Stephen Hawking urges inquiry into Jeremy Hunt's NHS 'weekend effect' claims

Stephen Hawking reveals the mystery he finds most intriguing

8 October 2015

Stephen Hawking has revealed life's most intriguing mystery – and it's women.

The renowned physicist has been answering questions from science enthusiasts and fans as part of an ongoing Ask Me Anything Q&A on Reddit.

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When asked "What is the one mystery that you find most intriguing, and why?", Hawking responded: "Women. My PA reminds me that although I have a PhD in physics women should remain a mystery."

Hawking has been mainly answering questions on artificial intelligence (AI) and has warned that human-level AI is likely to be "either the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity, so there's huge value in getting it right".

He told readers not to trust anyone who claims to know for sure when human-level AI will happen, but said the goal should be to create beneficial intelligence rather than "pure undirected" AI. "It might take decades to figure out how to do this, so let's start researching this today rather than the night before the first strong AI is switched on," he said.

Asked about the possibility of "technological unemployment", whereby widespread automated technology puts humans out of jobs, Hawking said the impact would depend on how wealth is distributed.

"Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution," he said. "So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

Stephen Hawking outsmarted by 12-year-old girl in IQ test

26 August 2015

A 12-year-old girl has bested Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein by scoring a perfect mark in a Mensa exam.

Lydia Sebastian, from Langham, Essex, had been lobbying her parents for permission to take the test, which measures IQ, for over a year. The gifted schoolgirl began speaking at six months old and has been playing the violin since the age of four.

There are several forms of IQ test that are accepted by Mensa. Younger children are often measured on the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales, which in 2013 gave British Mensa its youngest ever member, two-and-a-half year-old Adam Kirby. Lydia took the Cattell III B paper, which measures intelligence based on linguistic and verbal reasoning.

Genius scientists Hawking and Einstein both racked up an eye-watering 160 points on the Cattell III B but, incredibly, Lydia managed to achieve the maximum score of 162. This puts her in the top one per cent of all test takers for the high-IQ society.

To add insult to injury, Lydia even described the paper as "easy", completing the test with time to spare at the sitting at Birkbeck College, London. "At first, I was really nervous, but as I started, it was much easier than I expected it to be and then I relaxed," she told her local newspaper, the Daily Gazette.

Professor Hawking is unlikely to be too miffed about the result, however. When asked for his IQ score in an interview with the New York Times, he quipped: "I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers."

If Lydia seeks a new challenge, she could try out for even more elite societies than Mensa, which currently has around 110,000 members. The most selective, the Mega Society, claims that only one in a million people are capable of reaching the necessary score of 171 on its entrance exam, and has only 26 members.

Stephen Hawking's new theory may solve black hole problem

26 August

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has detailed a new theory he hopes may help solve one of the great riddles around black holes with which scientists have struggled for years.

Hawking presented his new theory, which aims to address the so-called "information paradox", in a speech to scientists and the media at a conference at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Scientists have long wondered what happens to information contained in matter that falls into a black hole. If Hawking has managed to resolve the problem, he could help reconcile quantum mechanics with Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and solve other longstanding puzzles in the world of physics, according to Space.com.

Hawking explained his new theory yesterday, saying: "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon."

'Event horizons' are "the sort of shell around a black hole, past which all matter will be drawn into the dense object's powerful embrace", the Washington Post explains.

Hawking believes that particles that enter black holes leave remnants of their information on the event horizon. He also thinks that when particles come out of a black hole they may bring with them some information in a phenomenon called "Hawking Radiation".

"The information is stored in a super translation of the horizon that the ingoing particles [from the source star] cause," he explained. "The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form. For all practical purposes the info is lost."

Information returning from a black hole is likely to be incredibly difficult to decipher, Hawking said. The physicist likened Hawking Radiation to the ashes one might find after burning an encyclopaedia. All the information would still technically be there, but it would be very difficult to interpret.

Before being accepted, Hawking's theory will need to be tested by further discussion and "much comparing of maths equations", the Washington Post notes. The conference continues until Saturday.

Stephen Hawking leads call for ban on AI robot warfare

28 July

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have all signed an open letter, presented at the 2015 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, calling for a ban on "offensive autonomous weapons".

The conference is being held in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, and will feature talks on the future of AI and the ethics behind autonomous weapons and robotic warfare.

The letter, which has over 1,000 signatories, states: "AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms".

The weapons could reduce the number of human soldiers on battlefields, but they could also lower the threshold for going to battle, the letter said.

