RIP Dr. Stephen Hawking

[Dawgology]

All I'll say is that maybe the man should have put a few points into strength and Constitution instead of pumping it all into Intelligence and Wisdom. Perhaps he could have done as most nerds do and used Charisma as his dump stat.

Yep, rookie mistake.

[BeardoMSU]

Hate MS? Why? A neutral observer of this thread may just as easily conclude that MS is more dominated by atheists who take some questionable msg board comments and ascribe the opinions therein to an entire religion.

Atheists? Who's "ascribing" now...

[Lord McBuckethead]

For 17s sake, your chosen name is Cooterpoot.

[Lord McBuckethead]

Hate MS? Why? A neutral observer of this thread may just as easily conclude that MS is more dominated by atheists who take some questionable msg board comments and ascribe the opinions therein to an entire religion.

Atheist? Just because I appreciate Dr. Hawking does not make me or anyone else an atheist. Appreciating genius has nothing to do with religion. Shit.
Maybe just maybe everything I said about Mississippians has nothing to do with religion specifically and maybe just my impression of someone's insecure faith.

[turkish]

Fair points. I should have said ?atheist apologists.? I love you all, regardless.

[ScoobaDawg]

I bet you're a riot at parties. First of all, I wasn't replying to you. Seems you'd know that based on the quote. Second of all, you don't appear to be a very smart guy. In this post, or any of the others I've seen. Just a bullshite artist. So, not really a good place for you to be getting out of your lane. It won't end well for you. But if you insist....Here goes, sunshine...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...sics-92901090/

And another. Skip on down to 7,6,5,4,3,2, & especially 1, if you aren't patient enough to read the whole article.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/313922-cern...-hadron-higgs/

Here's another

https://futurism.com/cern-research-f...ctually-exist/

and finally,

https://www.livescience.com/47737-st...-doomsday.html

Just because something is too complicated for you to wrap your head around doesn't mean it isn't true.

Alright.. I have digested the articles you linked. 2 of them focus on a quote from Stephen. Specifically the RT item #7 "quotes" Hawking as saying "?The God particle found by CERN could destroy the universe,? " but actually wrote in the preface

"The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100 [billion] gigaelectronvolts (GeV). This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming."

This story tries to explain a little more context of this statement.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/sci...erse-17192502/

What Hawking is talking about here is not the Higgs boson but what's called the Higgs potential, which are "totally different concepts," says Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist at Melbourne University. The Higgs field permeates the entire universe, and the Higgs boson is an excitation of that field, just like an electron is an excitation of an electric field. In this analogy, the Higgs potential is like the voltage, determining the value of the field.
Once physicists began to close in on the mass of the Higgs boson, they were able to work out the Higgs potential. That value seemed to reveal that the universe exists in what's known as a meta-stable vacuum state, or false vacuum, a state that's stable for now but could slip into the "true" vacuum at any time. This is the catastrophic vacuum decay in Hawking's warning, though he is not the first to posit the idea.
Is he right?
"There are a couple of really good reasons to think that's not the end of the story," Mack says. There are two ways for a meta-stable state to fall off into the true vacuum?one classical way, and one quantum way. The first would occur via a huge energy boost, the 100 billion GeVs Hawking mentions. But, Mack says, the universe already experienced such high energies during the period of inflation just after the big bang. Particles in cosmic rays from space also regularly collide with these kinds of high energies, and yet the vacuum hasn't collapsed (otherwise, we wouldn't be here).
"Imagine that somebody hands you a piece of paper and says, 'This piece of paper has the potential to spontaneously combust,' and so you might be worried," Mack says. "But then they tell you 20 years ago it was in a furnace." If it didn't combust in the furnace, it's not likely to combust sitting in your hand.

I'm not touching the almost conspiracy level thoughts of 5 and 3.


#6 Opening the door to other dimensions
Well it's very interesting. Could there be another Dimension that we don't know about..that re-writes physics. VERY likely... and that point comes from your First link..
Would it really be that surprising considering our laws of physics are incomplete we know.. and so much of the universe is Dark matter or energy that we don't understand at this time...(as discussed in RT's #4 point)

This extra dimension could be separated from ours by a million trillion trillionth of a centimeter. Is this a parallel yet inaccessible universe?
It interacts with our dimensions only via gravity. And gravity is extremely weak. An elementary particle at ordinary energies exerts negligible gravitational force. But at the LHC, if this idea is right, we would see evidence of this extra dimension. Particles could carry momentum into the extra dimension, and that could actually be observable.
But it?s not something you think of as a ?parallel universe??
Technically, yes, it could exist parallel to our universe. But it?s not just a carbon copy of our universe, which a lot of people think of when they hear that phrase.
If physicists do find solid evidence of extra dimensions, how would that affect our view of the universe and our place in it?
You can have very exotic underlying phenomena, but they still would be consistent with the ordinary rules we?re familiar with. At some level, it doesn?t change anything. However, it means that at some deep underlying level, there?s a much richer universe out there. It?s just a wonderful thing to know what our universe is made of.

