Hawking Enjoys Weightless Flight

"It was amazing... I would be able to keep going without stopping", said Hawking, of 65 years, after landing from a trip of two hours in a Boeing 727-200 modified and with padded walls that, flying in parables as a roller coaster, produces periods of weightlessness… The professor is almost completely paralyzed by a degenerative illness and can only speak by means of a computer and a synthesizer… Four doctors and two nurses accompanied the cosmologist, dress with a blue suit of flight, inside the airplane "G-FORCE One", popularly known as the "vomit comet" by the unpleasant effects that can feel on board those who are submitted to the experience… The Zero Gravity Corporation (Zero-G), operator of the airplane, usually charges 3,500 dollars per passenger for a flight of 90 minutes… The scientist traveled seated during the ascent and once the plane descended, was helped by two people that guided him in the air while he was floating freely… Hawking, author of the best seller "Brief history of the time", on the origin of the universe and the creation of space-time, where also refers to more extensive themes as metaphysics, said that the opportunity to experience the weightlessness was "marvelous" … "I believe that mankind does not have any future if does not go to space", said Hawking. "I believe that life on Earth is every time in more risk to disappear from a disaster like the global warming, a nuclear war, a genetically developed virus, or other dangers", added… Hawking, holder of the Lucasian Professor of Math at Cambridge, position once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton, suffers of a degenerative illness, lateral amyotrophic sclerosis that was diagnosed at the age of 22.

Comment
And to think that I complained that a ride on the small roller coaster of the local fair was expensive! I do not need to pay so much to feel dizzy and just knowing the nickname of the airplane, I guess I am going to stay in land. Once in my life I paid to ride on the big Mexico City Roller Coaster: It was once too many! Now, yeah, I know that there are some people happy experiencing strong emotions, addicts to the adrenaline, some practicing extreme sports, who feel that in order to be alive one must challenge the gravity: It’s their money! I suppose that there are a lot of people like that, or the business of this little plane, the "G-FORCE One," would go bankrupt. Don’t take wrong, I don’t have anything against them, that should be clear, but please, if are you one of them, before your following jump with parachute (or equivalent: bungee jumping, motorcycle jumping, even scooter jumping), be sure to have accepted Jesus as your personal lord and savior. Just in case.

I respect Dr. Stephen W. Hawking, the disabled scientist that did the trip and I am happy that, to him it represented a unique emotion to abandon his wheelchair and to float inside the airplane. But I have no reason to agree with his opinions. I know that it could be shocking for the scientific community: Dissenting with Dr. Hawking, holder of the Lucasian Professor of Math at Cambridge, position once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton? Blasphemy! I will try to explain myself, but I should clarify before hand, that no human being, even the most brilliant and intelligent (Me included), possess the truth concerning the future of mankind. Of course I am not going to debate with him the result of a series of complex differential equations (because I will lose), nevertheless, he is entering a ground where he challenges God and as such is earning this fight.

(Editor: There was no need to clarify who would be losing the debate. Do I erase the note?)
(Author: I wanted to emphasize my humility)
(Editor: Then, the note after “brilliant and…”)
(Author: Forget it! forget it!)

Dr. Hawking said: "I believe that mankind does not have a future if does not go to space." Also: "I believe that life in Earth is every time in more risk to disappear from a disaster like the global warming, a nuclear war, a genetically developed virus, or other dangers." In his web site, in a Conference titled "Life in the Universe," wrote: "One can define Life to be an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, and can reproduce itself." "A living being usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism. But it is worth emphasizing that there need be nothing biological about them. For example, a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer, and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system that I have given."

He also mentions in his article (I give up citing him literally because he is very prolific) that life in other worlds exists, but that we do not know about it because the probability of intelligent life is very low (he himself says so), or that life has not evolved enough, or that has not been bothered in visiting us. Actually, when I was reading his article, at least the first part, it seemed like he was going to defend the idea that a divine designer exists, because he argued about the low odds for basic elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen) to combine randomly in order to form the extremely complicated molecule of DNA. Instead he concluded that perhaps there couldn’t be a lot of intelligent life in the universe, perhaps just some. Then he moved to speculate that life can also be mechanic (according to him, a computer virus is a form of life) and that we can send mechanical elements to space in order to colonize other planets.

Honestly it is very peculiar his form to visualize the future of mankind: Mechanical ships (robots) with the ability to reproduce, carrying, imbedded in chips, the literary production of all terrestrial libraries (I expect that this Blog can go incorporated in some little robot; would that make it my great-great-great-grandson?) I love science-fiction, I even wrote some time ago some short stories, but always I was able to distinguish them from reality. It seems to me that Dr. Hawking is trying to erase the line a little bit forced.

In another part Dr. Hawking said: "We are such insignificant creatures, in a small planet, of a very average star in the exterior suburbs of a hundred billion galaxies. As such it is difficult to believe in a God that care for us or that even note our existence."

There’s the point! Perhaps it is the illness that bothers him, or the lack of sincere human contact, or the lack of love around him, or some other sad event in his life, that produced in him incapacity to believe in God. I’m sorry, but I have to rebuke him. We are not neither insignificant, nor we live in a minor planet. If Earth was prepared, in the best possible location of the Universe, by God for us, we cannot be insignificant. And if we interest him enough as to give us a comfortable home, is because His desire to have personal contact with each one of us. Someone that can create the Universe can have the power to attend us all as well. Dr. Hawking cannot believe in Him and because of it he lives without hope for the biological human beings.

God so cares for us that has given us the sunsets, the flowers, the fragrances, the beaches, the forests and of course endowed us with the senses to be able to enjoy them. It gave us also a soul, a spirit and a family (biological) to enjoy life together and that is enough proof of His existence.

What the Bible Says
For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:6).

Wisdom is to understand that God formed us and that only in Him we can trust, even when the future could be perceived uncertain. Let’s be happy with the little things that we have today in this planet that He gave us, because tomorrow we will be with Him in spirit in a place where treasures are not based on heavy metals.