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Stephen Hawking's Voice Beamed Into Space as His Ashes Are Interred (cnet.com) 111

The ashes of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking were interred at Westminster Abbey in London on Friday in a memorial ceremony attended by a mixture of celebrities and members of the public. From a report: Astronaut Tim Peake and British actor Benedict Cumberbatch and both gave readings, and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees paid tribute to the Hawking's work. Following the service, Hawking's words, set to an original score by composer Vangelis, will be beamed into space by the European Space Agency.

Hawking died in March aged 76 after a lifetime of studying the science of space and time. His final resting place is situated between the remains of two other great scientists: Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. It is a rare honor to be interred at the Abbey, and one that has not been afforded to a scientist for almost 80 years. Before Hawking, the last scientists laid to rest at Westminster were atomic physicists Ernest Rutherford in 1937 and Joseph John Thomson in 1940.

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Stephen Hawking's Voice Beamed Into Space as His Ashes Are Interred

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  • Rest in peace Mr Hawking.
  • Why are we scaring away ETs?
  • by AnthonywC ( 4415891 ) on Friday June 15, 2018 @09:53AM (#56789600)
    His popularity came from his disability; not his actual scientific accomplishment (while still good; is arguably not that great). For example, the former Lucasian Professor Paul Dirac is a much more accomplished physicist than Hawking.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Hawking's accomplishments go beyond being a physicist though. He's just as recognized for helping make science popular among us commoners that maybe didn't choose to go into it for a career. He could take the ideas in modern physics and theoretical physics and distill them down in a way that most anyone could understand if they were willing to actually crack a book and do a modicum of thinking about the subject. And helping to get this sort of thought process instilled in a larger percentage of the publi

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Well the fame is obviously because of the chair and the voice, because you don't get famous for doing physics. If you go through the list of Nobel prize winners I think the only one any significant number would remember is Albert Einstein, and if he'd been more serious and well-groomed [bigthink.com] I doubt even he'd reach that fame on merit alone. Maybe Schrödinger for the cat but very little else. So what's the merits if you try to take away all the fame? I honestly don't know enough physics to tell and you can't

    • Agreed. Yet, there is something to be said for dumb-ing it down to reachable levels for us layman.
  • ...nobody hear you scream...
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Let me guess the piece was called Wheelchairs of Fire.

    Captcha: perhaps

  • I actually respect him a lot for his cartoon voice acting as much as his science contributions. He was someone who not only excelled at science and explaining concepts, but also did some funny work as a voice actor in Futurama.

    To quote him, "I like physics, but I love cartoons".

    • He also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation and multiple times on The Big Bang Theory, though I love his Futurama work the most.

      Hawking: I call it a "Hawking Hole".

      Fry: No fair! I saw it first!

      Hawking: Who is The Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?

  • So Stephen Hawking was outspoken with his views on contacting Alien life.

    "One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this," Hawking said, referring to the potentially habitable alien planet Gliese 832c. "But we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn't turn out so well," he added in 2016 during the documentary "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places," which streamed on the CuriosityStream video service."

    Followin
  • Stephen Hawking's actual voice (before his disability caught up with him) ?

    Or the computer generated voice (the name of whose sample donor I could not locate )?

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