"If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow," they said.

Toby Walsh, professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, told The Guardian: "We need to make a decision today that will shape our future and determine whether we follow a path of good. We support the call by a number of different humanitarian organisations for a UN ban on offensive autonomous weapons, similar to the recent ban on blinding lasers."

The letter comes in the aftermath of increased public awareness of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence. Last December, Hawking warned that the development of machines capable of intelligent behaviour "could spell the end of the human race". While in November Musk, the founder of SpaceX, warned that "the risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe – ten years at most".

In April, the UK opposed an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems (Laws) at a week-long United Nations conference on the issue.

"At present, we do not see the need for a prohibition on the use of Laws, as international humanitarian law already provides sufficient regulation for this area," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

The Guardian reported at the time that one of the problems of the debate is that there is no internationally agreed definition of what constitutes a lethal autonomous weapons system.

Stephen Hawking launches $100m hunt for alien life

21 July

Professor Stephen Hawking has launched the most extensive search for alien life yet, with a $100m (£64m) project that will give leading astronomers and researchers access to the world's most powerful radio telescopes.

The Breakthrough Listen search will be 50 times more sensitive, and cover ten times more sky, than previous attempts to find alien life.

Hawking, who will act as an adviser on the project, said: "It's time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth."

He added: "If a search of this scale and sophistication finds no evidence of intelligence out there, it will be a very interesting result. It will not prove that we are alone, but will narrow the possibilities."

The ten-year project – which is being backed by Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner – will begin in January 2016 and will allow researchers to search for radio signals that could be being emitted from distant planets, or even machines made by intelligent life-forms.

According to The Independent, "the survey will be sensitive enough to detect signals emitting from planets orbiting the one million stars closest to Earth. Stronger signals could be detected from even further afield, among the 100 galaxies closest to our own."

However, as Hawking explained, the project will not send out signals from Earth into the cosmos, primarily for our own safety. "A civilisation reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria," he said.

Milner, who is the sole funder of the project, has spent much of his fortune attempting to raise the public profile of scientists. "It is our responsibility as human beings to use the best equipment we have to try to answer one of the biggest questions: are we alone?" he told The Guardian. "We cannot afford not to do this."

Alongside the recent developments in photographing Pluto, the search for alien life has become a hot topic of debate in the science community. In April, Nasa chief scientist Ellen Stofan predicted we would find "definite evidence" of microbial life on other planets within 20 to 30 years. At the same time, Nasa released an infographic that showed evidence of water – believed to be fundamental for all life – on a number of worlds in our solar system.

Hawking is known to be a key believer in the need to colonise other planets in the solar system for the preservation of human life. In February he told those gathered at the Science Museum in London: "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonising other planets.

Stephen Hawking to deliver Reith Lecture on black holes

30 June 2015

Professor Stephen Hawking will mark the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity by delivering the BBC Reith Lecture, to be broadcast on Radio 4 later this year.

Hawking told the BBC that he would discuss the "remarkable properties of black holes", and would answer listeners' questions.

He said he hoped to "encourage people to imagine and explore the possibilities of science – both the known, and the as yet unknown", and to "enthuse a new generation" about the spirit of discovery.

"We should never stop trying to tell these extraordinary stories from science," he said.

The Reith Lectures are an annual series of radio talks by leading figures in their fields. Named after the BBC's first director general, Sir John Reith, they began in 1948 with a talk by philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Other past lecturers have included Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry, politician Aung San Suu Kyi and renowned conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim.

Traditionally the Reith lecturer delivers a series of themed talks. But The Independent reports that 73-year-old Hawking, who pulled out of a planned appearance at Glastonbury for "personal reasons", may not deliver more than one address.

Hawking suffers from a degenerative motor neurone disease and now communicates with a single cheek muscle attached to a speech-generating device. He sometimes uses a ventilator to cope with breathing difficulties.

His lecture will come amid a series of changes for Radio 4's autumn schedule, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The line-up will include Jeremy Irons in Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea and Oscar winner Glenda Jackson, returning to acting after "retiring" from a career in politics in 1992. Jackson will star as 104-year-old Adelaide Fouque in an adaptation of Emile Zola: Blood, Sex and Money.

The News Quiz will also get a revamp, with comedian Miles Jupp taking over as host following the departure of Sandi Toksvig, who is stepping down at the end of the current season to start a party for women's rights.

