Stephen

Stephen Hawking’s disturbing prediction about our future

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In 1818, when an expedition led by John Ross came across them around Inglefield Firth, the Inughuit had not seen another human being for centuries. Descendants of the thule villagesarrived in Greenland in the 13th century and lived a small golden age until, around the 17th century, climate change isolated them from the rest of civilization. They were a community of just over 200 people convinced that they were the last human beings on the face of the Earth. AND They were for hundreds of years. The ends of the world This case is very interesting because, although the “end of the world” has been a literary trope for thousands of years, there are not many communities that thought they were the last ones left. The ‘Apocalypse’ historically was more of a ‘reset’ than a ‘game over’. As I pointed out Thomas Moynihan in his ‘X-Risk: How humanity discovered its own extinction‘, the idea of ​​the world ending completely was “virtually unthinkable.” But 200 years ago something changed. It was when we began to understand that there is no “anthropic principle“, that we are not necessary, nor the natural result of the evolution of the universe. That is, we began to understand that we could disappear. The problem is that in these two centuries things have only gotten worse. It defended Nick Bostrom more than twenty years ago“due to the acceleration of technological progress, humanity may be rapidly approaching a critical phase of its career.” The ‘existential risk’ That is, “a threat that could annihilate humanity or permanently destroy much of its potential.” We are talking about a risk that could eliminate not only the current human population, but also all potential future generations. Dan Meyers A risk that, moreover, has not stopped growing since the beginning of the century because, given the threats we already had (the climatenuclear weapons, etc…) now the derivative of artificial intelligence is added. In 2016, in front of the Oxford Union (probably the most prestigious debating society in the world), Stephen Hawking Yogave a conference about cosmology that ended with a profound and terrible reflection on existential risk and the future of humanity. With that phrase (“I don’t think we will survive another thousand years”), the Hawking of 2016 was not inventing anything, he was putting into words something that experts had been ruminating on for many years. He was also giving us a solution. Because, although the quote is at the end of the conference, the British physicist still had time to add something key: that he did not believe that we would survive another thousand years, otherwise we would not “escape beyond our fragile planet.” It was a way of putting eggs in several baskets; but on an interplanetary scale. As the risks on the planet growthe space appears as “plan B.” Hawking is quite explicit about this: “it is not just an intellectual question,” he tells us. “It’s not even an economic issue, it’s an existential issue.” Obviously, it’s a tricky thing. The moral hazard is there. The risk that we use that scarecrow as an excuse not to reduce risks on Earth. However, if we read Hawking’s words in context, it is clear that that is not what he is telling us. “We need other worlds, but they are in this one.” Taking Hawking’s argument to the limit, we don’t even need to go to space, we need to want to go. We need the special dream because we need stories that tell us how far we can go; stories that motivate us to create new technologies and develop new ways of looking at the world. The case of the Inughuit is also very frustrating, because contact with the outside world changed them very quickly and did not give us time to study their way of life or their belief system. However, we can always make tales and that is what Hawking does. in the 2016 speech: realize something that, without a doubt, the Inughuit lost in the white hell realized, that “the important thing is not to give up.” Image | Tanya Hart | Alexander Andrews In Xataka | In 2009 Stephen Hawking hosted “the party of the century.” No one came precisely because Stephen Hawking organized it

In 2009 Stephen Hawking hosted “the party of the century.” No one came precisely because Stephen Hawking organized it

