Carlo Rovelli, "Thank You, Stephen"

 

 

 

"그가 위안을 받고 힘을 얻은 것은 어떤 종류의 초월적인 것이나

신이 아니었다."

 

 

"Thank You, Stephen" 도,  "Are You Free?"처럼, Carlo Rovelli 의

에세이집 "There Are Places In the World Where Rules Are Less

Important Than Kindness" 에 실려 있는 글이다. 몇 구절 인용한다

(자투리 시간에 잠깐 포스팅하려다 보니 이번에도, 위에 한 구절

말고는, 원문 그대로다. 호킹 공식은, 그 아름다움을 기술한 구절과

함께 읽고서는, 빼놓을 수가 없다.)

 

"Stephen_Hawking is no longer with us. We bereft of his sly

smil and his youthful irreverence, which he kept even when

affliceted by age and illness. And what an illness ..."

 

"There is a beautiful formula that summarizes Hawking's

result. It is the formula that gives the temperature [of black

hole radiation], as a function of the mass M of its surface.

It is the extremely simple formula ...:

The beauty of this formula lies in its simplicity, but above all

in the fact that it combines the four fundamental pillars of

physics: the Boltzmann constant k, which is the root of

thermodynamics, the speed of light c that characterizes

relativity, the Newton constant G, which is to say the

structure of spacetime, and the Planck constant ... on

which quantum mechanics is based. There is no other

formula that puts together so elegantly all the fundamental

pillars of our physics." [내가 보기엔, 거기다  π 까지.]

 

"His real greatness was his humanity, his character."

 

"Stephen was certain that life does not continue in any

other form after death.... It wasn't any kind of

transcendence that he found consolation in or drew his

strength from.... Is this not the infinitely precious gift that

Stephen has left us? The irresistible luminous force of

life, of curiosity, of thought, of intelligence?"