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Stephen Hawking on Weibo


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in the WSJ

 

Stephen Hawking Debuts With a Big Bang on Chinese Social Media

 

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-NM794_hawkin_G_20160412063818.jpg

 

“Greetings to my friends in China! It has been too long!” celebrated black-hole theorizer Stephen Hawking wrote in an inaugural, bilingual post on Chinese social media platform Weibo. “I hope to tell you more about my life and work through this page and also to learn from you in reply.”

The response was, well, astronomical.

The account amassed more than a million followers in its first six hours. In that time, Mr. Hawking’s first message was reposted more than 200,000 times, garnering more than 180,000 comments and 380,000 likes.

. . .

The account is being managed by Stradella Road, an L.A.-based social-media marketing company that translated Mr. Hawking’s first message into Chinese and posted it on Weibo. Stradella CEO Gordon Paddison said the scientist had a particular interest in establishing dialogue with China and that the company would send him translated comments.

. . .

In his post, Mr. Hawking said he first visited China in 1985, when he traveled the country by train. “In my physical travels, I have only been able to touch the surface of your fascinating history and culture. But now I can communicate with you through social media,” he wrote.

 

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. . . AND THE SCMP, along with many Western journals

 

Kind of a scatter-shot technique, but the price seems right. the original headline, now corrected, had said 4.3 MILLION light years away.

 

Revolutionary space exploration project unveiled by British physicist and tech tycoon Yuri Milner

 

 

The Post was one of just a few select media agencies to be briefed on the details of the ambitious project before the ­announcement.

 

. . .

 

Today’s fastest spacecraft would take 30,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri. To cut the time to just 20 years, the Breakthrough Starshot team plans to build small, unmanned probes that can carry cameras, power supplies and navigation and communications equipment while still weighing less than a smartphone.

 

 

The so-called “nanocraft”, powered by laser, will travel at ­almost 20 per cent the speed of light at 160 million km/h.

Advances in nanotechnology – that can produce super metamaterials just a few hundred atoms thick – had made it possible to create such tiny space probes, thePost was told.

Thousands of these nanocraft will be fired towards Alpha Centauri. After a 20-year journey, it would take at least another four years for the probes to transmit data and images gathered in the star system back to earth.

 

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The launch system described in Scientific American

 

Alpha Centauri or Bust

Is a new plan to blast nanosatellites to the stars with gigagantic lasers brilliant or crazy—or a little of both?

 

 

Best of all, this tiny craft wouldn’t need to carry a bulky propulsion system or a heavy load of fuel; instead, it could be attached to an ultrathin lightsail and propelled by a powerful laser beam.

Under Milner’s plan, thousands of lasers arrayed at a site on the Earth’s surface would fire in precise synchrony so that their outputs can merge into a single beam shooting upward through the atmosphere with a power of 100 billion watts. The beam would focus on the lightsail of a StarChip previously launched into orbit. If the sail reflects the laser light instead of absorbing it, then the force delivered by all the colliding photons could swiftly accelerate the lightsail to twenty percent of light speed, propelling the spacecraft hundreds of thousands of miles in a mere two minutes. After that point, the craft would be so distant from the Earth that the laser beam could no longer push the craft, but the StarChip would already be cruising at 134 million miles per hour toward whatever star system the laser had targeted. And if the lightsails and StarChips can be manufactured cheaply enough, they could be launched into orbit by the hundreds, and the laser array could accelerate a new one toward the stars every day.

. . .

The technical challenges are enormous, of course. Researchers would have to learn how to keep the laser beam tightly focused as it punches through the atmosphere. The lightsail and StarChip would have to be sturdy enough to withstand the sudden acceleration, which would be equivalent to 60,000 g-forces. But the biggest problem might be ensuring that these tiny spacecraft can do some useful exploration once they finally reach their destinations. There’s no way to decelerate the StarChip, so the spacecraft will zoom past its targeted star system in a matter of hours. The craft might be able to slightly adjust its trajectory, but it won’t have much time to photograph the planets, asteroids and comets orbiting the star. And then there’s the challenge of transmitting the data back to Earth.

 

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  • 1 month later...

‘Be fearless, this is the start of your bright future’: Stephen Hawking to China’s 9 million students taking entrance exams

 

 

“As many of you prepare to take the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, I want to wish you, the next generation of scientific minds, success in your academic endeavours,” Hawking said in a post on his Weibo account on Monday.

 

. . .

Their efforts, in the eyes of Hawking, will help shape the future of China.

“Whether you aim to be a doctor, teacher, scientist, musician, engineer, or a writer - be fearless in the pursuit of your aspirations,” he wrote on Weibo.

“You are the next generation of big thinkers and thought leaders that will shape the future for generations to come.”

 

 

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  • 8 months later...
  • 1 year later...

in the SCMP

 

Stephen Hawking, who has died aged 76, was Britain’s most famous modern day scientist, a genius who dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of the Universe

 

 

 

Hawking had a cult following in China, where he visited in 2006.
In a public Q&A session he was asked: “What things in China do you like?”
“I like Chinese culture very much and Chinese food as well,” he responded.
“But I like Chinese women the most. They are very pretty.”
Another person asked: “This is your third visit to China, why do you like to come to China?”
“Chinese are very clever and they are hardworking,” he said.
“They are intelligent and there have achieved a lot in science and technology.”
He was also asked if he would like to visit Tibet.
“I have always wanted to visit Tibet since I was little. But I don’t think I can do that in my lifetime. Tibet altitude is too high for me.

 

 

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