Back in Black… Hole

Posted by Speakeasy News > Wednesday 04 July 2018 > In the News


On Friday June 15th, after a memorial service which saw Stephen Hawking’s ashes interred at Westminster Abbey, his “message of peace and hope” was sent to the stars.

NS_hawking_int01Ashes to Ashes…

The ashes of British physicist Stephen Hawking were buried Friday June 15th in a corner of Westminster Abbey between the graves of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, buried in the Abbey respectively in 1727 and 1882.

Hawking was interred beneath a stone inscribed: "Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking " — an English translation of the Latin words on the nearby grave of Newton, the 17th-century scientist who discovered the laws of gravity. The stone is also inscribed with one of Hawking's equations describing the entropy of a black hole.

… funk to funky

After the service, Stephen Hawking’s voice was beamed into space from a European Space Agency satellite dish in Spain.

Greek composer Vangelis who wrote music for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, created an original six-minute piece of music featuring Hawking's voice.

The BBC quoted, Hawking's daughter, Lucy, saying the broadcast would be aimed at "the nearest black hole, 1A 0620-00, which lives at more than 3,000 light years from Earth in a binary system with a fairly ordinary orange dwarf star.”

“It is a message of peace and hope, about unity and the need for us to live together in harmony on this planet.”

You can listen to the message via the BBC site.

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Two astronauts attended the ceremony: Canadian Chris Hadfield who commanded the International Space Station and Briton Tim Peake, who spent six months on the ISS in 2015-16.

Listen to a part of the article read by the Stephen Hawking Voice Generator



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