Stephen Hawking: Discovering the Maker’s Work Without Knowing the Maker

Lia Martinez

Challenge B

Final Astronomy Essay 

There are some stories that stop us in our tracks and make us marvel at the perseverance of the human spirit. This is such a story. Just a few years ago there lived a man who didn’t let a debilitating and crippling disease stop his passion and desire to comprehend our universe. He discovered things that were, at one time, beyond man’s knowledge. I beseech you to look past the fact that you may likely not have the same beliefs as him. I hope as you read this, you will learn to push aside all those factors and agree on one fact, that scientific expansion benefits man and further leads us to marvel at the work of Maker’s hands.

Stephen Hawking is a man whose career started with disappointments. First he was told that he wasn't accepted as an intern underneath a well known man by the name of Fred Hoyle. Hoyle was the supervisor of his dreams and the most famous astrophysicist in Britain at that time. However there was an opening for him to study under the less popular Dennis Sciama, a position which half-heartedly accepted. It was later that same year that he was diagnosed with ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an incurable degenerative motor neuron disease that causes the person’s motor neurons to gradually deteriorate and doesn’t let them voluntarily move their muscles. Even though this disease stopped him physically he didn’t let it stop him mentally. As he was finishing up his second year of his PhD he got wonderful news, his disease was moving a lot slower than they first feared it would. I believe he took this information as a newfound hope and decided he wasn’t gonna let ALS stop his desire to learn, comprehend, and contribute to science.

 Stephen, a staunch atheist, dedicated most of his life to the study of black holes and how the earth was formed. Hawking theorized that after the Big Bang there were multiple objects, which held as much as one billion tons of mass and occupied as much space as a proton, born and thrown into different directions. These objects are dubbed black holes and have unique immense mass and are only ruled by the laws of relativity. This anomaly puts a hole (pun intended) right into the very heart of thermodynamics. He later proposed that in accordance with his prediction of quantum theory, black holes send out particles until their energy source ends and they explode; the only problem with this therapy is that it wasn’t in line with the second law of thermodynamics. A man by the name Bekenstein met Stephen at a French ski resort and they shared their thoughts and ideas on the matter. Bekenstein suggested that to preserve the law the area of its horizon itself is a measure of entropy. Stephen was furious with these ideas because they not only disproved a lot of his work, it supported Bekenstein’s work which he firmly disagreed with. The second Hawking got back to Cambridge, he immediately set out to disprove Bekenstein’s theories. Yet in the end, he couldn’t disproving the theory and had to accept that his research was indeed true.

Stephen Hawking has not only influenced science expansion and universal comprehension, he also gave many people hope. About fifteen percent of the population have a severe disability, many with dreams of doing bigger things without the limitations of the disease they have contracted or inherited. Stephen helped us understand black holes, their mass, and how they live by the rules of thermodynamics, all while being a role model to around one hundred ninety million people with severe mobility disabilities.

    Even if we don’t agree with his religious beliefs, we have to remember that God had a purpose for Stephen, one that we may never fully know or understand. Despite the fact that he never came to the conclusion that he was discovering and learning about God’s universe during his time on earth, he had a major influence on the field of astronomy and contributed to our knowledge of many ways our Maker created this planet we call home. For that, we are forever grateful for the story of Stephen Hawkings life.