{"id":19239,"date":"2016-09-22T18:30:16","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T10:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/stephen-hawking-tours-five-favorite-places-in-the-universe-in-curiositystream-video\/"},"modified":"2016-09-22T18:30:16","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T10:30:16","slug":"stephen-hawking-tours-five-favorite-places-in-the-universe-in-curiositystream-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/stephen-hawking-tours-five-favorite-places-in-the-universe-in-curiositystream-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hawking tours five favorite places in the universe in CuriosityStream video"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hawking
A scene from \u201cStephen Hawking\u2019s Favorite Places\u201d shows the good doctor and his heads-up display in a CGI-created spaceship called the S.S. Hawking. (Credit: CuriosityStream)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You\u2019d think that physicist Stephen Hawking\u2019s favorite place on Earth would be his native England, but it\u2019s actually someplace completely different \u2013 as he explains in a new 25-minute documentary from CuriosityStream.<\/p>\n

\u201cStephen Hawking\u2019s Favorite Places\u201d is an exclusive offering from the online video-on-demand channel, founded last year by John Hendricks, who was the mastermind behind the Discovery Channel. It\u2019s the first episode in what\u2019s expected to be a series of original \u201cFavorite Places\u201d features, supplementing CuriosityStream\u2019s library of science documentaries from the BBC and other providers.<\/p>\n

The real-life Hawking has to use a computer-equipped wheelchair to get around nowadays, but CuriosityStream\u2019s documentary uses CGI magic to put the good doctor into the cockpit of the S.S. Hawking, a spaceship he designed himself.<\/p>\n

From that vantage point, Hawking takes viewers on a tour through time and space \u2013 and talks about his own journey through life as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is simple: complete understanding of the universe,\u201d Hawking said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s always been a dream of mine to explore the universe. So, what if I could? Imagine I could go anywhere and see anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=boMwraPxQIo<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are the five places that Hawking picked:<\/p>\n

The Big Bang:<\/strong> The S.S. Hawking starts its trip with a visit to the beginning of the universe, giving Hawking the opportunity to explain that the Big Bang wasn\u2019t as big of a bang as people think. \u201cThere are no fireworks,\u201d he says. \u201cLight won\u2019t exist for hundreds of thousands of years.\u201d But Hawking spins the time dial fast enough to get to a satisfying flash, 380,000 years after the beginning.<\/p>\n

The Milky Way\u2019s central black hole:<\/strong> When Hawking gets to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way, fans of the movie \u201cInterstellar\u201d will recognize the scene. It\u2019s a bigger version of Gargantua, the huge black hole in the movie that\u2019s based on calculations by one of Hawking\u2019s pals, Caltech physicist Kip Thorne. To CuriosityStream\u2019s credit, the scene neatly explains the mechanism behind a black hole\u2019s \u201cHawking radiation\u201d and why Hawking changed his thinking on black hole behavior.<\/p>\n

Gliese 832 c:<\/strong> Hawking journeys to one of the likeliest nearby candidates for habitability beyond Earth \u2013 Gliese 832 c, a super-Earth that orbits a red dwarf star located 16 light-years from our solar system. \u201cPlants here wouldn\u2019t be green,\u201d he says. \u201cPhotosynthesis from the sun\u2019s red light would produce purple or black foliage. There could be animals, too, perhaps intelligent ones.\u201d Hawking notes that Gliese 832 c (like the more recently discovered Proxima Centauri b) is under observation by the Breakthrough Listen SETI campaign. \u201cFinding intelligent life would be the single greatest discovery in history,\u201d Hawking said. \u201cWe would be forced to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturn:<\/strong> Hawking\u2019s in love with the giant planet\u2019s rings and its more than 60 moons. \u201cI have no doubt in the future it will be a massive tourist hot spot, complete with hot-dog stands and screaming children,\u201d he says. The S.S. Hawking spends a few extra moments zooming past Enceladus, an ice-covered moon that spews geysers of water vapor and may well harbor life in its hidden ocean.<\/p>\n

Earth:<\/strong> The whole planet counts as a favorite place for Hawking, but he\u2019s especially fond of sunny Santa Barbara, Calif., where he spent many happy hours with his young family in 1974. At the time, Hawking held a position at Caltech in nearby Pasadena and was coping with the early stages of his neurodegenerative disease. \u201cMy home away from home \u2026 It was a world away from the gray skies of Cambridge,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve traveled the globe, but I\u2019ve never found anywhere quite like this.\u201d Even today, he stops by Santa Barbara\u2019s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, which he calls \u201cthe perfect place for blue-sky thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

CuriosityStream works on an ad-free subscription model, with a month\u2019s free trial. Standard-definitiion access is $2.99 a month, HD is $5.99 a month, 4K Ultra HD is $11.99 a month. More than 1,500 titles are available. For more information about the service, check out the website.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scene from \u201cStephen Hawking\u2019s Favorite Places\u201d shows the good doctor and his heads-up display in a CGI-created spaceship called the S.S. Hawking. (Credit: CuriosityStream) You\u2019d think that physicist Stephen Hawking\u2019s favorite place on Earth would be his native England, but it\u2019s actually someplace completely different \u2013 as he explains in a new 25-minute documentary from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5508,21,3755,3333],"class_list":["post-19239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-curiositystream","tag-space","tag-stephen-hawking","tag-video"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}