On the death of Stephen Hawking —
Upon this being the first thing I learned of when I woke up this morning, I recall back in my sophomore year of high school, when I was standing outside the door to first period, waiting for class to start. I was reading an article on my phone regarding Hawking's thoughts on assisted suicide: that is, the medically-sanctioned ability to end one's own life on their own terms and for their own reasons. Hawking was a supporter of this ability and even said that he would consider it if he felt it was right. Indeed, that was years ago, and, regretfully, I don't believe I've had another thought about him since that morning. I am genuine when I say I regret that, because of the person he was.
Stephen Hawking is now gone, having died peacefully at home. If he were alive less than 300 years ago, we may have dismissed his intellect and attempts at educating about the universe because of its lack of base in religion; if he were alive less than 300 years in the future, we may have been able to give him a better life with better technology. Still, it's good that we could allow him to communicate despite how strong his medical problems held him. Because of that, we were able to see to the fullest potential his erudition and hear the results of his teachings about the universe in terms we could all understand, after so much hard work on his part. Hawking gave us more value from his wheelchair than lots of people give us without medical problems. That is not meant to say anything bad about everyone, but rather to support celebrating Hawking's surprisingly-long life and everything he's done for us despite conditions that would have completely justified otherwise.
Although this probably isn't true, the following visions are a bittersweet distraction from the knowledge that Stephen Hawking has died: Imagine he is now an invisible floating orb, completely free in movement, and able to explore any and all parts of the universe without being bound by anything human. He can orbit black holes, see inside them, and understand the singularity. He can explore the atmosphere of any planet in or out of the solar system (even some moons!) and observe the weather. He can somehow go "above" the universe and see everything from a bird's eye view. He can move to all these places while feeling a cool breeze if he wants to. Most importantly, he is as happy as he felt when he flew in a simulated zero-gravity environment back in 2007, and that feeling shall always be novel to him.
The picture was taken from http://www.hawking.org.uk/
And here's a video of his flight — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhIpdSZQZlI
"The zero-g (0g) part was wonderful and the high-g part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space here I come!"