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Bottles of the best French Champagne, tables full of canapés and cucumber sandwiches, balloons, banners and music. Stephen Hawkingthe famous theoretical physicist from the University of Cambridge, had everything ready to give the party of the century in June 2009. “I was waiting for a long time, but no one came,” explained a couple of years later. He wasn’t too surprised, especially since he only sent out the invitations after the party was already over. And not by mistake: Hawking’s party was the first major celebration dedicated specifically to time travelers. In 1992, Hawking had already proposed that time travel was impossible. So that afternoon party in the swamps of the River Cam was half an experiment to prove that the timetravelers They did not exist, half “trolling” all those theorists who thought that this type of trips could exist. In reality, it was a joke that is inserted into the historical controversy of time travel. For all we know, all the time travelers could be in the pub across the street laughing at poor Hawking and his old anti-travel ideas. It is not likely, there I agree with Hawking; but, today, we cannot rule out that working hypothesis. Everything (not) is on the internet I suppose that, therefore, that of the English physicist has not been the only attempt to search for time travelers. A few years later, in 2014, a team of physicists from the Michigan Institute of Technology used the internet and social networks to look for clues about possible trips. It was not about looking for people who defined themselves as “time travelers“, but to look for the trace of clairvoyance. That is, signs of people who knew things before they happened. The idea was to look for unequivocal messages, about things not previously known and significant enough to be recorded in the history books of the future. They chose two facts that met these three characteristics: Comet ISON and the name that Jorge Bergoglio would choose during his papacy, Francisco. The search, needless to say, was fruitless. Only in the case of Pope Francis did they find a prior reference to the choice of the name, but after analyzing it they discovered that it was a merely speculative text. Can you travel in time? The short answer is that we don’t know. The long answer is that, although it seems something banaldebates about the possibility of time travel continue to be a very controversial topic even today. And they remain so for a very simple reason: there is nothing in our scientific theories about the universe that prohibits per se this type of trips. Hence it is an exciting field full of theories, objections and counter-objections. Someday we will have to return to the topic and talk about the current controversies in time travel. But today, since it’s Sunday, I just wanted to remind you that if you ever pass through Cambridge on June 28, 2009, there is a party to which you are invited. Toast us. In Xataka | The most transformative event in modern cosmology is just around the corner, according to these physicists’ hypothesis In Xataka | Stephen Hawking made a prediction about black holes in 1971. A new signal has proven him overwhelmingly right

We have had Stephen King releases for several weeks in a row. Don’t we know how to do anything else?

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The fall of 2025 has brought with it an avalanche of Stephen King: almost in consecutive weeks we have had the premiere of ‘The long march‘ and ‘The Running Man‘, and shortly before the series started ‘It: Welcome to Derry‘ on HBO Max. Three great productions in just one month. Are we facing an unimaginative industry that constantly turns to the same author, or is it that King continues to offer something that others cannot? The answer has three keys: the so-called Kingaissance, the decisive factor of the streaming and the current value of King, which has not been devalued by bad adaptations. Debunking the myth. To deny King’s supposed dependence on the horror genre, just look at the last twelve months of releases. Independent horror is enjoying an unsuspected golden age: ‘Longlegs’, for example, grossed more than one hundred million dollars at the box office with a budget of just ten, and films like ‘The substance‘ have given terror a life-long breath of quality, including Oscar nominations. Classic franchises such as ‘Final Destination’ are recovered, ‘Frankenstein’ is sweeping Netflix and a star system from horror creators: the aforementioned Perkins, Prano Bailey-Bond, Danny and Michael Philippou, Zach Creggar and Rose Glass, among others. The Kingaissance. The Anglo-Saxon media coined a term to describe what is happening: the “Kingaissance“, a revival that has a precise birth date. In September 2017, ‘It’ by Andy Muschietti became an unexpected cultural phenomenon: With a budget of just thirty-five million, it grossed more than seven hundred globally, becoming the highest-grossing horror film in history without adjusting for inflation. What followed was an avalanche. Without exhaustiveness: ‘Doctor Sleep’, ‘Animal Graveyard’, ‘Eyes of Fire’, ‘Salem’s Lot’, ‘In the Tall Grass’, the series ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Chapelwaite’… And now, three more adaptations, to which will be added the future television ‘Carrie’ by Mike Flanagan, ‘The Talisman’ for Netflix and perhaps a new ‘Cujo’. The difference with the eighties is abysmal. Back then, TV movies and B series predominated: now they are series on HBO and films with established directors. King himself often has creative control and serves as executive producer on many of these projects. The factor streaming. For decades, adaptations of King’s longer novels have been handicapped by having to compress their length to the margins of the feature film. He streaming changed the rules of the game: platforms now allow series of eight or ten episodes that respect the author’s narrative complexity, something that had previously only been experienced in miniseries format, in productions such as the first version of ‘It’ or ‘The Store’. It happened with ‘11.22.63’, with ‘The Stranger’, with ‘Lisey’s Story’ (which King personally wrote)… Now it is the turn of the prequel to the latest version of ‘It’, and it is clear how the logic of the platforms works: they look for recognizable IPs, and King offers dozens of stories with a bomb-proof dramatic structure. But there were bad adaptations of King. And they didn’t kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. It’s always happened: there are adaptations in miniseries format in the nineties, like ‘The Langoliers’ or ‘The Shining’ that are a pain. Since the nineties there have been as many weak King films as there have been notable ones. Very recent is the horrendous ‘The Dark Tower’ from 2017, which compressed eight novels into 95 disastrous minutes. Or ‘Cell’, absolutely forgettable. Why didn’t these catastrophes sink King’s value? First, the original novels remain, at worst, more than readable, and at best, downright excellent: the source material is indestructible. Second, readers clearly distinguish between author and adaptation, continue to appreciate the writer, and continue to try their hand at adaptations. Third, the good adaptations (‘The Shining,’ ‘Carrie,’ ‘It,’ ‘Misery,’ the original ‘Pet Sematary’) are so good that we’ll always come back for more. Why we return to King. The answer, despite appearances, is not a lack of ideas, but rather that we are faced with a name of proven effectiveness, even in its worst moments: few have that commercial hook combined with minimum standards of quality and entertainment. King has more than 65 novels and 200 short stories, an inexhaustible mine whose themes will never go out of style and are universal: generational traumas, addictions, the problems of the working class, invisible threats, the corruption of power, the weight of our past… And to top it off, we are in the era of the IP. So it is not an issue that affects only him. Marvel, DC, Disney… In 2024, the ten highest-grossing films They all came from pre-existing intellectual properties. And Hollywood seeks familiarity: from the Agatha Christie films directed by Kenneth Branagh to the explosion of video game adaptations like ‘fallout‘, ‘The Last of Us‘ and ‘Super Mario Bros.: The Movie‘. An ideal scenario for a brand that, undoubtedly, has had its ups and downs, but that right now enjoys unexpected iron health. In Xataka | There is a book by Stephen King that sells for around 100 euros and I got it for five: the strange story of ‘Rage’

