Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alice and I don't know, the science editor
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writer at how stuff works dot com. And you know, um,
Speaker 1: it's really hard not to love Stephen Hawking. Indeed, he's
Speaker 1: very lovable and intelligent, especially when you you know, you write, podcast, edit,
Speaker 1: live and breathe science, you know, at least from nine
Speaker 1: to six from you know, for a living. Then then
Speaker 1: you know he's a pretty big deal. Yeah, he starts
Speaker 1: to approach idle status, but like we're discussing earlier, it's
Speaker 1: often easy to like fall into the trap of just thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, this is a brilliant, brilliant brain in um,
Speaker 1: you know, a a disabled body and uh, and then
Speaker 1: sort of like dismiss a lot of like whatever he's
Speaker 1: talking about. What are you talking about? Dismiss who's dismissing Hawking?
Speaker 1: Who has the audacity seeing that? Not like logically saying
Speaker 1: like Hawking, but more like people are just kind of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking, he's brilliant, but without really giving a lot
Speaker 1: of thought to like what he's you know, actually why
Speaker 1: he's brilliant or much less thinking about the man, the
Speaker 1: man that this is. This is a real dude, and
Speaker 1: it's more than a theoretical physics and he's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting guy. Yeah. So today we thought we'd walk you
Speaker 1: through a couple of things that you might not know
Speaker 1: about Stephen Hawking. Despite the title hanging with Stephen Hockey,
Speaker 1: he's not actually here in the studio. He didn't respond
Speaker 1: to our interview requests. Imagine that. Um. This is based
Speaker 1: on article that Jane McGrath, former co host of Stuff
Speaker 1: You Miston history class back in the day, and she
Speaker 1: wrote an article for House to Parks called ten cool
Speaker 1: things you didn't know about Stephen Hawking. So if you
Speaker 1: are really into Hawking and you want to go check
Speaker 1: it out after you listen to our podcast, do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also have a quiz about Stephen Hawking. We have
Speaker 1: two quizes about Stephen Hawking, I think. So if you
Speaker 1: feel like Stephen Hawking already know that stuff, well bring it,
Speaker 1: you know, come to the website and test that knowledge out. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what is the theoretical physicist known for? What do
Speaker 1: you know him for? Black holes? Right? Yeah, black hole
Speaker 1: research and also the whole limitless universe thing where the
Speaker 1: boundless universe. We'll get into that a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. We don't don't turn off the podcast.
Speaker 1: We're not going to get heavy into that. But but
Speaker 1: well we'll discuss it. Let's let's start out with the
Speaker 1: day of his birth. It's kind of handy because this
Speaker 1: guy was born three hundred years to the day after
Speaker 1: Galileo died on January so that's kind of handy. I
Speaker 1: did think about looking up to see who died on
Speaker 1: on my birthday to see if I could somehow link
Speaker 1: myself a big figure in the past, but I didn't
Speaker 1: have time before the podcast. Oh that that's a bit
Speaker 1: of a letdown. I was really getting excited. We'll say
Speaker 1: that for another podcast. Um, but but yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty big. You know. It kind of implies that he
Speaker 1: had some big guest shoes to fill, and you know,
Speaker 1: some people would say he kind of did. But interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: this guy has never received a Nobel It is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so he's one of the most famous physicists
Speaker 1: out there, one of the most famous scientists out there,
Speaker 1: but he's gotten lots of other awards and prizes and
Speaker 1: recognitions that, but nothing about Yeah, so inducted into the
Speaker 1: Royal Society at the wee age of in his thirties.
Speaker 1: I think he was thirty two. He was. He was
Speaker 1: a relative young feller. Although a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are making their names in math and science, they say
Speaker 1: have already done like their critical work when they're pretty young,
Speaker 1: which I always find distressing because you know what, if
Speaker 1: my best years are are gone, your best years of
Speaker 1: scientific brilliance is gone. Um So. Another interesting thing is
Speaker 1: he's held at Cambridge University's Lucaezian Professor of Mathematics position.
Speaker 1: And this is pretty darn prestigious, especially when you consider
Speaker 1: that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the guys who
Speaker 1: has held it, and Charles Babbage, And do you know
Speaker 1: who Babbage is? I needed a little refresh on Babbage.
