“Gravity is a great mystery. We don’t know what it is and we have never seen it.” – Stephen Hawking, Renowned Physicist
Stephen Hawking was born on January 8th, 1942 in Oxford, England. He studied mathematics at the University of Oxford before obtaining his Ph.D. in cosmology from Cambridge University for his work on black holes. In 1979 he became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge where he stayed until 2009 when he retired to focus on communicating science to the public through books and lectures. Throughout his career, Hawking has been an advocate for space exploration as well as combating climate change; two topics that are very important today. His most famous theory is probably about how gravity fails when you get too close to a black hole.
“Gravity is a very weak force and so it would be difficult to notice its effects when they are operating at the level of, say, a hundredth of an inch,” he said in his lecture on March 30th, 1998 when explaining what happens when gravity fails. “But if we could travel close enough to a black hole and get near then these forces will become noticeable.”
Stephen Hawking Renowned Physicist
He continued by saying that as you approach closer and closer, your feet pull one way while all the rest of your body pulls another way because everything has been carved into this funnel shape. Finally, he explained that no matter how strong or tall someone may be, they can’t jump their way out of a black hole.
when gravity fails
After you enter the event horizon, all bets are off and strange things will start happening to your body. It’s not clear what happens in detail but Hawking mentioned that physical bodies can’t escape from this gravitational field (black hole). We have already established that light is unable to get out so it would be safe to say that everything else is at risk too. You might feel like being crushed by an overwhelming force – or stretched apart as if someone pulled on both ends of an elastic band until it snaps. Your molecules could even be torn apart into individual atoms! This means there won’t be anything left for everyone outside the event horizon to see where you went wrong…or right.
You might feel like being crushed by an overwhelming force – or stretched apart as if someone pulled on both ends of an elastic band until it snaps. Your molecules could even be torn apart into individual atoms! This means there won’t be anything left for everyone outside the event horizon to see where you went wrong…or right.
The gravity at the edge of a black hole is so intense that not even light can escape from it, and what happens when this gravity fails? If we found out what was happening here then maybe we could make our own black holes in laboratories! It’s definitely exciting, but Stephen Hawking will need more time before he can say definitively how all this works. For now, though, we’ll have to keep working with our understanding of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Stephen Hawking is an esteemed physicist known for his work on black holes and relativity. He has been a professor of mathematics at Cambridge since 1979 and was the director of research in applied mathematics and cosmology there until 2009 when he retired from that position to be a full-time author.
He has authored many books including “A Brief History of Time” which sold over 25 million copies worldwide. As such, Stephen Hawking needs no introduction – but we’ll give him one anyway! In 1963 when he was just 21 years old, it was discovered that he had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). The doctors gave him two years to live; they were wrong by almost 50 years! In 2007 Professor Hawking made history with what some are calling a “comedy show” when he participated in the first-ever live event from deep inside what’s called an Event Horizon.
In 2008 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
There you have it – an introduction to Stephen Hawking! Now that we know a little bit about him, let’s talk about when gravity fails… The term “event horizon” is used in astrophysics and cosmology as one of two definitions for what defines a black hole.
