5 ms·

Did he actually discover anything of worth or was most of his items refuted or unproven? I don’t know him well but don’t rate him highly

joshu 6y ago
hawking radiation?
- abhinav22 6y ago
  Has it been proven? I read online and while it seems impressive (and increased my estimation of him), I didn’t see concrete proof of it being proven or disproven
  - bawolff 6y ago
    This isn't my field, and i cant talk to the specifics, but i think that's the wrong question. The important thing is did it move the field forward? Did it get us closer to the "Truth" of the universe. There's a certain sense that newtonian mechanics isn't "true" (with relativity and what not), but its still obviously an important contribution. P.s. this is physics not math. You don't prove things of the natural world, you check if they are the best explanation of emperical observation. This is very different from proving sonething in the math sense.
    - abhinav22 6y ago
      Thanks - that’s the right perspective, I agree. The question you phrased is better and more appropriate
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Yes, it has been proven. Also, while it's good that you admit your bias, "don't think highly of him" while you don't even know the basics of his field (never mind of his career), it's nonetheless a bias. I don't think he (or, well, his legacy) should be striving to prove something to you, rather the opposite. You should be striving to evaluate it if you want to have an opinion about it (even if it's a negative one after the evaluation), as opposed to randomly have opinions and feelings about it.
  - titzer 6y ago
    Proven? No idea. But it has been observed: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-stationary-hawking-analog-black-hole.html https://phys.org/news/2021-02-stationary-hawking-analog-blac...
    - l33tman 6y ago
      But that wasn't with any black hole and it's not Hawking radiation. Basically they could as well have simulated that experiment on a computer and said the same thing (that what they got is similar in nature to Hawking radiation). But it's just similar - Hawking radiation relies on a mashup of GR in a strong regime and quantum field theory extravaganza, it's something you would very much want to observe for real as those theories don't normally fit together very well. I'm not sure you'd want to be close enough to observe it though :)
      - titzer 6y ago
        Ah, right, I didn't notice that in the article I linked, the black hole was an artificially created sonic black hole, not a real one.
  - vl 6y ago
    All current astrophysics is “proven” in a sense that bunch of scientists loosely agreed that strange unexplained things we see explained as such, but then there are elephants in the room like dark energy, dark matter and etc. So it’s really far away from actually being iron-clad, unlike more basic QM or GR.
auntienomen 6y ago
Hawking was a mathematical physicist. His job was exploring the general relativity and quantum field theory, models which we already know describe our world with remarkable accuracy, trying to understand what they allow and don't allow. He was remarkably successful at this. The Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems made us realize that black holes are ubiquitous in general relativity. It played a big role in the community's acceptance of their reality. He discovered that quantum field theories on curved spacetime generically predict that different observers will see different matter and radiation in the same region of spacetime, depending upon their state of motion. This includes Hawking radiation from black holes. His work with Hartle on cosmology helped open our eyes to what a wild variety of phenomena are possible in the early universe. If you don't know Hawking's work, then you don't have an opinion about it. Not rating it highly isn't an option.

joshu 6y ago

hawking radiation?

abhinav22 6y ago
Has it been proven? I read online and while it seems impressive (and increased my estimation of him), I didn’t see concrete proof of it being proven or disproven
- bawolff 6y ago
  This isn't my field, and i cant talk to the specifics, but i think that's the wrong question. The important thing is did it move the field forward? Did it get us closer to the "Truth" of the universe. There's a certain sense that newtonian mechanics isn't "true" (with relativity and what not), but its still obviously an important contribution. P.s. this is physics not math. You don't prove things of the natural world, you check if they are the best explanation of emperical observation. This is very different from proving sonething in the math sense.
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    Thanks - that’s the right perspective, I agree. The question you phrased is better and more appropriate
- coldtea 6y ago
  Yes, it has been proven. Also, while it's good that you admit your bias, "don't think highly of him" while you don't even know the basics of his field (never mind of his career), it's nonetheless a bias. I don't think he (or, well, his legacy) should be striving to prove something to you, rather the opposite. You should be striving to evaluate it if you want to have an opinion about it (even if it's a negative one after the evaluation), as opposed to randomly have opinions and feelings about it.
- titzer 6y ago
  Proven? No idea. But it has been observed: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-stationary-hawking-analog-black-hole.html https://phys.org/news/2021-02-stationary-hawking-analog-blac...
  - l33tman 6y ago
    But that wasn't with any black hole and it's not Hawking radiation. Basically they could as well have simulated that experiment on a computer and said the same thing (that what they got is similar in nature to Hawking radiation). But it's just similar - Hawking radiation relies on a mashup of GR in a strong regime and quantum field theory extravaganza, it's something you would very much want to observe for real as those theories don't normally fit together very well. I'm not sure you'd want to be close enough to observe it though :)
    - titzer 6y ago
      Ah, right, I didn't notice that in the article I linked, the black hole was an artificially created sonic black hole, not a real one.
- vl 6y ago
  All current astrophysics is “proven” in a sense that bunch of scientists loosely agreed that strange unexplained things we see explained as such, but then there are elephants in the room like dark energy, dark matter and etc. So it’s really far away from actually being iron-clad, unlike more basic QM or GR.

auntienomen 6y ago

Hawking was a mathematical physicist. His job was exploring the general relativity and quantum field theory, models which we already know describe our world with remarkable accuracy, trying to understand what they allow and don't allow. He was remarkably successful at this. The Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems made us realize that black holes are ubiquitous in general relativity. It played a big role in the community's acceptance of their reality. He discovered that quantum field theories on curved spacetime generically predict that different observers will see different matter and radiation in the same region of spacetime, depending upon their state of motion. This includes Hawking radiation from black holes. His work with Hartle on cosmology helped open our eyes to what a wild variety of phenomena are possible in the early universe. If you don't know Hawking's work, then you don't have an opinion about it. Not rating it highly isn't an option.