Speaker 1: It sounds familiar. I was just talking about him with
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff this morning. He something to
Speaker 1: do with computers, he does, he does. He was essentially
Speaker 1: the guy who led to the modern computer. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: computers are great. But has he received an award from
Speaker 1: the Pope? Indeed, I'm not sure Babbage has, but Hawking
Speaker 1: has he and Roger Penrose did the pious eleven Gold
Speaker 1: Medal for science. You know, we have to do some
Speaker 1: some sort of something about the pope giving out medals
Speaker 1: to science because this was curious. I've not heard of this,
Speaker 1: had you? Um? Yeah, I was a famiere a little
Speaker 1: bit with it. I know one thing we're talking about Galileo.
Speaker 1: Galileo did not get an award from the Pope, at
Speaker 1: least not in his day and time. Yeah, and Galileo
Speaker 1: certainly did not get the Presidential Medal of Freedom from
Speaker 1: US President Barack Obama in two thousand nine. Yeah, what's up, Obama?
Speaker 1: Why are you not giving Galileos dues? I think he'd
Speaker 1: take him even after his death. Of course, Hawking is
Speaker 1: no stranger to the media. Have you guys seen him?
Speaker 1: Have you Have you checked him out in any of
Speaker 1: his many appearances on TV or in film? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen the Futurama episode that he's in where um, he
Speaker 1: like teams up with Al Gore and a few other
Speaker 1: notable celebrities to like go back in time and um,
Speaker 1: we're going to the future to like save the world.
Speaker 1: And so it's pretty funny. Um. So this episode really
Speaker 1: made an impression on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I
Speaker 1: do remember specifically that Philip Fry, the kind of idiot
Speaker 1: main character and Futurama. He uh, he discovers like a
Speaker 1: cosmic achnology and calls it a fry hole, and and
Speaker 1: then Hawking like steals it from him and calls it
Speaker 1: a Hawking hole. That's good stuff. He's been on The
Speaker 1: Simpsons four separate times. I heard the connection there was
Speaker 1: that his daughter Lucy knew one of the scriptwriters from
Speaker 1: the Simpsons. Um and he Hawking had a funny quote
Speaker 1: and he said, as many people know me through the
Speaker 1: Simpsons as through science, which is kind of hilarious. And
Speaker 1: he also said Simpsons is the best thing on American TV. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a big fan. You can you can kind of
Speaker 1: tell a lot about somebody if they have at least
Speaker 1: dug the Simpsons at one point or another. I have
Speaker 1: a friend who swears that she's never seen the Simpsons,
Speaker 1: which I find to be a lie. How and that
Speaker 1: be she has she has a TV, she has seen TV,
Speaker 1: she has seen the Simpsons. How could you not have
Speaker 1: seen the Simpsons? And then, of course, um, you wrote
Speaker 1: a recent article that was based around his Discovery series
Speaker 1: Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, and this got a
Speaker 1: lot of press because he was talking about some things
Speaker 1: that people didn't want to necessarily hear about. Aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we we did a podcast, yeah, talking about this
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it basically boiled down to it
Speaker 1: was a slow news week. Oil hadn't like leaked up
Speaker 1: and polluted the golf yet, so everyone was like, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna talk about that today? Aliens? Right? Um,
Speaker 1: here's something you might not have known about Hawking. Along
Speaker 1: with his whole appearances on TV and in film, he's
Speaker 1: a children's author. Yeah, and I'm thinking, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: excited about the books. So he's written too with his
Speaker 1: daughter Lucy Hawking. Um. And the first one is George's
Speaker 1: Secret Key to the Universe, and it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: part of a trilogy built around this little boy George.
