Hawking Page #4

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like each other, you watch.

Another lunch of advanced theoretical physics.

- Hello.

- Hello.

Tomatoes. Could you? Thin slices.

- Hello. Roger Penrose.

- Yes, I know.

Have you two met?

Prosciutto. Help yourselves.

Mozart could go to sleep and wake up with whole symphonies

in his head and no idea how they got there.

A whole symphony in his head, complete.

How can that be?

Music is temporal. How can you pack a whole

symphony into just one moment?

Well maybe it's because music is a way of thinking

that is way beyond language.

Maybe that's what genius is.

Thinking without time.

All roads lead to physics.

I think thought, mathematical thought,

can exist completely without words.

I don't think thinking is verbal.

In fact, I think words come in the way.

I think you can do it without words.

Poets have always been obsessed with time.

- Shrinking it, controlling it, stopping it.

- T. S. Eliot?

"Time present and time past are both perhaps

present in time future,

and time future contained

in time past."

Rupert Brooke:

"Stands the church clock still at ten to three?"

Blake:
"To see a world in grain of sand

and a heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

and eternity in an hour."

- L. I. Merick.

- Who?

"There was a young lady named Bright,

whose speed was faster than light.

She set out one day in a relative way

and returned on the previous night."

- It's unstable.

- Sorry?

- Go on.

- It's unstable.

You need a negative energy field in order to create

the new matter, which makes it unstable.

- Hoyle's steady state?

- It's problem, isn't it?

Isn't it?

- You like Hawking very much, don't you?

- Hm.

- Will he have the time?

- What?

Does he have enough time left to get what he's after?

I hope so.

A time-symmetric new theory of gravity.

It's brilliant. Hoyle at his best.

- Did you start as his PhD student?

- Are you after my job?

- Did you?

- Are you?

- No.

- Yes. He's a great scientist.

His work on the production of uranium inside

stars is - what's the word...

Beautiful. And so is this.

I do the checking. It should be refereed by a committee

but Hoyle doesn't have time.

Can I see it?

- I have to go.

- Just give me a few more minutes.

- I have to go now.

- Leave it with me.

- OK, but don't -

- What? Eat it?

Just leave it on my desk.

Up early?

- Are you alright?

- Yes, fine.

You look like you've had a wild night.

Something like that.

So the Royal Society this afternoon?

- You're giving the paper today?

- Yes.

You remember Stephen Hawking?

The new theory we have formulated differs

in its global implications from the usual theory in that,

whereas in the usual theory the negative sign at the constant

of proportionality which appers in the field equations,

is chosen arbitrarily.

In the new theory, there's no such ambiguity.

The sign must be minus, and further the magnitude of g

follows on from a determination of the mean density of matter,

thereby enabling the cosmologist to know

how hard he'll hit the ground if he falls off a cliff.

Any questions?

You want to say something young man?

Your calculation is wrong.

The advanced field diverges.

- The advanced field does not diverge.

- I'm afraid it does. It's all wrong.

Would you like to tell us how you know this,

young man?

I worked it out.

- You worked it out during the lecture?

- No, I had a privileged early glimpse at the paper.

- Who put you up to that?

- What?

That stunt in there. Who put you up to it, eh?

- Somebody's put you up to sabotaging me.

- It's just wrong, that's all. I had to say it, didn't I?

The physics is wrong.

Why did you show him the paper?

I hate them being shown to any bugger.

- Science isn't theatre.

- It needed to be said.

In that way?

How long has it been, since you've started with me?

- You don't like the idea of me attacking steady state theory...

- You didn't answer my question.

- ...because you're a steady state man yourself.

- OK, I'll answer it for you. Twelve months.

- So the idea of me attacking the steady state theory...

-My father ran a cotton mill.

When I was twenty-one, I told him

I wanted to be a physicist. He hated the idea.

He wanted me to take over the business from him.

So he told me that I couldn't be a physicist,

unless I got a fellowship to pay for it.

He thought I wouldn't get it.

He thought I would buckle.

- And I worked like a dog...

- What does this have to do with me attacking steady state...

I know what it is like to have obstacles in your path.

I know what it's like to be told you can't do something.

That's why I became a teacher.

I would never, ever stop a student of mine from pursuing

something because I didn't agree with their opinion. Never.

I know you can do more than make

brilliant attacks on others.

Do something! All of your own.

Be original.

Look out!

Maybe it's New York!

- Maybe the hiss is New York we said.

- New York? How?

We figured, that if any city in the world can give you

three degress of hot radio noise, it must be the Big Apple.

My family alone could probably make this much hiss.

- We were struggling to think what else it could be.

- You were guessing?

How could we claim to be making very sensitive radio astronomy

measurements, with all that manmade stuff around.

We pointed the antenna at New York City,

all that energy spread out across the northern horizon;

arcing from subway rails, hum from power lines,

the radar amplifier at Kennedy Airport spewing out radio noise by the kilowatt.

And I'm thinking, just maybe, just maybe, this town,

this town of all towns might crank up three degrees of hiss.

You said you were from Germany.

When did you leave Germany?

Maybe we should stop filming?

I came to America when I was six years old.

We lived in a two room apartment in the garment district.

Me, my brother and my parents and

the cockroaches in the kitchen.

We were poor.

That's why I became a physicist. Not to get rich,

not to win the Nobel, to stop being poor.

New York wasn't it. We pointed the 20 foot horn

at the city and it gave us a reasonable amount but -

- Not enough heat.

- Not enough.

To win the Nobel Prize, you

have to find something. Am I right?

It's not about thinking,

or theory...

- It's about discovery.

- But do you have to be looking for the thing that you find?

Science can be slow work.

It's hardly ever about Eureka moments in the bath.

You need precision, tenacity, dedication.

German talents.

Your visitor, Mr. Hawking.

He wouldn't let me out of sight, not once.

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