It truly bothers me that some people still believe that the Earth is flat.
I was also made aware of that someone I know, actually feels that Stephan Hawking isn't all that brilliant, that anyone in his situation could have achieved the same accomplishments.
lol what did they say about the Hawkings thing
He basically said (response to a satire meme that had referenced Stephan Hawking), "screw him, anyone could have done what he did given the same circumstances and situation. He isn't that brilliant. Screw him."
At which point I pointed out a decent list of his accomplishments including the book he wrote holding a best seller list for a record 237 weeks in UK, age of his doctorate work, etc. Then I posted what his nomination read as a Fellow of the Royal Society which was:
Hawking has made major contributions to the field of general relativity. These derive from a deep understanding of what is relevant to physics and astronomy, and especially from a mastery of wholly new mathematical techniques. Following the pioneering work of Penrose he established, partly alone and partly in collaboration with Penrose, a series of successively stronger theorems establishing the fundamental result that all realistic cosmological models must possess singularities. Using similar techniques, Hawking has proved the basic theorems on the laws governing black holes: that stationary solutions of Einstein's equations with smooth event horizons must necessarily be axisymmetric; and that in the evolution and interaction of black holes, the total surface area of the event horizons must increase. In collaboration with G. Ellis, Hawking is the author of an impressive and original treatise on "Space-time in the Large"..
His response consisted of "we are one in a million so in the US alone, there should be 320 people who have done the same".
My response was something to the effect of, name one other person that even started their graduate work in cosmology by the age of 20, finish in 6 years, during which being diagnosed with ALS, and only given 2 years to live. Hell, use any field. I then told him I felt he was talking out his $*#, and that Stephan Hawking was smarter by age 12 than he sounds now.