Stephen Hawking left a hidden treasure that has just been discovered. The problem is that it is in the form of floppy disks

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The Cambridge University Library houses several historical treasures including letters from Isaac Newton and notebooks from Charles Darwin. Now they will take care also of manage 113 boxes with documents and memories of the physical Stephen Hawkingbut in those boxes they also found a surprise turned into a challenge: floppy disks. Lots of them. Computer pioneer. The famous physicist was an early user of those first computers in which data was stored on floppy disks. When he suffered from ALS this was a very important resource to be able to communicate and work, and now those disks that have just been discovered could contain all kinds of revealing data about Hawking’s life and work. Future Nostalgia. That’s what it’s called the project of the University of Cambridge and its library that precisely tries to safeguard all that information that in the past ended up being stored on floppy disks. Recovering such data is not easy when so much time has passed, and this project tries to educate about the best ways to preserve said information and transfer or recover it from those floppy disks. A format with an expiration date. Although one would think that floppy disks are a more secure way to store data than paper and ink, this physical medium also has clear disadvantages. The iron oxide covering the thin layer of plastic can degrade and lose its magnetic capabilities, meaning data could be lost forever. Each floppy disk is a world. With old books there are not too many problems when it comes to retrieving the information: you open them and read them (if you understand the language, of course). With floppy disks you need the hardware to be able to read them—a compatible disk drive—and also figure out how they are formatted. Leontien Talboom, responsible for this project, explained How to also clean those floppy disks was complex and there were various methods that they were exploring. These included the use of hand soap or isopropyl alcohol. Hawking used both a PC and a Mac. The disks arrived at the project in two batches. The first, with five and a quarter (5.25 inch) disks formatted on an MS-DOS based PC. The second, with three and a half disks, somewhat more recent and that were still used on an old Mac. According to Talboom, they are mainly talks that Hawking gave: “from a technical point of view they are really interesting because his talks were so big that he had to divide them into several floppy disks.” I wrote to speak. Hawking’s illness left him unable to speak for himself, so for years he used various voice synthesizers to express his ideas. Precisely for this reason he wrote so much on the computer and saved those documents on disk: this allowed him to use them later so that his synthesized voice could read said documents. Different discs, different readers. Although 5.25″ and especially 3.5″ discs were the most widespread, other formats were also seen such as eight inch discs which for example were used in the Churchill Archives Centre. Chris Knowles, one of the Future Nostalgia participants, explained how he bought a player for these discs on eBay. “It was a miracle that it worked,” but that allowed him to recover the information from those disks. Forgotten formats. They have also received some three-inch floppy disks, a much less widespread and peculiar format that had some success in the United Kingdom before the 3.5″ format was clearly imposed. To recover them, they ended up using an old reader manufactured by Amstrad that they had to modify to bring it back to life. And then there’s the software problem.. The information recovered from these disks can also pose another challenge: that it was created with software that was abandoned and even ended up disappearing. Some disks, for example, had documents written with a missing word processor called Diamond Word. That’s where a kind of “translation” comes into play to convert those files into something readable in the current era. Safeguarding our past. This work demonstrates how critical it is to try to protect and recover information from these old formats. Many of those floppy disks are 40 or 50 years old, and as Knowles says, “old emails and work calendars may not look like historical documents. They might seem banal. But they’re what Newton’s or Darwin’s letters would have looked like 200 years ago. Now they are fascinating documents that open a window to the past.” In Xataka | The 20 most important personal computers in the history of technology

