The Genius of Stephen William Hawking

October 26, 2008


Humbly tucked in a small corner on page 19 of my daily newspaper was a small news item about Stephen Hawking. It said that Stephen Hawking would retire in January next year as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from the Cambridge University. Apparently the editors of the newspaper did not think much of Hawking or the distinguished Chair he has occupied since 1979.

Stephen William Hawking is a genius. He occupies a unique place in the pantheon of 20th century scientists. Lucasian Chair of Mathematics in the Cambridge University has a distinguished history of more than 300 years. It was occupied by the likes of Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Paul Dirac. It is arguably the most famous academic chair in the world.

Hawking is one my favorite heroes in the field of science. I have repeatedly read his best seller A brief History of Time (1988). Every time I complete reading it my understanding of the physical universe becomes better. His beautiful book On the Shoulders of Giants, the Great Works of Physics and Astronomy (2002) gives an interesting peep into the contemporary history of Physics and Astronomy.

Hawking has always been fascinated with the ultimate reality of physical universe. Along with the celebrated English physicist Roger Penrose, he has demonstrated that the General Theory of Relativity implies that space and time have a beginning in Big Bang and an end in Black Holes. His fundamental research includes quantum cosmology, Big Bang theory, structure of the universe, and Black Holes.

The most attractive thing about Hawking’s persona is his stubborn will to live. He has been suffering, since he was 21, from a serious disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It has crippled his neuromuscular control. He cannot move his limbs normally. He speaks through a computer that he is able to operate by his eye and lip movements. But that has not prevented him from wanting to travel in space. .

He has a very practical attitude on his disease. In an interview with The Guardian (UK) on September 27, 2005 he said, “It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining." He is a supreme example of mind's victory over body. The only comparable example which pops up in my mind is that of Helen Keller.

In spite of being extremely busy with his research he retains his concern for mankind. He spoke convincingly at George Washington University on April 21, 2008 about the desirability of colonizing space. The topic of his lecture was ‘why should we go into space’ and the occasion was the 50th anniversary of NASA. He has speculated on the existence of life outside solar system.

Stephen Hawking traveled in a zero-gravity flight of a special aircraft arranged by a Florida-based private company. He experienced eight bursts of weightlessness each lasting 25 seconds. He thoroughly enjoyed the fun. He observed later, “Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.”

Hawking has a quaint sense of humor. He took an interesting bet with Kip Thorne, the eminent theoretical physicist. In the 1988 edition of A Brief History of Time, he says, “This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would win me four years of the magazine Private Eye. If black holes do exist, Kip will get one year of Penthouse. When we made the bet in 1975, we were 80% certain that Cygnus was a black hole. By now, I would say that we are about 95% certain, but the bet has yet to be settled.”

Hawking lost the bet. Cygnus was proved to be indeed a black hole. Like a gentleman, that he is, he honored the bet and gifted one year's subscription of Penthouse to Thorne.

Hawking has had two divorces. It caused him emotional trauma, but that did not daunt his indomitable will to live. He travels all over the world delivering lectures and attending scientific conferences.

He remarks with his characteristic lucidity, “My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

Sounds like he belongs to the tribe of Newtons, Galileos and Einsteins. Is it a matter of sheer coincidence that he was born exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo?

A Lollipop called Threshold Test ban Treaty (TTBT)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were brutally destroyed by the American atomic bombs in the fall of 1945. By the end of the year about 220,000 men, women and children had lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of the survivors were affected by fatal diseases induced by radioactive fallout. Human tragedy on such a colossal scale had never visited this planet before.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of 15 and 21 kilotons TNT yield respectively. TNT is a powerful explosive material, and the destructive power of a nuclear weapon is measured in terms of the kilotons of TNT. A nuclear weapon yielding one kiloton of TNT is equal to the destructive power of one thousand tons of TNT. Usually, the acronym TNT is dropped while describing the yield of a nuclear weapon.

