Tonight
the time before time begins
The universe, Black Holes
God and the laws of Science
Profº Stephen Hawking
Doctor Carl Sagan
and Arthur C. Clarke
discuss the mysteries men faces as he starts to explore the stars
Subtitles by JUZAO in july 2008, from the original audio
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Degenerative disabilities prevents Stephen Hawking from speaking a word
But he reason above them to become a brilliant mathematician and teacher
using a computer driven voice synthesizer
He's told the world how the universe began
and now he is seeking the ultimate theory of how it works
Arthur C. Clarke invented the communication satellite long before the technology exist to launch one
That vision of the future father the global village
his novels and stories including 2001 Space Odyssey
have inspired generations of real life astronauts
Carl Sagan sent man's first messages to the stars aboard Nasa's space probes
his sure will not be alone in the cosmic widerness
Doctor Sagan join our discussion from Cornell University in NY State
So I check whether he could hear us over one of Arthur satellites
Yes. Communication satellite technology is working very well, Thank You
Arthur can you hear all right?
I can hear fine
And professor Hawking are you in touch with Carl Sagan?
Yes
Profº Hawking in fact has just made publishing history
by writing a book about hard theorical science which has outsold
even Michael Jackson in the bestsellers lists
It is called a Brief History of Time
and we will be talking about the concepts that are in it
Now Stephen Hawking has engaged in a search for the ultimate answer
a grand, unified theory that will explain everything
Stephen Hawking that is quite an agenda. How are getting on with it?
Let me just explain that what happens when Profº Hawking wishes to speak
He lost his voice a couple of years ago. And now has to use a voice synthesizer
And he can control a squeeze box in his hand
And on the video screen on his chair he's got a vocabulary
which scrolls trough and he can pick out a word that he wants
and these words are then assembled into a sentence
and when the sentences are ready he can passes it trough the voice synthesizer
so whenever you are ready profº Hawking we would like to hear from you
In the last 300 years we have discovered the laws and covered the universe
in all by the most extreme conditions
I think there is a reasonable chance that we may find the complete set of laws
by the end of the century if we don't blow ourselves at first
If we do find a complete unified theory will be a great triumph not only for scientist
but for ordinary people as well
In time, the unified theory will be simplified and taught in schools at least in outline
Then everyone will have some idea of how the universe works
Well that is a tremendous vision
Now Carl Sagan you wrote an introduction to the book
And of the striking things that you said is that
Is only children now a days who ask the big questions
because they don't know enough
What I was trying to get across was the notion that the school system
It seems to me that they have an attitude of discouragement
Of asking fundamental questions
If a 5-6 year old asks why the moon is round or why the grass is green
The usual adult answer, at least in my experience, is to discourage the child
Say "what shape did you expect the moon to be? A square ?"
"What color did you expect the grass to be? Blue?"
Instead of saying: Those are interesting questions let’s try to find out the answers
Or "Maybe nobody knows the answer
and when you grow up you will be able to discover the answer
It will be very healthy for the human species
if there were less discouragement and more scientists
Arthur Clarke?
I wonder about science which is because it does free the imagination
and it does inspire people to become scientists
and astronauts
maybe for the very old man by coming up and say to me
You know your book turn me into a small boy
Excellent. Now I've planned a reasonably finite structure for our little colloquium
And I’d like to start it, if I may, with Profº Hawking
How did the universe start? With a Big bang?
We observe that the distant galaxies are moving away from us
This means that they must have blow themselves together in the past
In fact, one can show that all the galaxies must have been on top of each other
about 15 billion of years ago
this was real big bang not the puny things that took place
on the stock exchange a couple of years ago
It was the beginning of the universe and of time itself
Anything that happened before the big bang
could not affect what happened after
so we can neglect the events before the big bang
and say that the time began at the big bang
After the Big Bang we believe that the universe expanded in a very rapidly inflationary manner
Again this inflation in the universe quite puts modern economic inflation in the shade
An increase of billion of billions of percent in a tiny fraction of the second
Of course, that was before the present government
During the inflationary period the universe borrowed heavily formed from its gravitational energy
To finance the creation of more matter
The results was a triumph for the Reagan economics:
A vigorous in the expanding universe filled with material objects
The debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe
I'd like to stay with this basic proposition for time beginning: The big Bang Theory
And then I come to you Carl Sagan could you help me
by putting it into layman terms what was involved with this Big Bang?
