We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
Stephen HawkingRead
It's a pity that nobody has found an exploding black hole. If they had, I would have won a Nobel prize.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a sense of regret for missed opportunities in groundbreaking scientific discoveries.
Stephen Hawking humorously reflects on the idea that if an exploding black hole had been discovered, it would have brought significant recognition, potentially a Nobel Prize, to him as a physicist. It highlights both the competitive nature of scientific discovery and the often-unpredictable course of scientific investigation where great ideas may go unnoticed or remain theoretical.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a lecture on the nature of black holes.
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.
I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.
The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century.
In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.
The history of acceptance of new theories frequently shows the following steps: At first the new idea is treated as pure nonsense, not worth looking at. Then comes a time when a multitude of contradictory objections are raised, such as: the new theory is too fancy, or merely a new terminology; it is not fruitful, or simply wrong. Finally a state is reached when everyone seems to claim that he had always followed this theory. This usually marks the last state before general acceptance.
I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.
You know, entropy is associated thermodynamically, in systems involving heat, with disorder. And in an analogous way, information is associated with disorder, which seems paradoxical. But when you think about it, a bit of information is a surprise. If you already knew what the message contained, there would be no new information in it.
The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.
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