Speaker 1: And the second one is out too, it's called George's
Speaker 1: Cosmic Treasure Hunt. So I was curious because I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I have some kids, know, some kids, I
Speaker 1: gotta get them presents sometimes, you know, when things roll
Speaker 1: around birthdays and such, And these started like good books
Speaker 1: to get kids. Yeah, I mean it's supposedly like and
Speaker 1: I haven't read them, but supposed to be each one
Speaker 1: like deals with like real cosmological you know issues, like
Speaker 1: they explain kind of how the universe works in you know,
Speaker 1: far simpler terms. Yeah. They did an interview with ABC
Speaker 1: Lucy and her I think Lucy and her dad did,
Speaker 1: and Lucy says it was clear to me that there
Speaker 1: was a wealth of science fiction available for children, but
Speaker 1: not very much quote unquote science fact. Science fiction can
Speaker 1: be exciting and very gripping, but it doesn't tell us
Speaker 1: anything about the universe in which we live. We wrote
Speaker 1: an adventure that is based on real science rather than
Speaker 1: on fantasy. I don't know. I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: that I kind of disagree with her on the whole
Speaker 1: science fiction thing not being able to tell us about well,
Speaker 1: the universe. It, No, it can, but I just don't
Speaker 1: know how much I think. Maybe her point is more
Speaker 1: when it comes to children's fiction, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: like and I can't think of any like young adults
Speaker 1: sci fi titles. Well, I don't know. I guess for
Speaker 1: me when I was a young adult, like the sci
Speaker 1: fi titles that I was into, or things like Asimov.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, if you look at it that way,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, Asimov is perfectly fine for many
Speaker 1: young people to read, and you know, and I think
Speaker 1: reading as Amov has inspired you know, many scientists and
Speaker 1: children who just you know, went on to other things
Speaker 1: that remained interested in it. But the book that Hawking
Speaker 1: is really well known for is, of course, Brief History
Speaker 1: of Time. Right did you read it? Um? I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've sat down and read it cover to cover,
Speaker 1: but I've definitely hit it up here and there for
Speaker 1: articles or you know, to answer little questions in my head. Um.
Speaker 1: They made a movie out of it as well, which
Speaker 1: I have not seen, but yeah, and there's a hawkings
Speaker 1: and tons of documentaries. He's written all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: But here's something this guy, this vaunted science celebrity, maybe
Speaker 1: not always the best student. Yeah, everybody loves these stories.
Speaker 1: Everybody does love these stories because whether you're a you know,
Speaker 1: a kid who just got to see you know, in
Speaker 1: in social studies, or you're a mom, or the argument
Speaker 1: when you present your battery port to your parents. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve Jobs never finished high school. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: like when Einstein was a kidte Robbi convenient story, and
Speaker 1: hockey wasn't even really that smart. Yeah, Bill Gates stole
Speaker 1: the painting. You know, he turned out great. But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, Hawking could actually get it done in
Speaker 1: the grades department. When he took his scholarship exams, he
Speaker 1: aised them and he had a near perfect score on
Speaker 1: the physics portion. Yeah, when it came down to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, basically, be in a situation where you're not
Speaker 1: going to get to go to the college you need
Speaker 1: to go to unless you as this test, then he
Speaker 1: ponied up and did it. So that's interesting because, um,
Speaker 1: he didn't really want to study physics. Physics represented a
Speaker 1: compromise between he and his dad, good old Frank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his dad wanted him to be a doctor. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you know that's a lot of parents want their
Speaker 1: kids to go into medicine. Yeah, make that make the
Speaker 1: big money. Right. But but then the yeah, that then
Speaker 1: he was more interested in mathematics, like this, the whole
Speaker 1: the hard cold you know when I mean not cold.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're in love with mathematics, it's not
Speaker 1: really a cold thing. But numbers can be warm and
Speaker 1: fuzzy if you understand them. Yeah, they can be, yeah,
Speaker 1: your best friends of your mathematician. But he was very
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of potential in mathematics. There's a and then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, exact you know, calculation, and I
Speaker 1: think he was really into that it wasn't so psyched
Speaker 1: on biology, found it rather imprecise, and so Jane was
Speaker 1: Jane was writing. So he ultimately wound up attending Oxford
Speaker 1: and majoring in physics. And when it came to figure
Speaker 1: out what physics path he wanted to go down, he
Speaker 1: chose cosmology. Yeah, the big questions, you know, the big
Speaker 1: overall what is he He's a big picture guy instead
Speaker 1: of particle physics. So why there's a pretty interesting quote.
