Announces $100 million for alien life search
Hawking and Milner announce they are putting $100 million into Breakthrough Listen, a project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Hawking:
We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth. So in an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life.
Milner, who is funding the project, says scientists will be able to collect as much data on SETI in a day as they now do in a year, and all data will be made public. The project will also work on improving the best way to send a message out into space. Milner:
I’ve been thinking about this since I was a child, reading Carl Sagan’s book Intelligent Life in the Universe, The year that I was born, 1961, that was a big year in science — the first man was launched into space [Yuri Gagarin], and I was named for him. And Kennedy made his famous speech about putting man on the moon…I don’t have high expectations, but the search itself will teach us quite a bit. We could find something we’re not even looking for…Irrespective of what the answer is, it’s a powerful answer. At any given time, we should apply the best technology and use the best instruments available to search for that answer.
Hawking, Wilde marry
Despite his ailing health, Hawking continues his education at Cambridge. He marries Jane Wilde, an acquaintance from his years at Oxford. Wilde agrees to marry him in spite of his life threatening condition.
I loved Stephen so much that nothing could deter me from wanting to marry him: I would cook and wash and shop and make a home for him, dismissing all my own previous ambitions which were now insignificant by comparison with the challenge before me.
Stephen Hawking born in Oxford, England
Stephen William Hawking is born in Oxford, England to research biologist Dr. Frank Hawking and Isobel Hawking. He has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. In 1950, Hawking’s family moves to St. Albans, Hertfordshire, where he attends St. Albans High School for Girls, which allowed boys up to the age of 10, before attending St. Albans School. On his early schooling:
At school, I was never more than about halfway up the class. It was a very bright class. My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better. When I was twelve, one of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don’t know if this bet was ever settled, and if so, which way it was decided…