Well, ... we... here we are in a planet, which is about five thousand million of years old
The sun around it goes is not much older
It is part of a galaxy which is a perhaps 10-12 thousand of million years old
Which is one of perhaps hundreds of thousands of millions of other galaxies
And none of these planets, suns and galaxies was around at the time of Big Bang
At the time of Big bang there was energy, elementary particles
which slowly evolved into the kind of universe we know it today
We are the product of the grand evolutionary sequence cosmic evolution
about which we are only occasionally aware of one of the great accomplishments of Dr. Hawking
Is to plug us better in to the knowledge of this long evolutionary sequence
What I have in my mind is a picture that Carl Sagan had been lead me towards to
Of the whole universe in quite amazingly small packages. Like putting the whole world into a matchbox
Immensely dense Immensely tiny. In fact sometimes it is kind of disappearing into a little point
Is this the earliest imaginable point that our minds are taking us to so far Carl Sagan?
Well, we..as Dr. Hawking said: The Galaxies are expanding, running away from each other
The further away they are from each other the faster they are running away
If you run the cosmic movie back into time you will come to a moment, perhaps 15-10 thousands of millions of years ago
In which all the matter in the universe was touching in, if you like, a point
And the key, unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question is:
Where did all that matter energy come from?
What was before that?
And if it was made from nothing: Who made it?
And who made the maker?
And of course an infinite regress behind that
Is the universe still expanding fast? I mean, It is a lot of more room in space, as i think ?
for the universe to carry on and getting bigger?
As far as I know: Nothing in the way, and the expansion continues. The question is:
Whether there is sufficient matter in the universe? Matter that we have not yet counted?
That will slow the expansion down and stop it and have the expanding universe followed by a collapsing universe
Or whether there is not enough matter to stop the expansion and so the expansion will continue forever
This is an observational question which is still unresolved
and the Hubble space telescope...Who knows? Might be launched next year if we are lucky
Might answer this question...
Profº Hawking uses a very striking proposition of the earth borrowing this energy from itself
Now in striking banking terms,
Let me do the overdrawn now in the end there is going to be a collapse a big Crunch
So does Big Bang get followed inevitably by Big Crunch?
No, not inevitably. It depends on how much matter there is on the universe
Which is still an unsolved issue. I should say that the prevailing opinion is that
the universe will continue expanding forever, but in my opinion is by no means a very secure conclusion
Now let bring in the poet of my side here.
Arthur Clarke, you know what T.S. ELLIOT says " This is the way the world ends, not with a Bang but a whimper"
When you think of the end of the world, if you think of the end of the world
Does it ends with a bang or a whimper?
Coming along, we like to think it will end with a Bang
Of course we will never know, this is a long road way in the future
Some...billions.. tens of billions... possibly much far in the future
As Carl said, we may have the answers to these questions in a very few years
If the Hubble Space telescope gets successfully into orbit and focus to the boundaries of the universe
If we are as living in a little suburb of the galaxy
Can you force a time when we will need to get out of the suburb and colonize somewhere else?
Because of the gradual curve towards the end?
Well, I think the human race.. If it survives the next few years will go on to colonize
First the solar system.. and then will send ships out to the stars
And ultimately perhaps throughout the galaxies
But if the expansion of the universe is fast enough, we will never be able to keep up with it
Now, one of the fastidid aspect that is raised is the question of time itself in the book
Now.. we all think.. we know what time is. It is a lentlessmarch forward
But for the purposes of you arguments Stephen Hawking you use a mathematical concept you called "Imaginary Time"
Which seems to be able to run backwards as well as forwards ?
In our theories there are two types of time
There is what is called real time.
This is the kind of time that is measured by a clock
The time that we feel passing, the time that we grow older
Then there is imaginary time
Of course imaginary time is an idea that science fiction writers, like Arthur, have used in their stories
But imaginary time is also a well defined mathematical concept
it can be thought as a direction of time
that is at right angles to ordinary, real time, in certain sense.