#2 the theory of the sculpture Outside.. it's not the "Deity of destruction" It mean's so much more and is it rooted in history.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-maha-shivratri-why-cern-the-world-s-largest-particle-physics-lab-has-a-statue-of-lord-shiva-2186655

[ScoobaDawg]

He was a meanie butt who didn't believe in God so now he's burning********

I've seen several posts like this on facebook.. why do I get on social media???

Thank you, Dr. Hawking

There is only person in this life of eternal that shall do the judging. All others do not know the fate of this man.

[DawgRockur]

If he wasn?t afflicted and in a wheelchair, no one would be talking on this day, about him or the things he said.

[BeastMan]

Hate MS? Why? A neutral observer of this thread may just as easily conclude that MS is more dominated by atheists who take some questionable msg board comments and ascribe the opinions therein to an entire religion.

Just for the record, I've seen similar post on TD political board (LSU site), Facebook, and twitter. I do not think this is a Mississippian issue. I think it's a Christians issue. Dancing in the streets over someone's death who is not a believer is kinda not how it's supposed to go.

[ScoobaDawg]

If he wasn?t afflicted and in a wheelchair, no one would be talking on this day, about him or the things he said.

[BeastMan]

For 17s sake, your chosen name is Cooterpoot.

[bostondawg]

If he wasn?t afflicted and in a wheelchair, no one would be talking on this day, about him or the things he said.

This is a completely wrong take. He was an Einstein-level scientist who changed the past, present and future of physics in ways that many people just don't care to understand. The world lost one of its intellectual giants when he passed.

[BeardoMSU]

If he wasn?t afflicted and in a wheelchair, no one would be talking on this day, about him or the things he said.

Oh for ****s sake....

[bostondawg]

Also a general note about the use of religious words in scientific literature--they're almost always used ironically and/or prescribed by the media.

For example, the phrase 'God particle' (referring to the Higgs boson) comes from the title of a 1993 book on the subject by Dr. Lederman. In it he jokes that the publisher wouldn't let them name it the "G**damn particle," which would be more apt of a name because of how frustrating it was to observe. That's the kindest explanation for the nickname. There is a less kind explanation that it got that name because the Higgs boson can explain the "creation of matter from nothing" (paraphrasing on a very complex subject--I'm happy to talk about it more offline. But it probably would derail this whole thread.)

tl;dr: use discoveries in science to justify your religious beliefs at your own risk.

ETA: didn't know the G-D word was censored.

[Dawgology]

If he wasn?t afflicted and in a wheelchair, no one would be talking on this day, about him or the things he said.

What makes you say that? I mean, can you qualify this statement? He was a best selling author and a ground-breaking theorist in cosmology and physics. The fact that he accomplished this all with a debilitating disease is part and parcel of his story.

It's kind of like saying "no one would talk about Abraham Lincoln if he hadn't been assassinated". Just because YOU wouldn't have been talking about him doesn't mean others wouldn't have. The fact that those outside of the field became interested in his works because of his unique disease is just part of his story and celebrity. It doesn't negate his work in the field.

[turkish]

Just for the record, I've seen similar post on TD political board (LSU site), Facebook, and twitter. I do not think this is a Mississippian issue. I think it's a Christians issue. Dancing in the streets over someone's death who is not a believer is kinda not how it's supposed to go.

Respectfully, to assume that posters there carry anymore clout than Mr Cooterpoot is dreadfully unfair.

It also seems impossible around here to know when it’s acceptable to be a wise ass and when it’s gonna offend someone. Such are the times, I guess. Some groups are held to a higher standard — maybe it’s high time to understand that, embrace it, take the high road, and leave the internet cred to others.

[BeastMan]

Respectfully, to assume that posters there carry anymore clout than Mr Cooterpoot is dreadfully unfair.

It also seems impossible around here to know when it’s acceptable to be a wise ass and when it’s gonna offend someone. Such are the times, I guess. Some groups are held to a higher standard — maybe it’s high time to understand that, embrace it, take the high road, and leave the internet cred to others.

See, it’s really not that complicated. “Being a wise ass” in a thread about a guy dying probably isn’t the place and I think that’s pretty common sense. I’m not assuming anything btw. All I’m saying is that a lot of what I’ve seen today, as a Christian, is sad to me.

[Cooterpoot]

All you smart SOB's living in your vacuum. It's ok if he was a genius asshole.

[Cooterpoot]

For 17s sake, your chosen name is Cooterpoot.

I could've gone with McCooterpoot I guess....

[Dawgology]

I could've gone with McCooperpoot I guess....

Also a great choice