking and Carl Sagan in the same sentence.
That hurt.
I don't think much of Hawking, but he deserves better than to be equated with media phony Carl Sagan.
Isaac Asimov was a hard working stooge for the scientific establishment.
Next somebody is going to put forward the Amazing Randi as their scientific "authority."
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. Often invoked as justification for unbelief, in this book modern science provides the basis for an unusual and provocative affirmation of religious faith. A professor of theoretical particle physics at the University of Delaware, Stephen Barr deploys his scientific expertise to challenge the dogmas of naturalistic materialism and to assert his belief that nothing explains the order of the universe better than divine design. To be sure, Barr recognizes that Darwin's work has swept away the arguments of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theologians, who traced the handiwork of God in birds, flowers, and seashells. But the old argument-from-design reemerges with new sophistication after Barr presses evolutionary theory for a plausible account of the origin of what quantum physics demands that is, a conscious observer and comes away with nothing but skepticism about the skeptics. Barr indeed relishes the irony of a skeptical logic of random chance that forces unbelievers who balk at one unobservable God to accept, on doctrinal faith, a myriad of unobservable worlds on which the matter-motion lottery has not produced the winning ticket of conscious intelligence. The absurdity grows even more palpable among astrophysicists who avoid acknowledging the human-friendly pattern in subatomic and cosmic architecture found in the observable universe only by theorizing the existence of an infinite number of unobservable universes in which sovereign randomness has dictated other and more hostile architectures. Neither religiously sectarian nor technically daunting, this book invites the widest range of readers to ponder the deepest kind of questions.
What makes your theories posted here any more or less whacko than Hawkings?
You said -- "No it doesn't."
Spoken exactly in the words of the "fool" of the Bible...
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said -- "If I want to read scripture, I'll go to the religion sidebar or pick up a bible."
I'll quote it any time I want.
You have the freedom to not read it. It's just as valid a quote as anything from any other so-called expert in this world. In fact, it's more relevent.
Your choice...
Regards,
Star Traveler
And haven't we been *close* to a unified theory of physics which will explain all for like the last 30 years?
Can't you religious types leave a science thread alone without spamming it with biblical quotes?
Why should I (or anyone else) give a crap what you think about him? He's a theorist, and sometimes even theories that are wrong help to advance science. At least he had the honesty to admit that he believes he was wrong.
You said -- "You seem pretty good with quoting scripture, could you tell us what God and Jesus have said about being self-righteous?"
And you would have the Bible sitting in a dust-filled box somewhere -- and not spoken in the "public market".
I thought that was the mantra of the liberal left -- "keep your Bible behind closed church doors." Don't say anything in public about it -- God forbid...
Sorry, that's not what the Bible says.
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said -- "What makes your theories posted here any more or less whacko than Hawkings?"
I don't have any theories.
God, on the other hand, simply *states* what He has done, and what He has provided through His Son, Jesus Christ. No theories there, either, since it's straight from the source.
Your choice...
Regards,
Star Traveler
At least he had the honesty to admit that he believes he was wrong.
Yes he does.
But decades after those who disagreed with him had their careers destroyed.
You said -- "Can't you religious types leave a science thread alone without spamming it with biblical quotes?"
And can't you atheist types avoid *spamming our lives and living existence* with anti-God quotes and statements?
I guess not... from what I see around me...
Regards,
Star Traveler
Of course you have the right to call me on anything you find offensive ..... and I'm not so thinned skin to be bugged by that. I'll admit the shrivelled crip nomenclature was perhaps, over the top, but take my post at face value. I feel it is rediculous anyone sit at the feet of Hawking awaiting his next groan.
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