The universe has a beginning in real time at the Big Bang
And it may well have an end, if it collapses to a Big Crunch
But in imaginary time it has no beginning or end
Rather, imaginary time is closed on itself like the surface of the earth
The surface of the earth doesn't have any beginning or end
I know because I’ve been around the world and I didn't fall off
Individual Particles can travel trough imaginary time and gets back in a nearlier real time
But I don't believe that people will ever be able to travel back in time like in the film "Back to the Future"
I'm gonna come first, if I may, to you Carl Sagan, because this idea in Profº Hawking's book
that there is 4 extra dimensionals model of the universe. With no boundaries... but finite.. just like the earth
This to me is really stretching my own capacity for imagination to the upmost
How do you turn it into words for me a layman?
Well.. the first thing i would say is not to feel bad... if it's not immediately intuitively obvious
Our ability to understand things instantly, so called "Common Sense"
Derives for a some certain range of size, and speed, and duration
That are appropriate for human existence
We know about thing from the tenth of millimeter to a few kilometers
From a fraction of a second to a lifetime... and so on..
So when we are dealing with matters of quantum physics..
we have particles of a size of ten to the minus of thirteenth centimeters
Or in cosmology... we are talking about of ten billion light years or more
It is very reasonable that our intuition is not adaqueted to the task
One point I would like to make about this is that every human culture
has a set of creation myths
But they are in the realm of mythology or religion or folklore
And of course they are all coherent and consistent
The great thing that is happening in our time is that we are able to a
method which can actually make some progress towards the real universe out there
To find out something about our origins and this is the scientific method applied to the science of cosmology
So I know that is not a direct answer to your question but I thought it was more important
to address the issue of feeling unhappy because is wasn't immediately understandable
Yes, I find that extremely soothing actually
because it is the kind of unformidable task of grasping this
that makes me want to retreat into trivial questions like
Is this idea of predicting backwards is going to put astrologists out of business ?
Nothing will put astrologist out of business !!
Well.. that is certainly the attitude of touching the lightness of this tremendous issues that we are discussing
Infinity, black Holes and Imaginary time
And at this stage... let's relax a little bit and have a bit of fun with mathematics at the most abstruse
I'm going to ask Arthur Clarke here to do something doodling with his computer
And with a fascinating exercise with complex numbers, which is called the Mandelbrot set
Now, this is name is in honor of a French scientist working for IBM
It's a mathematical equation which leads us towards the infinite
In fact, it makes the mathematics of the universe visual and incredibly beautiful
This is what we would see if we had eyes to see it when order meets chaos
This is what is going on in the universe everyday
And ordered universe is breaking down and becoming more disordered
This is the second law of therm dynamics in action. What Stephen Hawking calls Murphy's Law
Now Dr. Clarke will be using your computer back home in Sri-Lanka to
to explore the Mandelbrot set at incredible high magnifications..
And Yes,... well this strange looking object is the Mandelbrot set
which is actually extraordinary simply concept is to find behind the equation of just two terms
Z2 + C, that is all that is to it, that is a simple equation. Z2 + C
You feed a number into it, then carry on over and over again
to crank the number back and round around. And plot the results on screen. I'm not going to detail
But this is the first appearance of the set.
And what it does is to divide all possible numbers into two categories
It's a map or a boundarie or a fence, if you like, diving one plus other number for another
And you can tell your computer to go into any spot here and say
recompute that area to a higher degree of precision and then blow it up on the screen
So you can use a computer as a microscope and you can continue that process forever
Some of the images are incredibly beautiful, they are going to have a greater impact
on artists of design in the next decade or so
I found what look like black holes and I’d like to show to you
What I’m going to do now is to send to it, is to zoom into it, equation of magnification
Manifold, and if I press the right button, it should happen now
The computer will now review this image, and I think you will agree
when it comes up, it's a very impressive black hole
And it will be more so and I start it.....into action
Oh yes! It is magnificent, isn't it?
Oh you hate you seen nothing yet
I should explain that this magnification, remember the original picture, which we took that was the same area
This time I’ve magnified it more than a thousand times
So the picture it was first is now 500 feet across. Now let's see if this works
Now isn't that lovely?
So now there is matter streaming into this black hole
Well, now... when I found this black hole I started to exploring the neighborhood
And.. I very quickly found an HONOR
That's Lovely
Now, this is a second black hole, this look like the earlier one, but this is one a far greater magnification
the original Mandelbrot set now i think is about 10 million miles wide
This is enormiusly bigger
The first one you saw had essentially the same kind of pattern.