The most detailed gravitational waves in history have just confirmed the great prediction of Stephen Hawking

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After ten years Perfecting the detection of gravitational wavesLigo sensors achieved such a precise observation which has allowed physicists to confirm one of Stephen Hawking’s most famous predictions: the black holes area theorem. Ten years. A decade has passed since the scientists of the Ligo Observatory The universe listened for the first time in a completely new way: by detecting gravitational waves. On September 14, 2015, wrinkles in spacetime tissue Predicts by Albert Einstein a century earlier inaugurated a new era in astronomy. What was then an almost imperceptible cosmic whisper, today has become a symphony that sensors can clearly hear. And on the tenth anniversary of that milestone, the Ligo-Virgo-Kagra (LVK) collaboration has captured the most clear gravitational wave signal to date. GW250114. Detected on January 14, 2025, physicists believe that these gravitational waves were caused by the collision and subsequent fusion of two black holes to about 1.3 billion light years from the earth. Interestingly, the event is almost a twin that ended using Ligo’s physicists the 2017 Nobel PrizeGW150914. In both cases, it was two black holes with masses between 30 and 40 times that of our sun. But there is an abysmal difference: the signal quality. An unprecedented sharpness. Thanks to a decade of technological improvements and advances in quantum engineering, Ligo detectors are now almost four times more sensitive. While the first signal had a signal/noise ratio of 26, that of GW250114 has a 80. “We can hear it high and clear, and that allows us Physical Review Letters. This sharpness has been key to unraveling the secrets that were hidden in the vibrations of the black hole resulting from the merger. Hawking theorem. In 1971, Stephen Hawking proposed that the total area of ​​the event horizon of a black hole can never be reduced. It can increase or remain the same, but never shrink. This, which is known as the Hawking area theorem, is analogous to the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the entropy (the disorder) of an isolated system always increases. Therefore, the area of ​​a black hole is a measure of its entropy. Trying it is complicated. When two black holes merge, part of their mass becomes an enormous amount of energy in the form of gravitational waves (the famous E = mc²). In addition, the new black hole can turn much faster, and a larger turn implies a minor area for the same dough. Does the increase in mass compensate for these losses so that the final area is always greater? The analysis of GW250114 has been settled by the matter bluntly. Hawking was right. In this case, the two initial black holes had a combined area of ​​about 240,000 square kilometers. After the merger, the new black hole, with a mass of about 63 times that of the sun, it had an area of ​​400,000 square kilometers. If in 2021 a first test with the 2015 signal showed a 95%confidence, the new data raises that certainty to 99,999%. As Kip Thorne recalls, one of Ligo’s parents and Hawking personal friend, the British physicist called him right after the first detection in 2015 to ask if they could try his theorem. Hawking died in 2018but today his theory has been verified in a way that would have left him very satisfied. Einstein too. Thanks to this new signal, scientists have been able to analyze the moment just after the merger in which the new black hole vibrates like a newly hit bell before stabilizing. The frequencies and speed with which these tones are attenuated. It is the most solid test to the date that black holes are seemingly simple objects that can be completely described with only three properties: mass, spin and electric charge. All other information of the material that formed them is lost. But each detection of gravitational waves is one more piece in the puzzle of the cosmos. And as GW250114 demonstrates, to understand them we travel on the shoulders of giants such as Einstein and Hawking. Image | Aurore Simonnet (SSU/edeon)/LVK/URI In Xataka | Everything to know about gravitational waves: what they are, where are they and why we will not stop talking about them