Speaker 1: He gave a two thousand to lecture to Cambridge's Center
Speaker 1: for Mathematical Sciences and he said, came about particle physics,
Speaker 1: but I felt that elementary particles at that time was
Speaker 1: too like Botany. That's kind of rough, kind of a rough,
Speaker 1: very fair to the Botan Steither, but yeah, definitely even
Speaker 1: more interesting it is this man who we've come to
Speaker 1: know in a wheelchair. I'll be a crazy advanced wheelchair
Speaker 1: he was a rower. Yeah, first year Oxford, he went
Speaker 1: out for the crew team. Yeah he was. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was kind of like he wasn't like one of like
Speaker 1: the muscle rowers, but he's a cockin. He's the one
Speaker 1: who sat in the front because he was kind of
Speaker 1: a small guy even then, and so his petite build
Speaker 1: was good for sitting in the front of the boat
Speaker 1: when you shout directions, whoa, whoa, give me lunch or
Speaker 1: whatever you yell at your rowers. So yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's important, I think to realize that this, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy was once You know, if you're all young,
Speaker 1: young dude out there steering and not rowing a boat,
Speaker 1: well do they I mean they kind of direct Well,
Speaker 1: I mean he's steering. He's not like, you know, wiggling
Speaker 1: and bum from side to side to steer the boat.
Speaker 1: But still he's out there. You know, it's physical exertion,
Speaker 1: it's probably cold, and you know, well, so he had
Speaker 1: to drop it because rowing, as some of you guys
Speaker 1: probably know, it cuts into your school work, all that practice.
Speaker 1: It's fairly intense sport. So you had to drop it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But once upon a time, Stephen Hawking was a rower.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the family life. There's some pretty good
Speaker 1: stuff there. Yeah, Like the the author of our our
Speaker 1: article about about Hawking. His wife's name was Jane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first wife. He met his wife Jane at a New
Speaker 1: Year's party, wife Jane. According to Jane, it's funny. His wife,
Speaker 1: Jane thought that Hawking was a funny guy and he
Speaker 1: and she admired his independence and the sense of humor
Speaker 1: is something that remains with him. I mean, obviously he's
Speaker 1: cool with showing up on the Simpsons in Futurama, but
Speaker 1: but you see other things he's written and even the
Speaker 1: you know, the the TV show on Discovery of the
Speaker 1: Hawkings Universe, and there's a certain sense of humor to
Speaker 1: that as well. Yeah, it's pretty sharp. But Gec, he's
Speaker 1: good with comeback. It wasn't long after he met Jane, though,
Speaker 1: that he ended up going to the doctor to what
Speaker 1: he was like tripping a lot. He was filmed kind
Speaker 1: of clumsy, you know, like there's something wrong with his
Speaker 1: like motor skills and h He was diagnosed with blue
Speaker 1: Garrig's disease, also known as a l S. Yeah. Here,
Speaker 1: I'll just attempt it. Amiotrophic lateral sclerosis and that was
Speaker 1: at the wee age of twenty two. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: were not giving that kind of a forecast either thought
Speaker 1: he maybe lived like twenty four or something, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not necessarily long to even finish his PhD. He was
Speaker 1: then at Cambridge. So according to Mayo Clinic, in case
Speaker 1: you guys want to know the deal in a l S,
Speaker 1: if you don't remember H, signs of ALIS start to
Speaker 1: begin with your muscle twitching. Maybe you have weakness in
Speaker 1: an arm or even slurring of speech, so that would
Speaker 1: kind of explain the clumsiness. And then eventually the cells
Speaker 1: that control muscle activity you know, good stuff like eating, swallowing, breathing,
Speaker 1: all that stuff are affected and you essentially become parallels.
Speaker 1: It's too general at yeah, it occurs in one to
Speaker 1: three people for per one thousand, and the most common
Speaker 1: cause of death UM if you have a LS is
Speaker 1: a respiratory failure. So you guys won't remember back in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, there are a lot of news stories
Speaker 1: when talking went at the hospital and he would fairly
Speaker 1: serious respiratory infection UM. But he obviously survived it, and
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, he's now he's Britain's oldest survivor of a LS.
Speaker 1: He's a small feet because the life expectancy after your
Speaker 1: diagnosed is a few years, not decades. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: think like three to five tops, And he's been justifying
Speaker 1: the odds for decades. Um. So despite the diagnosis, he
Speaker 1: was like, whatever, I'm getting engaged to my lady Jane,
Speaker 1: and he did. Yeah, And she pointed out in an
Speaker 1: interview I think, or maybe it was in her book
Speaker 1: that that also there was like this atmosphere of you know,
Speaker 1: that we could have a nuclear war at any moment.
