Stephen Hawking

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About

Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist known for authoring several best-selling popular science books, including A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. He died at the age of 76 on March 14, 2018.

History

On January 8th, 1942, Hawking was born in Oxford, England. Hawking was born with a rare form of amyotrophic lacteral sclerosis, which began showing signs as a student at Oxford University and gradually paralysed his body over many years. In the late 1960s, Hawking developed his famous singularity theorem, regarding the prediction from general relativity that gravitation creates singularities. In 1986, Hawking began using the program "Equalizer" to speak and write by pressing a switch to select various words and phrases (shown below).

In 1988, Hawking's book A Brief History of Time was released, which gives an overview of a broad range of cosmological topics, including the big bang, black holes and light cones. Over the next 20 years, the book sold over 10 million copies and remained on the London Sunday Times bestseller list for more than four years. In 1991, Errol Morris' documentary film about Hawking titled A Brief History of Time was released (shown below).

In 2001, the book The Universe in a Nutshell was released, in which Hawking discusses various subjects in theoretical physics in an attempt to "combine Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe." In April 2010, The Telegraph^[6] published an interview with Hawking in which he warned that intelligent alien civilizations may move from planet-to-planet harvesting resources.

"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the American Indians."

Following the discovery of the Higgs boson during experiments run with the Large Hadron Collider in 2012, Hawking conceded that he had been wrong about insisting the Higgs boson did not exist. In September 2014, the British biographical romantic drama film The Theory of Everything was released, which centers around Hawking and his relationship with ex-wife Jane Wilde Hawking (shown below).

In July 2015, Hawking signed an open letter calling for a ban on artificial intelligence weaponry referred to as "offensive autonomous weapons," in an attempt to prevent a "global AI arms race" from starting.^[5]

Breakthrough Initiatives Projects

In July 2015, Hawking and Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner announced a new program by Breakthrough Initiatives named "Project Listen," which would invest $100 million into the search for intelligent life in the universe. On April 12th, 2016, Hawking and Yuri Milner announced the "Project Starshot" program by Breakthrough Initiatives, which plans to propel postage-sized space probes from Earth with a laser to investigate the Alpha Centauri star system. That day, the /r/starshot^[1] subreddit was created for discussions about the project.

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Death

On March 14th, 2018, Hawking died in his home at Cambridge. His family released a statement confirming his death, which was later reported by Sky News,^[8] The Guardian,^[9] BBC News^[10], and many other news sites. He also became the top trending topic on Twitter shortly after these reports.^[11] That day, several posts about his passing reached the front page of various subreddits, including /r/news,^[12] /r/science,^[13] /r/space^[14] and /r/worldnews.^[15] Additionally, Redditor Toxicxxfuzion noted that Hawking died on Albert Einstein's birthday, Redditor LongEclipse highlighted a photo of Hawking and actor Jim Carrey (shown below, left) and Reddit World_War_Meme999 posted a photoshopped tribute to Hawking included other deceased celebrities (shown below, right).^[16]^[17]^[18] The same day, Redditor nerdalator submitted a link to Hawking's final Reddit comment to /r/bestof.^[19]

Also on March 14th, Twitter published a Moments page dedicated to Hawking, highlighting many memorable quotes.^[20] Meanwhile, many photoshops dedicated to Hawking reached the frontpage of /r/dankmemes (shown below).

Kirstie Alley's Tribute

Following Stephen Hawking's death, actress Kirstie Alley tweeted about the death with the phrase "You had a good go at it..thanks for your input."^[21]

The tweet was quickly mocked for Alley's perceived understatement of Hawking's importance. Many found the tweet hilarious. User @i_zzzzzz tweeted "I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm pretty confident this is the funniest thing anyone has ever said about someone who just died," gaining over 420 retweets and 2,500 likes (shown below, left). User @DavidFarrier joked that it was the best Stephen Hawking obituary (shown below, right).

Twitter users also turned Alley's comment into a meme as well. Twitter user @iiTalW tweeted an image of the Friday Lizard with the phrase, gaining over 15 retweets and 90 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @prasejeebus posted a Tired / Wired joke about the tweet, gaining over 170 likes. The reactions to Alley's tweet were covered by Daily Dot,^[22] Wonderwall,^[23] Daily Mail,^[24] and more.

Online Presence

On April 4th, 2008, TED released a talk by Hawking titled "Questioning the Universe" (shown below, left). On March 30th, 2011, YouTuber Nice Peter uploaded an Epic Rap Battles of History music video in which Hawking competes against Albert Einstein (shown below, right). Over the next five years, the video received more than 102 million views and 340,000 comments.

On Jule 16th, 2014, Redditor imjustadude90 submitted a multi-pane image of Hawking and John Oliver to /r/funny,^[3] where it received upwards of 12,000 votes (98% upvoted) and 1,700 comments before it was archived.

On July 27th, 2015, Hawking participated in an "ask me anything" (AMA) post on the /r/science^[2] subreddit, which gained over 10,900 votes (98% upvoted) and 8,900 comments prior to being archived. On August 26th, Redditor alex_dlc submitted a post asking for readers to explain Hawking's black hole theory to the /r/explainlikeimfive^[4] subreddit, where it garnered more than 8,200 votes (96% upvoted) and 1,500 comments before it was archived. On January 27th, 2016, the IQIM Caltech YouTube channel uploaded a comedy sketch in which Hawking plays against actor Paul Rudd in a game of "quantum chess" (shown below). In three months, the video gained over 1.7 million views and 1,200 comments.

On April 12, Hawking joined the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo,^[7] where his first post greeting his "friends in China" (shown below). Within 48 hours, the account received more than one million followers and his first post gained over 500,000 likes.

Symphony of Science

On November 9th, 2009, electronic musician John Boswell released the first video in his Symphony of Science series titled "A Glorious Dawn," which featuring sample clips of Hawking from the Stephen Hawking's Universe television series (shown below).