This is black hole nº 3.. and this one.. took me 22 hours of computing in the day before I left Sri-Lanka
I let the computer running all night
And I’m ought to put this one because on this scale at the original middle picture you saw
This has the width of the orbit of Mars, so you understand that no human being has ever seen that
With this pattern before. Simply because of probabilities
And you can explore the Mandelbrot set by growing up missing pieces of it
And you are pretty sure that no one has ever seen that.. I'm the first person to see it
And which time you will be drawn toward
You are sucked into it
Mathematical infinity
Into smaller.. Yes.. this is real mathematical infinity.. this goes on forever and ever
Limited only by the capacity of the machine and the speed which it can do the calculations
I'm doing calculations here.. you may not and see that ..
this ENORMUS long number.. there are 22 digits of numbers or so..
and the Machine is multiplying those to get a 100 times a second
Now, the thing that fascinates me about this is that this is the infinity detailed
You go on forever and ever.. I'd like to ask to Stephen this question
Is the real universe also in infinity detailed ?
I mean we know we have MOLECULS, atom, electrons, protons
sub-atomic level to the quarks so far
But does it continue forever and ever? Or is there a limit? Is there a base for the real universe ?
Professor Hawking ?
We will discover new structures when look at the universe in smaller and smaller scales
But in the case of the universe there seems to be a limiting scale
It is called the "Planck Length" and it is about a million billion billion times smaller than an inch
This means that there is a limit to how complex the universe can be
It also means that the universe could be described by a theory that is very simple
at least on scales of the "Planck Length"
I just hope that we are smart enough to find it
Are we smart enough to find it, Arthur?
Well,... I wonder.. because after all we are simple primitive organisms and the universe is very old
And I yes don't know.. I'd like to think so.. but then there is a feeling..
When we found it, then what? where do we go from here?
I'd like to turn our attention back on to our profº Stephen Hawking
Do you think that we could ever hope to use the old science fiction trick of
Diving into a black hole and then traveling to another part of the cosmos?
Some recent work indicates that particles that falls into a black hole
Can come out again out from another black hole somewhere else in the universe
At first sight that seems to the ideal method of space travel
Just find a black hole and jump in it
But there are Snags.
First that doesn't seem to be anyway to choose where you will come out
Worst than that your history and real time you will come to a sticky end
As you are torn apart by the gravitational fields inside the black hole
Your history and imaginary time will continue out of the other black hole
But that might not be much consolation to someone being made into spaghetti
That will be like traveling on some Air Lines I could name
So how do you see the that role of science fiction
Is it purely escapism or do you see as having a very real purpose
In broughting our pattern of thinking, opening our minds to the kind of
vast concepts in which we are discussing today ?
First of all, there is no real objection to escapism in the right places
In fact, CS News once remarked me, the only people who don't really like, who object to escapism are jailers
We all want to escape occasionally but Science Fiction is often very far from escapism
In fact, you might say the Science fiction is escapism as escape into reality
Is a fiction which does concern yourself with really issues
The origin, the man, our future
In fact, I don't think... i can not think in any form of fiction which is more
More concern with really issues, reality
Well, what do you have to say to that Professor Hawking?
I don't believe in stories at flying Soucers and another unidentified flying objects
If time travel were possible
we should have already been visited by people from the future
I think if we were been visited by people from another time or another planet
It would be much more obvious and probably very unpleasant
I don't want to make contact with another civilization except at a safe distance
It might be like north Americans Indians making contact with a white men
I badly wish they had never sold Manhattan
Carl, you are the world's leading expert in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence
Now Profº hawking doesn't want to make contact with them,
Why do you want to make contact with them?