Second World War brought in its wake an era of cold war between the USSR and the USA. They found themselves trapped willy-nilly into a mad nuclear arms race. Not only they were each producing and stockpiling a large number of nuclear weapons, they were developing bombs of increasingly higher destructive power. To quote an example, the USA exploded at Bikini atoll a thermonuclear device code-named Castle Bravo of 15,000 kilotons on March 1, 1954. Not to be left behind the Soviet Union answered back by exploding their hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba on October 31, 1961 with an estimated yield of 50,000 kilotons. It outperformed the Castle Bravo by a factor of more than 3. It must have sure put a malicious smile on the face of Nikita Khrushchev.

Insanity of the superpowers was boundless. However, the USA and the USSR had been coming under immense international pressure to halt the arms race. There was growing realization by the all concerned that explosions of gigantic sizes were extremely dangerous and could lead to unintended consequences. Military experts knew that the super nuclear devices did not give any party any real strategic advantage over the adversary. Rather, these jumbo weapons would give rise to untold logistical problems. It needed a series of complicated technical maneuvers to detonate them precisely at a predetermined time and place. The underground tests carried another serious risk. Destructive force of an unusually powerful underground blast might crack open the ground surface and release its radioactive debris in atmosphere. A powerful underground explosion could also trigger off a earthquake. Slowly and surely, it became clear to everybody that the weapons of extremely high yield were not force multipliers. At best they were ego multipliers. They were ugly showpieces of military hardware.

Huge international pressure had been building up on the Soviet Union and the USA to restrict the size of their nuclear devices. Ultimately the USA and the Soviet Union caved in.

At Moscow on July 3, 1974, President Richard Nixon and General Secretary L.Brezhnev, on behalf of their respective countries, signed the Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests limiting the destructive power of nuclear test explosions. The treaty, popularly known as the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) banned nuclear test explosions having yield of more than 150 kilotons of TNT. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had yield only of 15 kilotons. By implication, these two superpowers believed that it was good enough for them to have a nuclear device more than ten times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. However, the treaty removed from the minds of people the fear of testing or developing any more monstrous weapons like Castle Bravo or Tsar Bomba. The treaty thus restricted the overall deployable destructive power of their weapon systems. It suited both the USA and the Soviet Union, as it was compatible with their first strike capability. Unless you test the reliability of a weapon one hundred percent you will be foolish to use it for a first strike. It was easy to test the reliability of a smaller weapon than a very large weapon.

In simple English, the treaty meant that in the worst case scenario of a war between America and the Soviet Union, the first or the retaliatory nuclear strike will not have the destructive capacity of more than 150 kilotons of TNT. The treaty could give only psychological comfort to the people who were rooting for substantial nuclear disarmament. A 15 kiloton bomb wiped off Hiroshima. A 150 kiloton bomb would easily wipe off New York, Moscow or London.

The Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) entered into force on December 11, 1990. It provided, inter alia, that the compliance would be monitored by seismic stations, situated outside the testing country. A protocol attached integrally to the treaty designated specifically the sites where the tests could be conducted. The procedures for the exchange of technical information were also laid down in detail with a view to improving the quality of verification.

TTBT turned out to be a gentlemen’s agreement. There was an express understanding recorded in the transmittal documents which accompanied the TTBT, when it was submitted on July 29, 1976 to American Senate for ratification.

“Both Parties will make every effort to comply fully with all the provisions of the TTB Treaty. However, there are technical uncertainties associated with predicting the precise yields of nuclear weapons tests. These uncertainties may result in slight, unintended breaches of the 150 kiloton threshold. Therefore, the two sides have discussed this problem and agreed that: (1) one or two slight, unintended breaches per year would not be considered a violation of the Treaty; (2) such breaches would be a cause for concern, however, and, at the request of either Party, would be the subject for consultations.”

Although TTBT was signed in July 1974, it was not ratified for a long time presumably due to different perceptions of verification procedures. However, in 1976 the Soviet Union and the USA independently announced their intention to observe the Treaty limit of 150 kilotons pending the completion of the ratification process.

TTBT was ratified on December 8, 1990 by the American Senate. It entered into force on December 11, 1990.

