Re: Hawkings Lecture on Blackholes

From: Jake Mannix (jake_at_rset.net)
Date: 07/25/04 

Date: 25 Jul 2004 09:16:28 -0400

ulmo@cheerful.com (Ulmo) wrote in message

> Hawking's recent flap on television is of no physics signifiance
> whatsoever. He had his publicist send out a press release to the
> Associated Press, so all the

<a bunch of rude personal attacks snipped>

>>From what people I've talked to at Stanford's physics dept, it's
nowhere nearly so harshly thought of ("no physics signifigance").

> His only significant contribution to physics was
> Hawking radiation, which was 30 years ago, and which the public never
> heard of.

And the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems, and the Hawking-Page
phase transition, and... or did you mean "signifigant contribution"
as "contribution which fundamentally changed the way we look at
a branch of physics"? Most theorists never have one of those.

> Since then, he's become increasingly irrelavant in terms of
> real physics, including his recent claim that information lost to a
> black hole in somehow magically recovered, for which he makes no
> attempt to explain how that might be possible. Yet every news program
> ran a story about Hawking's recent "breakthrough". A real physicist
> would be trying to convince his collegues, not the general public.

I think there's a big difference between saying that Hawking is not
THE ONE AND ONLY MOST AMAZING PHYSICIST ALIVE TODAY (which
many in the public believe), and saying he's irrelevant and not a
real physicist. Showmanship is not terribly uncommon among theorists,
and while not necessarily positivley correlated with talent, it's not
necessarily *negatively* correlated either.

Berate the media for treating Hawking as a celebrity beyond all
celebrities. But personal attack belittle yourself more than
anyone else.

      -jake

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