Well.. first of all I would say we have little choice in the matter
We have already announced, rather i should say Magnus
Your followers have already announced
The fact that there is a low level technical civilization at this part of the galaxy
Because television signals get out at the speed of light
And since any other civilization who detects those signals is unlikely to be at or
before our state of technological events
since we just invented radio technology so to say
They are much more likely to be in our technological future
And the question is to whether their intentions are BEGNY or
otherwise is of course adventuristic
But we have nothing to say about the matter
So therefore i think we might as well hope it's beny if they are out there
From my point of view, the search for extra terrestrial life
And in special the search for extra terrestrial intelligence
is one of the key Philosophical, scientific, and human questions that have been posed
But we are at the very beginning of searching, surely it is important for us to know the answer
One thing that interests me a great deal is the way
which public perception of beings from outer space have had changed over the years
They used to be the badies.. But Now..
there’s is an optimistic feeling that any extra terrestrial life is if not beny
is at least not as hostile and aggressive as the one we used to fear
Is this the drifting of your writings as well Arthur?
Yes, I'm an optimistic and I believe that any hostile civilization
will rapidly self destruct as we may see it on ourselves
So if we do have contact physical contact with aliens i think it will be beny
My frivolous mind is much taken...
If Intelligent being are reasonbly near why they have not visited us?
Well, that is a very good question, let's try to run across to Arthur Clarke?
There are literally dozens of answers to this
that may have come in a remote past, they may be visiting us every ten thousands of years
I mean the universe is a huge large place and even if there were fleets
of survey ships they are all going on the cosmos
we shouldn't expect visitors less than an ice age every thousand years or so
They may know about us, and they may have put a quarantine in our planet
For pretty good reasons
They may have lost the interest in us, they may be so much higher
that we must be just a JHHH an inconvenience if you like
You expect it endlessly.. I think we should just wait and try to get more evidence
Maybe there are spaces probes saying there is no intelligent life on earth
They maybe have achieved our television programs and decide that
that is the case
May I attempt a different answer to Stephen's question ?
Please do Carl Sagan
The first large scale commercial broadcasting on the earth was in the late 1940's
So that was forty years ago.. So you must imagine
A spherical wave expanding out from the earth at the velocity of light
Which contain all the JURY of programs of late 1940's
Since then, that expanding spherical wave containing
The news of a development civilization on earth has travel some forty light years
Suppose that there are no civilizations closer than forty light years
Perhaps they aren't here because they don't know we are about just yet
But in time the message gets to them
And perhaps they'll send a little expedition to look us over
I liked when I read that when spaces probes went out
First of all you put the figure of a man and a woman on the outside
So any alien life would recognize what we look like
And in the legend probe I think you put a LP of earth sounds
with instructions and hand signals on how to work the LP
How do you think anybody would have reacted if in fact, alien intelligence had heard this LP?
My guess is that will be something like
"Oh look, another artifact from some extremely primitive civilization, which one is this?"
But then some degree of thanks..
we were thoughtful enough to send a message into the far future which it could in no way benefit us
Certainly a selfless act. And perhaps it will be recognize
As a hopeful and optimistic gesture by an emerge civilization
just setting foot into the great galactic wilderness
Yes Arthur?
I know what is gonna happen to your voyager Carl
That will be overtaken one day by terrestrial spaceship and brought back to Smithsonian (NASA)
It is certainly technologically possible, but i hope they let it go on its original mission
Now, it very nearly 20 years ago since man landed on the moon
Do you think that we've basically started trying to get men any further?
Is there any chance of another Neil Armstrong will set foot on Mars in our lifetime?
United States and Soviet Union have managed to BOOBLE TRAP the planet with about 60,000 nuclear weapons
With a little help from Britain friends and China and Israel
It's a tiny fraction of those weapons is enough to destroy the participating nations
And certainly the global civilization and possibly the human species just maybe
It is time for the United States and Soviet Union to demonstrate that they can undo
This arsenal
That they can demonstrate their ability to work together on high technology
For peaceful hopeful purposes that carries us to a beny 21th century
That's why I support the idea of joint US Soviet cooperation and the exploration of Mars
Leading up to an International Men and by the way Women mission to the planet
Americans and Soviets as representatives of the human species other nations i presume will also be involved
Then a glorious, whatever will be few month period, in which Mars I have a global of it next to me
In which Mars will be explored. There are hundreds, for example, hundreds of ancient river valleys on Mars
Mars is today bondry. It was once much warmer much wetter, much denser atmosphere, much more earthlike
What were does conditions like?
Why did an earthlike planet get converted into this deep Ice Age condition?
That Mars has today?
Is there life there ? Could there once be life? Are there phossils forms?
There are extraordinary enigmatic geological features on the planet. What is their nature?
