A follow-up on Hawking. I read one of his books and was very interested in the topics he worked on – black holes, the Big Bang, and the like. The guy is extremely cool and smart.
However, almost one hundred percent of the people who have heard his name are unable to understand the essence of the issues he dealt with, and what he contributed to physics. “Unable” means that even if they spend about fifteen years studying all the areas of physics and mathematics he touched upon, they will still have more questions than answers about the theory itself. And I am among them.
Secondly, almost everything Hawking is valued for, such as the theory of black hole radiation, is a mathematical model that provides answers to some questions but raises a million others, with no answers in sight. It would probably be more accurate to say that this is not exactly physics yet, but rather more like 21st-century philosophy multiplied by 21st-century mathematics. No practical application for these findings has been found yet, nor is likely to be.
A good example here is another scientist, Leonard Susskind, one of the creators of String Theory, the author of the holographic Universe concept, and many other highly intricate consciousness-expanding ideas. He is also quite a solid figure in science, quite close to Hawking in terms of coolness. Interestingly, he is regarded as Hawking’s most worthy opponent. Susskind managed to prove Hawking wrong, and then wrote a book about it. It was really a clash of the titans. Yet all that they have come up with is just mathematical abstraction, explaining one thing but due to its far from perfect nature, confusing another even more.
In general, the thought is that you can’t really tell where the boundary between science and philosophy lies in cosmology.
In general, the best way to understand how little you know, having virtually any level of knowledge in physics and mathematics –
is to delve into the details of the discoveries of Hawking and Susskind. I really hope to live to see the days when I can write that I have finally understood at least at the level of principles, to which I have no questions. But, I am sure, it will require the birth of a few more Hawkings and Susskinds to resolve the inconsistencies and to devise a simpler model that reconciles things with each other. Most likely, half of what they have come up with will be deemed incorrect, while the other half will be a major breakthrough and a basis for the next steps, which we are currently unable to appreciate.
UPDATE: related interesting topic https://cosmos.d3.ru/chto-to-ne-tak-s-sovremennoi-fizikoi-971821/?sorting=rating
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 