Article III of TTBT provide an important exception to the 150 kiloton rule. It lays down that "The provisions of this Treaty do not extend to underground nuclear explosions carried out by the Parties for peaceful purposes....." The companion treaty was signed on May 28, 1976 at Washington and Moscow by President Gerald Ford and L. Brezhnev respectively. It is popularly called Peaceful Nuclear Explosion Treaty (PNET) and it entered into force on the same day as TTBT. I may sound cynical, but it is possible that PNET might be an eyewash by the superpowers to find an excuse for conducting high-energy blasts, should they really feel the need. I cannot think of any peaceful 150 kiloton plus blast, unless they want to set fire to the Himalayas.

TTBT demonstrated that the superpowers were vulnerable to sensible international opinion. If one digs deeply into the genesis of the TTBT, one cannot help feeling that the top political levels of the USA and the Soviet Union were psychologically insecure. It is difficult to comprehend that some day somebody would need to use a weapon of 150 kilotons of TNT. Mankind cannot afford to see a repeat of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, under whatever circumstances. TTBT is nothing more than a psychological lollipop doled out to a vast number of people all over the world who desire this planet to get rid of all the atom bombs, hydrogen bombs and neutron bombs. It hardly matters if they are big or small, clean or dirty, peaceful or belligerent, capitalist or communist, Occidental or Oriental.....

LTBT: An Irony of History

History, like the lives of human beings, is full of ironies. That makes history interesting, as people can relate historical events to their own experience.

After the World War-II was over, there began a relentless cold war between the USA and the USSR. Both these superpowers went on stashing more and more dangerous nuclear weapons to their arsenals. At one point, it was said that both of them had sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world seven times over. If this was not madness in the clinical sense, one cannot say what the clinical madness is.

On March 1, 1954, Americans exploded a thermonuclear device, popularly called hydrogen bomb, in the Bikini atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The explosion, code-named Castle Bravo, gave rise to a stupendously huge mushroom cloud of fire and smoke, and was seen on TV all over the world. Meteorologists said that the radioactive debris was flown across the ocean over wide areas destroying marine life. The 23-member crew of a Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon seriously affected by the radioactivity of the explosion. One of the crew members died. It created an enormous outrage in the world, particularly in Japan.

The Castle Bravo is talked about as an accident by many people, because of instead of an expected yield of about 8 megatons its actual yield turned out to be in the neighborhood of 15 megatons. It is believed to be the biggest nuclear explosion ever performed by the USA.

The very next year Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued an appeal to the leaders of the nuclear powers to stop the nuclear arms race. Einstein died in 1955, but Russell, Norman Cousins and other eminent pacifists all over the world continued to agitate against the dangers posed by the atomic and hydrogen bombs. In 1957, the renowned scientists all over the world initiated the famous Pugwash conferences, thus bringing on a single platform scientists from all over the world to formulate a strategy of total nuclear disarmament. Norman Cousins, who was in those days the editor-in-chief of Saturday Review (SR), powerfully advocated the cause of nuclear disarmament through his weekly. It is no small measure of the popularity of the cause he promoted that the circulation of SR went up from 20,000 to 650,000. People, at large, were getting disgusted by the nuclear arms race.

1957 saw the formation of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in the USA. It ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on Nov 15, 1957 pointing to Americans: "We are facing a danger unlike any danger that has ever existed." SANE became a formidable vehicle of protest against nuclear madness in the United States.

In 1958, the Nobel Laureate scientist Linus Pauling released a petition signed by more than 11,000 scientists from the world over urging the nuclear powers to stop nuclear tests. Things were moving swiftly much to the embarrassment of the authorities. But they could not halt the avalanche of protest.

The big nuclear daddies were aware that testing of atomic or hydrogen bombs had an embarrassing disadvantage. Deadly radioactive fallout invariably followed in the wake of every nuclear test explosion. Winds would carry the radioactive dust far and wide. If you exploded a bomb in Nevada desert, there was no guarantee that the wind would not carry the dangerous radioactive clouds to Mexico or California.

