Exhibit Hopes to Solve Mysteries of Doodle-Filled Blackboard Kept 40 Years by Stephen Hawking (livescience.com) 23
"A new museum exhibit hopes to uncover the secrets behind the doodles, in-jokes and coded messages on a blackboard that legendary physicist Stephen Hawking kept untouched for more than 35 years," reports Live Science:
The blackboard dates from 1980, when Hawking joined fellow physicists at a conference on superspace and supergravity at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., according to The Guardian. While attempting to come up with a cosmological "theory of everything" — a set of equations that would combine the rules of general relativity and quantum mechanics — Hawking's colleagues used the blackboard as a welcome distraction, filling it with a mishmash of half-finished equations, perplexing puns and inscrutable doodles.
Still preserved more than 40 years later, the befuddling blackboard has just gone on public display for the first time ever as the centerpiece of a new exhibition on Hawking's office, which opened Feb. 10 at the Science Museum of London. The museum will welcome physicists and friends of Hawking — who died in 2018 at the age of 76 — from around the world in hopes that they may be able to decipher some of the hand-scrawled doodles.
What, for example, does "stupor symmetry" mean? Who is the shaggy-bearded Martian drawn large at the blackboard's center? Why is there a floppy-nosed squid climbing over a brick wall? What is hiding inside the tin can labeled "Exxon supergravity?" Hopefully, the world's great minds of math and physics can rise to the occasion with answers.
The exhibit includes dozens of other Hawking artifacts, including a formal bet that information swallowed by a black hole is lost for ever and a copy of his 1966 Ph.D. thesis on the expansion of the universe. The exhibt runs through June 12th at the Science Museum in London before touring other museums around the U.K.
Still preserved more than 40 years later, the befuddling blackboard has just gone on public display for the first time ever as the centerpiece of a new exhibition on Hawking's office, which opened Feb. 10 at the Science Museum of London. The museum will welcome physicists and friends of Hawking — who died in 2018 at the age of 76 — from around the world in hopes that they may be able to decipher some of the hand-scrawled doodles.
What, for example, does "stupor symmetry" mean? Who is the shaggy-bearded Martian drawn large at the blackboard's center? Why is there a floppy-nosed squid climbing over a brick wall? What is hiding inside the tin can labeled "Exxon supergravity?" Hopefully, the world's great minds of math and physics can rise to the occasion with answers.
The exhibit includes dozens of other Hawking artifacts, including a formal bet that information swallowed by a black hole is lost for ever and a copy of his 1966 Ph.D. thesis on the expansion of the universe. The exhibt runs through June 12th at the Science Museum in London before touring other museums around the U.K.
Another Dupe (Score:2)
(Sigh) Another weekend dupe. https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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How many NFTs can we make for the same article?
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Apparently enough that the NFT marketplace has to halt trading them because of all the dupes.
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They aren't dupes, they are "replica" NFTs. Seriously, those are a thing now.
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Oh gosh (Score:2)
I thought it was Valentine's day today, but it turned out it's Groundhog day. Again, and again, and again, and again. I guess I'll see this story when I wake up tomorrow. Again.
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At least somebody posted a nice, simple, direct link to a decent image of the blackboard this time around:
https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.n... [wp.com]
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Devalued (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want to discuss the inevitable "why don't we just paint over the sistene chapel" or "who are you to decide what is art". It's his blackboard, he was a scientist, it's a doodle. It was probably for making close colleagues chuckle, and that in itself should be respected.
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I think it's even worse than just devaluing. The hype is going to encourage people to "find the secrets of the universe in the doodle!". The result will be people inventing anything they like as Hawking's theory. Kinda like looking at a Rorschach Inkblot and claiming you see the real correct truth.
Meanwhile, nobody will bother to try and understand what Hawking's contribution and theory are really about.
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The biggest mystery ... (Score:2)
Overnight cleaning staff (Score:2)
Sometimes... (Score:2)
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.