Dr. Stephen Hawking is one of our best known cosmologists, a person who studies the universe and develops theories to explain its creation. Dr. Hawking suffers from a debilitating disease, is in a wheelchair, and speaks to a special computer. You may have seen it on TV at times.

Dr. Hawking is an example of a man who did not let himself be defeated by adversity. Despite his illness, he has outlived his doctors’ prediction of him for years. He has children and a loving wife who cares for him despite what was supposed to be the result of him. He is known and respected throughout the world. He should be admired by the youth and held up as an example of a person who did and does very difficult things despite his physical limitations. We all have defects. We can all be successful.

When my children were little, I told them to do things that were difficult for others. Many people turn away from math, chemistry, physics, foreign languages, political science, and other difficult subjects. When you do difficult things, you improve your ability to do even more difficult tasks. Why are engineers, scientists, doctors, nurses, and architects paid more than other people? It’s because they form a smaller part of our population with special abilities. The rarity has always paid off. That is why gold and diamonds are worth more than iron and coal.

So what happened to my children? My eldest son is a neurosurgeon, hand surgeon and neurologist, my second son, a ventriloquist and juggler in his spare time, is a pediatric anesthesiologist, my daughter married a cardiac anesthesiologist and is a professional portrait painter, my second son, who has 13 children here in my hometown (9 adoptees), she is a veterinarian, and my youngest son, who has triplets, is a lawyer. All of my children are musically skilled and music is an important part of their lives and the lives of their children.

One thing some young people don’t realize is that people who aren’t as smart or capable are doing things that they themselves could be doing. The difference is hard work and desire. Be like Dr. Hawking. You can ask Dr. Hawking questions at

[http://www.hawking.org.uk/home/hindex.html] Please be patient for an answer to your question.

Would you like a more detailed explanation of cosmology? There is a good article on

http://www.reference.com/search?q=cosmology

I have asked Dr. Hawking for answers to questions about the universe before and got an answer from his staff. I have a few more questions for Dr. Hawking, but first we need to explore the universe a bit.

Here is the timeline for a big Bang Theory universe:

Boom too big: Energy destroys everything too fast, the matter that forms never fuses into stars, everything is dark and dull. God takes a not-so-deep breath and tries again.

Very little boom: Too little poop to pop. There is not enough time for stars to form. Everything is black. God again decides to start over.

Ah ha! Just fine!: God does it right this time. The universe is created out of nothing everywhere at the same time (that’s what a member of Dr. Hawking’s staff told me in an email a few years ago).

As the universe expands, stars form. I believe that black holes may already be present due to “incomplete combustion”. (Well, what do you expect from a ceramic engineer?)

Anyway, black holes form sometime when stars and galaxies get confused and forget that they are supposed to be moving apart from each other.

The stars become supernovae and spread the matter of which men are made in the environment. Planets form and collect stardust as they do so. In January 1932, a planet of the right size and composition at the right distance from the right-sized star and Taylor Jones, the Hack Writer, is created in Salt Lake City. The universe continues to expand, things get colder as even the background radiation of the universe dissipates (well, it wasn’t enough to keep us warm anyway) everything gets so far apart that except for local traffic, entropy wins .

I’m sorry I threw “entropy” in there. Now you will have to read about thermodynamics at http://www.reference.com/search?q=laws%20of%20thermodynamics

Read about entropy at http://www.reference.com/search?q=entropy

Here are the Three Laws of Thermodynamics in layman’s terms if you are a player who likes Texas Hold’em (read my EzineArticles.com article). Texas Hold’em is not a sport:

First Law: You can’t win.

Second Law: You can’t break even.

Third Law (entropy): You’re not even in the game!

Let’s go back to cosmology.

here is a task assignment: Read the article at http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010625/story.html

Here is an excerpt from that article:

“THE DESTINY OF THE COSMOS

“But that’s not the end, according to Fred Adams, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan. An expert on the fate of the cosmos and co-author with Greg Laughlin of The Five Ages of the Universe (Touchstone Books; 2000), Adams predicts that all this dead matter will eventually collapse into black holes. By the time the universe is 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years old, the black holes themselves will disintegrate into loose particles, which will loosely coalesce to form individual “atoms” larger than the size of the universe today. Eventually, even these will decay, leaving an infinitely large, featureless void. And that will be it, unless, of course, whatever inconceivable event that launched the original Big Bang is repeated, and the ultimate free lunch is served once more.”

If you read the article like you were supposed to, you know that “dark energy” and “dark matter” confuse things. Current thinking is that there is little or no curvature in our universe. Now that’s confusing. This is why:

The universe did not exist until about 15 billion years ago. We know that because everything we see in the universe seems to be receding from us, we are on the surface of a large celestial sphere. Like two points on a balloon, if we inflate the balloon until the circumference has doubled in length, the distance between the two points will also have doubled. Cosmologists don’t think in three dimensions like we do. They like to think in “n” dimensions where “n” is whatever integer they want it to be. Solid state physicists do this. They like to think of “drive space” and “energy space” and the like.

Being a dork, I like to think of the universe as a spherical ring. Draw a circle within a circle that both have the same center. I’m talking about the space between the circles.

So you can blow up a balloon inside a balloon, right?

Of course he can.

If you can center the smaller balloon, the space between the two balloons is my “spherical ring.”

Okay, so you couldn’t center the inner globe. Neither do I. In reality, the elderly have an evolutionary mismatch in their DNA. We can’t blow air into balloons without our teeth flying across the room.

So, here are my questions for Dr. Hawking and his staff (another cosmologist may join in; we’ll assume that cosmological forces have not yet completely destroyed the universe):

If galaxy “A” is on one side of the ring and galaxy “B” is on the other side of the ring on the same line of diameter, can I turn my super telescope 180 degrees and see the galaxy from the other direction?

What if I draw a straight line through the globe to the galaxy? Will the galaxy look different from this view, or will light refuse to enter a “no-go core zone” and refuse to look in that direction?

What if I get on my super spaceship? (For those reading my UFO articles at http://www.ezinearticles.com, this is the spacecraft owned by Xrytspet© from

Fanton in G10009845788899990766, the FnL7 Time Craft), can I fly in any direction from galaxy “A” and reach galaxy “B” while staying in the ring of the sphere? (Will my FnL7 Time Craft ignore the ring and shoot into galaxy “B” following a line of diameter? (String theory says it could do smarter things.)

Back to the idea of ​​the flat universe: What does a cosmologist mean when he says that the flat universe allows him to see god? Was it obscured by curvature in the old days?

Well that should do it.

Dr. Hawking and you other cosmologist, please email me your answers: [email protected]

Thank you!

The end

copyright©2007 John Taylor Jones, Ph.D.