Of all the scientists that have come and gone, none have had as much of an impact on our understanding of the universe as the late Stephen Hawking.
Up until his passing on March 14 last year, he was able to share his discoveries directly with the public. And boy were there a few under his belt, and how!
1. In 1970, in collaboration ?with fellow physicist Roger Penrose, Hawking merged Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum theory to form the theory of singularities. They postulated that, if Einstein's general theory of relativity is true, and also fits the expansion model of the universe, then it must have started as a singularity, thus proving the phenomenon's existence.
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2. Later that year, Hawking postulated the second law of black hole dynamics, which states that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller. In tandem with James Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he defined discovered the four laws of black hole mechanics, based on established thermodynamics principles.
3. In 1974, Hawking proved that black holes emit radiation, which may continue till they exhaust their energy and evaporate. This work was so path-breaking the phenomenon is today referred to as Hawking radiation, as well as earning him a place as one of the youngest scientists elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
4. Along with James Hartle, Hawking published a model called the Hartle-Hawking state in 1983. ?It proposed that time didn't exist before the Big Bang and hence the concept of the beginning of the universe is meaningless. It's still one of the most prominent theories on the initial state of the universe.
5. With Thomas Hertog and Jim Hartle in 2006, he proposed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says the universe didn't have one unique initial state but was a superposition of many possible conditions. That meant, therefore, we can't study the beginning of the universe By settling on a starting point, we can only infer from it the final stage i.e. today.
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7. In 2007, Hawking and his daughter Lucy collaborated to write 'George's Secret Key to the Universe', a children's fiction book explaining heavy scientific ideas to kids. It was his only other non-technical work, after his 1988 best-seller, 'A Brief History of Time'.
8. And finally, in July 2015, Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives along with Yuri and Julia Milner. It's an an effort to search for extraterrestrial life in other parts of the universe, a hunt that continues today even after Hawking is long gone.