Speaker 1: It could, it could all be over, so all the
Speaker 1: more reason. It's like, you know, the person I love,
Speaker 1: you know, has this condition, but you know, and and
Speaker 1: then everything might you know, go up in flames tomorrow,
Speaker 1: But you know, right now, we've got this moment. Let's
Speaker 1: make the best of this. Romantic they lasted for a
Speaker 1: long time, but they too wound up splitting, and then
Speaker 1: of course Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason, five years later,
Speaker 1: So this caused some chattering the folks that like to
Speaker 1: talk about this stuff, and Hawking has since split from
Speaker 1: Mason as well, and he's a couple of kids, a
Speaker 1: couple of grandkids now too. Yeah, this is actually really
Speaker 1: interesting right across another tidbit about Hawking's musical taste, given
Speaker 1: his you know, his own um um you know, musical explorations.
Speaker 1: He's really big into like Wagner and some classical stuff, right,
Speaker 1: But he was hanging out with his his son Tim,
Speaker 1: and his Tim was listening to a lot of depeche
Speaker 1: Mode all right. He wound up go into the depeche
Speaker 1: Mode cos and the and Hawking says that he's like,
Speaker 1: actually really digs depeche Mode now, So that's that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of like here setting sitting around
Speaker 1: kind of jamming out everybody else. Ha said his ears
Speaker 1: were ring for maybe twenty four hours after, So that's
Speaker 1: you know, but if you gotta if you're gonna rock hard,
Speaker 1: sometimes you gotta to roll with the punches, right Hawking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and come on, like some of those depeche
Speaker 1: Mode songs are pretty somber, you know, so you should
Speaker 1: be able to roll with that. Indeed. So wife Jane
Speaker 1: eventually wrote this tell all about what it was like
Speaker 1: to be married to the brilliant scientists, and it was
Speaker 1: called Music to Move the Stars. Six hundred and ten
Speaker 1: pages of detail on what it was like to be
Speaker 1: married to Stephen Hawking, and from when I gather from
Speaker 1: reading some of the reviews, it wasn't all positive. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what it would be like to live with
Speaker 1: such a ridiculously smart mind. I mean, just say it
Speaker 1: caused you to, you know, lack faith in your own judgment.
Speaker 1: Do you question yourself? I mean there have to be
Speaker 1: all sorts of issues that come up with a relationship
Speaker 1: like that, or maybe it's just two people. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I would tend to, you know, It's it's always
Speaker 1: been my experience that if somebody is really smart about
Speaker 1: some things, they're probably pretty dumb about others about others,
Speaker 1: you know, so it all evens out. Yeah, maybe so?
Speaker 1: Maybe so. Anyway, he's since reconciled with wife Jane, and
Speaker 1: she was at his bedside when he had that respiratory infection.
Speaker 1: Back into us and nine. But let's depart from his
Speaker 1: personal life before we get too many angry emails. Um,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the physics. Yeah, in a nutshell,
Speaker 1: the boundless universe theory that he's you know, attributed with,
Speaker 1: it boils down to like think of the think of
Speaker 1: the globe, right, yes, all right, Now, if you start
Speaker 1: running around in a circle, you know on the globe,
Speaker 1: we're not in a circle. But like you started just running,
Speaker 1: then you would eventually loop around to where you were before,
Speaker 1: and then you'd loop around to where you're before. You
Speaker 1: just going forever. You know, you're never going to run off, right,
Speaker 1: It's limitless, at least in a two D two dimensional framework.
Speaker 1: Oh man, we should have called hi flat Stanley for this.
Speaker 1: We should have called him flat Stam. He was busy.
Speaker 1: I think he was going to Josh and Chucks the
Speaker 1: Trie United to his agent. Wouldn't return my call. But um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so in a in a very two dimensional sense,
Speaker 1: a globe is limitless. So uh, the boundless universe deal
Speaker 1: is taking that idea and expanding it to a four
Speaker 1: D universe and the universe right yeah, where you have
Speaker 1: you know, three spatial dimensions in one of time. Right,
Speaker 1: So universe has a contained entity but having no boundaries.