In 2024 Nicolas Cage, in 2025 Stephen King. The revolutionary horror cinema returns with a new epic of humor and gore

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Osgood Perkins is one of the most stimulating horror film directors of today (in addition, consecrated to gender: fans are lucky that it is not one of those creators who roll two impact films and then retire to more prestigious genres or profitable). And above, it is wonderfully prolific: last year, ‘Longlegs‘It became the cult film par excellence; This year, already in February, his ‘The Monkey’ is on his way to running the same fate. Oz Perkins likes fear. As is well known, Perkins is the son of an authentic horror cinema icon, Anthony Perkins, but with his good work he has been distanced from the titanic shadow of his father: before his international revelation with ‘Longlegs’, Perkins He already signed small but tremendously disturbing films, in which he showed an incredible hand for gender. As in his debut, the very sick ‘The envoy of evil‘, his personal vision of fairy tales with’Gretel and Hansel‘, And the modest but very intense’I am the beautiful creature that lives in this house‘For Netflix. ‘Longlegs’, a murky descent to madness. Descent, but as one descends rolling down the stairs to the darkest corner of a flooded medium basement. ‘Longlegs’ left Patidifuso to everyone in 2024 thanks to one of the most extreme papers of Nicolas Cage (which is already), but also because of the unexpected of their script turns and for the few concessions that this story gave this story this story of an FBI agent with some extrasensory capacity, and that is embarked in the search for a murderer who soon acquires absolutely inexplicable dyes. And now, Stephen King. Here is all of icons of the disheveled gesture and the insomnia nights. Stephen King, Nicolas Cage and now, Stephen King. Because his is the story that inspires Perkins’s new movie, ‘The Monkey’, which arrives at theaters this week. The original story is the variant of a code that King has used on countless occasions (‘the store’, ‘animal cemetery’), that of the monkey leg: do not want something very strong, because the desire can meet with the same force and with devastating consequences. But Perkins has brought the original story completely to its land. The desire monkey. The film starts when two twin brothers find among their father’s objects, whom they did not get to know, an old toy monkey with a drum. Soon a series of truculent deaths begin to happen in their surroundings, and that blame the monkey. The brothers decide to get rid of him and continue with their lives, although they end up distancing over the years. But suddenly the strange deaths take place again and the brothers must meet to end the power of the monkey. Laugh until he died. We said that Perkins had taken his own way when adapting the original story, and that path is that of humor. The deaths, absolutely free, unexpected and very bloody, are the most grotesque that have been seen on the screen from the saga ‘final destination’, with which ‘The Monkey’ has more than one point in common. Blood acrobatics, creative gore and a feverish rhythm of demential deaths mark the rhythm of a hilarious film and that definitely consecrates Osgood Perkins as one of the greats of modern terror. In Xataka | About the new ‘Wolf Man’ weighs more than a curse: the shadow of the failed mcu of monsters that wanted to build universal

Stephen Curry leads NBA jersey sales for the third consecutive year

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The Golden State Warriors point guard, Stephen Curry, reaffirmed his status as an NBA star for the third consecutive year by being crowned the player with the most jerseys sold in the entire league.behind the legend LeBron James and the Boston Celtics player, Jayson Tatum. According to an NBA report, Curry remains the absolute leader in jersey sales, in a count that is identical to the of the 2023-2024 season when the podium was also repeated with James and Tatum. New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama of France occupy the fourth and fifth positions, respectively. Anthony Edwards (Minnesota Timberwolves), Ja Morant (Memphis Grizzlies), Luka Doncic (Dallas Mavericks), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks) and Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets) complete the top 10. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the leading team in the Western Conference, is number 11; while Donovan Mitchell’s jersey, from the East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, is the fifteenth most requested. It should be noted that the statistics come out of the official NBA storewhich has the jerseys of all the teams’ players and their respective editions available for sale. Although the NBA did not indicate the total number of jerseys sold by Curry, There are up to four models of jerseys available for each player, these being the replica edition, the ICON edition, the City edition and the authentic player versionwith prices ranging from $59.99 to $199.99. Keep reading:

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