There a huge amount of exploration to do
And all of it, every step that I’ve described, could be before the television cameras over the world
And we could all participate in such exploration
Is another danger that the human bacterys that we take with us
Will pollute and destroy something enourmsly precious out there simply because we are so inquisitive about it
Arthur?
Well, if you ask the question "Should the human beings go to other planets?"
I think the answer to that is: We could had stayed the Europe and could explore American by robots
It might have been, it would certainly save a lot of human lives, but of course we didn't we went there and lived
In this new continent. Now again Mars like none of the planets of the solar system is anything like as beny as
The United States and the other parts of this planet
But one day people will argue to call them home
There will me Martians one day and they will be arguing eventually
And they will think as the earth poison as a horrible place for themselves to live
Now as to whether will we pollute this environment: Yes there are some risks to it
Of course colonization always involves a destruction of what was there first
I'm quite sure in the next century, In fact already started there is a conference on the pollution of space
In the United States in a very near future this is already a serious problem in the near earth space
But you have to control you have to cut down forests on this earth to make new cities
On the moon I'm afraid one day we may have to polish much of the moon with vacuum
Vacuum on Mars, we may have to change the atmosphere
But i do hope we'll leave most of the universe in a crystal condition
But our heirs are gonna have to change ourselves in Mars, I mean we could evolve differently
Mars will change us. In fact this is part of the progress
By going into a new environment, by occupying new biological niches
That's the way we progress and discover the universe and explore it..
and perhaps fulfill our destiny
Do you think that other planets might have the same kind of system which there will be a morality
Which there would be people taking moral attitudes, which may not necessary be the same as ours of course ?
All societies must have some moral structure, I mean otherwise we just can't have a society
We must understand rules and the way to behave to our neighbors
And even if the society consist of machines, there must be a machine land
Which they can agree to react together
So morality in some way is essential to the universe
Now, Professor Hawking in the very last paragraph of your book
You said that if we discover a compete theory of the universe
Then it should be in time understandable and BROUGHT principle to everyone and not just to scientists
And when that happens, all of us will be able to start discussing "WHY" rather than the "HOW" and I quote:
"If we find the answer to that, it should be the ultimate trying for human reason for then we will know the mind of god"
Do you think that God can intervene in the universe as he wants ?
Or is god too bound by the laws of science?
The question whether god is bound by the laws of Science is a bit like the question
Can God make a stone that is so heavy that he can not lift it?
I don't think that is very useful to speculate on what god might, or might not be able to do
Rather, we should examine what he actually does with the universe we live in
All of our observations suggests that he operates accordingly to well defined laws
These laws may have been ordained by god
But it seems that he does not intervene in the universe to break the laws
At least not once when he set a universe going
However until recently, it was thought that the laws would necessarily breakdown at the beginning of the universe
That would had meant, that God would have had a complete freedom to choose how the universe began
In the last few years, however we have realized that the laws of science may hold at the beginning of time
In that case would have had no freedom
The way the universe began would be determined by the laws of science
Well, thank you very much.
Carl Sagan, in your introduction to the book you commented on this
You said this is also a book about God or perhaps about the absence of God
Because Hawking left nothing for the creator to do
Now, God of course means many things to many people.
What sort of God basically are we talking about when we talk about reading the mind of God?