Speaker 1: So I think that your analogy really helps to kind
Speaker 1: of frame that in my mind and hopefully in listeners
Speaker 1: minds too. I mean, it's contained, yet it has no boundaries,
Speaker 1: So that's tricky. Yeah, it's it's a pretty big topic.
Speaker 1: We may have to cover that one on its own
Speaker 1: in a future podcast. So what about the black hole business?
Speaker 1: What about the black hole bet? Oh? Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is this is in. It had to do with whether
Speaker 1: information is lost in a black hole, right, So that's
Speaker 1: what Hawkings said back in He essentially said that, well,
Speaker 1: black holes, they're not exactly black. I mean they're radiating
Speaker 1: energy because we tend to think of them as these
Speaker 1: yawning malls of blackness sucking everything within, you know, remotely
Speaker 1: close into it, right, tremendous cosmological forces. So Hawking thought
Speaker 1: black holes radiated energy. But here's the tricky thing. At
Speaker 1: the same time, he said that information was lost in
Speaker 1: the black hole, so it's creating this nice little paradox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and us, the theoretical physicist John Preskill did not agree.
Speaker 1: He even made a bet with Hawking, uh as well
Speaker 1: as with cal Tech theorist Kip Thorne in that the
Speaker 1: information can in fact escape from black holes. And this
Speaker 1: was nice because pres Skill's idea didn't break the laws
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics as um as Hawking and Thorne we're doing.
Speaker 1: And so eventually a two thousand four rolls around. Hawking said, yeah,
Speaker 1: pres Skill was right. I'm not sure that Thorne has conceded. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I also couldn't find like what kind of money was
Speaker 1: at stake here. I did there was an encyclopedia, and
Speaker 1: the encyclopedia was to be given to the loser, so
Speaker 1: the loser could look up information that he wasn't so
Speaker 1: sure about. Oh so it's just kind of like a
Speaker 1: kind of a petty, not a petty, but it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like a joke result kind of. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the kind of bets that sign just have.
Speaker 1: They weren't like, it wasn't like a finger or anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. So, as we mentioned earlier, Hawking also has
Speaker 1: talked a good deal about the possibility of extraterrestrial life
Speaker 1: in our universe. And uh, and that always gets some
Speaker 1: you know, when you have a dude that's considered by
Speaker 1: many to be one of, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: if not the most brilliant mind out there, scientific mind
Speaker 1: and he starts talking about alien aliens actually existing, you know,
Speaker 1: people take notice and they run with it on slow
Speaker 1: news weeks and uh, he said, some has said some
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. He he thinks that sure, it's a
Speaker 1: big universe out there, we might not be alone. But
Speaker 1: his big point has been that it might be primitive life,
Speaker 1: not necessarily intelligent life. In fact, he famously equipped that
Speaker 1: sense of humor again that intelligent life has yet to
Speaker 1: occur on Earth at NASA's fiftieth anniversary lecture series. So, yes,
Speaker 1: life might be out there, but it might be primitive.
Speaker 1: And his another point of his which is well received,
Speaker 1: was that those aliens, they might not be DNA based. We,
Speaker 1: like we've talked about before in the podcast, we tend
Speaker 1: to think of aliens being somewhat similar to humans. Who
Speaker 1: who's to say, you know, pure energy beings. So you know,
Speaker 1: this guy is kind of a limit, you know, ultimately, right,
Speaker 1: So if these aliens aren't DNA based, then they could
Speaker 1: bring a whole host of new diseases that could just
Speaker 1: lay waste to the human population and life on Earth.
Speaker 1: And uh and as we mentioned in the Into the
Speaker 1: Universe with Stephen Hawking show and Discovery, he uh he
Speaker 1: discussed at length how of intelligent life on another planet
Speaker 1: followed the same evolutionary scent as as human life and
Speaker 1: it in it in it it even resembled our cultural advances.
Speaker 1: Then we would be looking at some pretty scary aliens
Speaker 1: who would probably not be pleasant to meet, right. They
Speaker 1: might not be looking to make friends, but rather mind
Speaker 1: the Earth of its available resources, right, and move on
Speaker 1: in their giant spaceships to mind other planets. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: everybody focused on that aspect of it, and but that
Speaker 1: that aspect of of the talk was very nightmark, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea of any foreign force coming and
Speaker 1: harvesting your planet, that's that's spooky. Indeed. So if you
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