Stephen Hawking 'would consider assisted suicide'

3 June

Professor Stephen Hawking has revealed that he would consider ending his own life if he felt he had become a burden to his family.

The cosmologist, who has motor neurone disease, criticised the current law that criminalises people trying to help their loved ones die, the Daily Telegraph reports. Keeping someone alive against their own wishes is the "ultimate indignity," he said.

"I would consider assisted suicide only if I were in great pain or felt I had nothing more to contribute but was just a burden to those around me," he told comedian Dara O'Briain in an upcoming television documentary. However, he added: "I am damned if I'm going to die before I have unravelled more of the universe."

During the candid interview, Hawking said he was not in pain but did suffer from occasional discomfort. He also revealed that life can sometimes be lonely for him as he finds it difficult to talk to people he doesn’t know. "I'm shy and tired [sometimes]," he said. "At times I get very lonely because people are afraid to talk to me or don't wait for me to write a response."

When asked what he misses most about being able bodied, Hawking said: "I would like to be able to swim again. When my children were young, I missed not being able to play with them physically." The one-off documentary will feature interviews with Hawking's daughter Lucy, his youngest son Tim and his Cambridge research students.

This isn't the first time the acclaimed physicist has waded into the debate on assisted suicide. In 2013, he argued: "We don't let animals suffer, so why humans?"

Earlier this year he told politicians that not approving the Assisted Dying Bill would be a form of discrimination against people with disabilities, as it denies them "the right to kill themselves that able-bodied people have”.

Dara O'Briain meets Stephen Hawking will air on BBC One on 15 June

The Theory of Everything: film skips over Stephen Hawking's divorce

8 January

Critics have praised Eddie Redmayne's performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, but some have suggested that the film sanitises his personal relationships and obscures the darker details of his divorces.

"In the film, the Hawkings’ marriage breakdown is civilised," writes Alex von Tunzelmann in The Guardian, but in reality Jane Wilde, his first wife, felt that Elaine Mason, who went on to be his second, was manipulating him.

"He was being persuaded that I was no longer of any use to him, that I was good for nothing," Wild wrote. "Flames of vituperation, hatred, desire for revenge leapt at me from all sides, scorching me to the quick with accusations.”

Writing in The Spectator, Tanya Gold says the film represents a hagiography of Hawking, and sweeps his shortcomings off the cutting room floor.

"He may be a talented, or even extraordinary, physicist, but he was a very ordinary husband of his own space and time," she claims.

The film also omits details of Hawking's second marriage, although von Tunzelmann says that it can be forgiven this blind spot.

"Allegations that Hawking was abused during the marriage were reported, but were strongly denied by Hawking himself – making that relationship difficult territory for the film-makers to approach in any more detail than they have," he writes.

Professor Stephen Hawking has joined forces with billionaire YuriMilner for a project that plans to send a probe to a neighbouring solar systemin as little as 20 years.

The £70m project, called Breakthrough Starshot, will investigate thetechnologies required to send tiny spacecraft into space, travelling trillionsof miles at one-fifth of the speed of light.

"Imagine hundreds of spacecraft the size of a butterfly, propelledby light beams at record-shattering speeds and journeying to distant stars 4.37light years away," says [1]CNN. That's "far deeper into space thanhuman-built probes have ever ventured".

The BBC [2] adds: "The concept is to reduce the size of thespacecraft to about the size of a chip used in electronic devices." Up to1,000 of these "nanocrafts" would be launched towards the AlphaCentauri star system, a distance of 25 trillion miles. With current technology,such a journey would take around 30,000 years – but Breakthrough Starshotresearchers believe their light-powered ships could reach it within ageneration.

Each nanocraft would be equipped with a solar sail, which would receivea boost into space from a 100 billion-watt laser-powered light beam based onEarth. The probes would reach speeds of 37,000 miles per second.

The project will be led by Dr Pete Worden, a former director of Nasa'sAmes Research Centre in California, with around £70m funding provided byMilner.

The Russian founder of the Breakthrough Prizes for science hopes tofurther research into the existence of extra-terrestrial life. However, forHawking, Breakthrough Starshot also represents a crucial step forward for thepreservation of life on Earth.

"If we are to survive as a species we must ultimately spread outto the stars," Hawking told the BBC. "It is unwise to keep all oureggs in one fragile basket. Life on Earth faces dangers from astronomicalevents like asteroids or supernovas."

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/12/us/breakthrough-starshot-space-probe-stephen-hawking-feat/index.html

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36025706