Well... I think that's an excellent question
And I'd be the most interested to hear Stephen Hawking Answer
But just to try to illuminate the range of possibilities consider two alternatives
One is the notion popular in the West
that God is sort of outsized, elderly white male with a long white beard seating in a throne in the sky
And telling the fault of every being
Contrast that with the idea of God in the mind of, let's say, Spinoza or Einstein
Which was at least very closely with the sum of the total laws of the universe
Now it would be madness to deny that there are well defined physical laws in the universe
And if is that what you mean by god there is no question that God exists
But it's a very remote God what French called "roíz franiant", a do nothing King
On the other hand the former model of the one who intervenes daily
For that there seems to be as Dr. Hawking said "No evidence"
I think that's wise my own personal feeling to be a little humble
On such matters, we must recognize that we are dealing with, by definition
"The most difficult things to know the furtherest from the human experience"
And perhaps we will be able to penetrate a little way into these mysteries
I think Prof Hawking would like to come in here
I use God in the same sense that Einstein did
It is our will the real reason why the is universe is as it is and why the universe exists at all
Can i ask Arthur Clarke what he meant when you said in a interview
I don't believe in God but I’m extremely interested in it
Well i guess I haven't placed my bet yet
You know when Stephen remarks and Carl remarks Reminds me that this was said
200 years ago when Napoleon, I think he was talking with Laplace who publishes theories of the universe
An Napoleon said "God isn't in it?" and Laplace replied "Sr. I have no need for that hypothesis"
Do you think that the church is In fact beginning to recognize that it may have to lose its priority
its anonnance as it sounds arbitrary of these matters and that Science will be allow to come in as an equal partner
Well, the church, the Roman Catholic Church is becoming very much more neighboor
I had a pleasure of give a talking in the Vatican myself when the Academy of Sciences ask me to
and I met the Pope and of course I quoted Galileo and so things are moving
In fact are they moving Backwards as well as Forwards Carl Sagan ?
Because I understand that in the earliest days of civilization then the priests were in fact what we call the scientists
The ones who could start astronomy and who could predict eclipses and things
You see the scientists coming back into to a second position like this or Am i overstating it?
Well, I hope you are overstating it
I think the essence of the scientific method is the willingness to admit you are wrong
The willingness to abandon ideas that don't work and the essence of religion is not to change anything
Suppose your truth are handed down by some revered figure
And no one is suppose to make any progress beyond that because all the truth was thought to be in hand
And may i talk about setting the agenda for the future?
My sense is that scientific way of thinking is questioning some delicate mix of creative encouragement of new ideas
In the most rigorous and skeptical Scrutiny of new and old ideas
I think that is the path to the future not just for science but for all human institutions
We have to be willing to challenge because we are in desperate need of change
I have the same question to you Arthur Clarke
Politics or Priests are setting the agenda or scientists ?
I'm very fan of Pandit Nehru on this, he once said that
Politics and Religious are obsolete. The time has come for science and spirituality!
I hear from the clicking that Prof. hawking would like to come in
I don't think that physics tells us how to behave to our neighbors
The physics may determinate who our neighbors are and what planets they live in
But you say that science should be skeptical and politics
Don't you think that we should be skeptical about science too? I mean, can we trust you guys?
I think you should certainly be skeptical, but my view is that there are no community of people on the planet
More skeptical than scientists. It's our stocking trade, is the life blood of our subject
Science is a self correct subject, not like Politics!
Well politics is corrected by other forces
Can I ask one question of you all?, is the question of creativity which fascinates me
Here we have three Enourmsly creative people. Enourmsly creative inthelects
How in fact does it operate?
Do you, Arthur Clarke, do you should find a problem that you like to work on
And then look for a solution to it ?
I'm not sure what might make the new creation, and I don't think i really want to know
And I’m afraid to find, if I discover, that i will not act naturally
Just found distract
Or a golf man when de think about his swing? Yes..
So you don't think about that
Carl Sagan, there is a seriou sight to this?
Well..this issue Where creativity comes from...
I share your fascination with it
I don't think we understand very much about it
My practice is to respect my unconscious mind
Who often is much wiser than the conscious part of me
And pay attention to what is says
In fact, I think this is connected to that delicate attention at the heart of Scientific Method i talked about before
The unconscious mind proposes a range of possibilities
And the conscious mind disposes and it compares those ideas with the real world
Checks for internal inconsistencies and so on
I think the creative process is a partnership between a conscious and unconscious parts of our minds
At least that is how it seems to me
I'd like to leave the last word on creativity In fact with Prof Hawking
Just whenever you are ready
I'm just curious I want to find out how the things works I follow my nose
One thing leads to another and i don't know what I will find next
Now i think i would like to retreat a bit into poetry myself because it's nearly a 150 years ago
Since Mathew Arnold wrote his explandid poem "The Future"
What was before us we know not and we know not what will succed
But perhaps if Prof Hawking magnificent vision and curiosity is realized
we will have proved Mathew Arnold is wrong before the 150 years are up
Gentlemen to all of you, to Prof Stephen Hawking, to Dr. Arthur C. Clarke
To you Carl Sagan in America, a enourmous thanks to all three of you
And to all of you watching Good Night