In the meanwhile, that is, from 1954 to 1961, the USSR was preparing to outdo the explosion of Castle Bravo. They did so by detonating a 50-megaton thermonuclear device code-named Tsar Bomba on October 30, 1961 at Novaya Zemlya, a remote site on an island in the Arctic Ocean. It had an estimated yield of 50 megatons, and it is claimed to be the largest nuclear device ever exploded. It had more than three thousand times explosive power than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The Soviet explosion intensified the public outcry against the atomic test explosions. The big powers found it almost impossible to resist the pressures from their own people. This was at least true in case of the USA and Great Britain.

USA and the Soviet Union set to work out the text of an agreement, but by force of habit went on procrastinating to reach an agreement on one excuse or another. They exchanged various aide-memoires, proposals and counter-proposals under the sponsorship of UN Disarmament Commission. Ultimately, they came round to the view that it would be good enough if they were able to test their nuclear weapons below the ground. It would absolve them of the risk and blame associated with the radioactive fallout, and they would be able to fine tune and upgrade their weapons without anybody tom-toming about it. Once this realization dawned on them they lost no time to ink the treaty.

On August 5, 1963, the USA, Soviet Union and the United Kingdom signed a treaty at Moscow. These three signatory countries pompously named themselves as the Original Parties and decided to keep the treaty open for signatures by other countries. The treaty was ratified by the American Senate on Sept 24, 1963 and it entered into force on October 10, 1963.

France and China did not sign the treaty. The why of it became apparent to everybody when France and China tested their nuclear devices in 1974 and 1980 respectively. Neither of these tests was performed underground and thus these tests would have been in violation of the LTBT, had these two countries signed it.

The treaty has the title "Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water". Generally it is known as Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). In the USA it is known as Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT).

This treaty prohibits nuclear weapons tests "or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. While not banning tests underground, the treaty does prohibit nuclear explosions in this environment also, if they cause "radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the State under whose jurisdiction or control" the explosions were conducted. In accepting limitations on testing, the nuclear powers accepted as a common goal "an end to the contamination of man's environment by radioactive substances."

In the treaty preamble and Article I, the LTBT parties pledged to seek "the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time...."

The LTBT has the record of a fast track movement. The treaty was signed by the USA, the UK, and the USSR on August 5, 1963. By October 10, 1963 it entered into force pursuant to the procedure laid down in the treaty. In contrast, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all the nuclear tests under all circumstances, has yet not entered into force even after a lapse of more than 12 years from the date it was kept open for signatures.

Total number of nuclear tests by all the nuclear powers has been more than 2000 since the beginning. Most of them have been underground tests permissible under LTBT. It can be argued with justification that but for LTBT the nuclear powers would not have been able to test their atomic weapons for the fear of polluting the global atmosphere and inviting the hostility of the people all over the world. CTBT has so far failed to enter into force, because the nuclear powers did not wish to give up the permissiveness given to them by LTBT.

One can argue convincingly that this treaty promoted rather than discouraged the nuclear weapon environment in the world. Testing a nuclear device anywhere except below the ground is fraught with the danger of radioactive fallout which the winds might carry across the national borders, apart from causing unpredictable disasters at home. Further, a country conducting a test in the open would be branded as the purveyor of nuclear catastrophe. The nuclear powers were averse to test-explode a bomb in a desert or on an island, except when it was unavoidable. It is, therefore, not surprising that about 2000 nuclear test explosions, all underground, took place after the LTBT entered into force. Exceptions were: a test by France on Sept 14, 1974, and test by China on October 1980. Both these countries in their eternal wisdom had not signed the LTBT.

An effective way to stop the nuclear test explosions was to completely ban all nuclear tests. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is such a treaty, which unfortunately has not entered into force, although it has been lying open for signatures since Sept 24, 1996. There are no indications that it will enter into force in any foreseeable future.

There lies the irony of history. With hindsight one can argue that it would have been good for the mankind, if LTBT would never have seen the light of the day. Such a situation might have led to a comprehensive and enforceable treaty completely banning all the test explosions of a nuclear weapon. That would have prevented thousands of underground tests, and the resulting enormous atomic inventories by the super powers, and our planet would have been a less dangerous place to live on.