From: joann@ariadne.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Jo Ann Malina)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Subject: Re: Stephen Hawking, Mensan
Date: 2 Sep 92 07:08:24 GMT
Reply-To: joann@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu
Organization: SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center)

In article <15097@claris.com>, mike_steiner@qm.claris.com (Mike Steiner) writes:
|> In article <1992Aug30.054806.26282@ncsu.edu>, cjdcosta@eos.ncsu.edu (CHRISTOPHER J DCOSTA) writes:
|> > 
|> > 
|> > I just caught Siskel & Ebert's review of "A Brief History of time".. Not
|> > very enlightening as to the content, but yes, it's a documentary. And Siskel
|> > liked it but Ebert thought it "treated Hawking like a brain in a box" instead
|> > of a person, or something of that sort. Anyway, I'm going to see it.
|> 
|> As I wrote a few moments ago, we saw it Friday evening; it was worth seeing.

I did enjoy it, although it's pretty slow paced, lots of talking heads,
Hawking's mother, sister, colleagues reminiscing about his life and work,
plus his talking computer reading parts of his book to us as we watch him
composing it with his hand-held word selector. This is interspersed with
some mediocre graphics trying to illustrate some of the ideas he has worked
on over the years. They are very exciting. I hope they are explained in more
detail in the book, which I now intend to read. For instance, the idea that
the universe never had a "beginning" (in terms of all the matter in it being
compressed into a single particle in the moment before the Big Bang) is not
one I had heard before. Of necessity it had to be treated sketchily in the
film, I hope the book goes into more (non-mathematical) detail.

Also some words were used in ways I didn't understand, such as "entropy"
being used as if it were a place at the event horizon (of a black hole).
Or the idea of matter-antimatter particles popping into existence, only to
disappear by annihilating each other again; if this happens near the
event horizon, one half the pair may drop into the black hole and the
other escape into the universe. That much I grasp, but this state of
affairs was somehow supposed to mean that black holes could someday
"boil away," and I don't get how the one process implies the other.

My SO was also confused by some of this, and as he is more mathematically
literate, I think I can safely attribute it to the film's glossing over
some of these concepts. Or maybe they are just damned hard to understand.

Anyway, if your entertainment budget is tight, you might want to wait until
this shows up on PBS. Got to sooner or later, probably during a Pledge
Drive :-(  But if you enjoy cosmological speculation, go, dream.

*) *) *) *) *) *) *) *) *) *) *)!(* (* (* (* (* (* (* (* (* (* (* (* (*
Jo Ann Malina, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
joann@slac.stanford.edu  -or-  415/926-2846
Neither Stanford nor the DOE would be caught dead with these opinions.
Nor do they consult me when formulating theirs.
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                 "I have looked into the abyss,
                  and the abyss has looked into me.
                  Neither of us liked what we saw."
                                -- Brother Theodore