Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe

Stephen Hawking unfolds his personal, compelling vision of the biggest question of all: Who or what created the universe in which we live? The groundbreaking series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking combined cutting-edge CG with Hawking's witty, distinctive and incisive worldview. Now, we take the journey a step further, as physics and cosmology become tools to answer questions that philosophers have struggled with for thousands of years.
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Larry King Live: Are Aliens a threat?

Are Aliens a Threat? Could space aliens be out to get us? Stephen Hawking thinks so and he tells Larry and YOU why! And, what he thinks an alien would look like! If extraterrestrials could be a danger to us, as Hawking suggests, should we stop trying to contact them? Dan Aykroyd and others debate!

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Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman:Is there a Creator?

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Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman: Is There a Creator? Premiere Date Wednesday, June 9 2010.

Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole explores the deepest mysteries of existence тАФ the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity.

What are we made of? What was there before the beginning? Are we really alone? Is there a creator? These questions have been pondered by the most brilliant minds of the human race. Now, science has evolved to the point where hard facts and evidence may be able to provide us with answers.

Is There a Creator?

It's perhaps the biggest, most controversial mystery in the cosmos. Did our Universe just come into being by random chance, or was it created by a God who nurtures and sustains all life? The latest science is showing that the four forces governing our universe are phenomenally finely tuned. So finely that it had led many to the conclusion that someone, or something, must have calibrated them; a belief further backed up by evidence that everything in our universe may emanate from one extraordinarily elegant and beautiful design known as the E8 Lie Group. While skeptics hold that these findings are neither conclusive nor evidence of a divine creator, some cutting edge physicists are already positing who this God is: an alien gamester who's created our world as the ultimate SIM game for his own amusement. It's an answer as compelling as it is disconcerting.
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Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking: Time Travel

Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking is an epic new kind of cosmology series, a Planet Earth of the heavens. It takes the world's most famous scientific mind and sets it free, powered by the limitless possibilities of computer animation. Hawking gives us the ultimate guide to the universe, a ripping yarn based on real science, spanning the whole of space and time -- from the nature of the universe itself, to the chances of alien life, and the real possibility of time travel.

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Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: Aliens

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Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking is an epic new kind of cosmology series, a Planet Earth of the heavens. It takes the world's most famous scientific mind and sets it free, powered by the limitless possibilities of computer animation. Hawking gives us the ultimate guide to the universe, a ripping yarn based on real science, spanning the whole of space and time -- from the nature of the universe itself, to the chances of alien life, and the real possibility of time travel
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Hawking hurls us superfast into the future

HUMANS may one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future, according to Stephen Hawking.
He has suggested humans could build spaceships capable of such high speeds that time itself would slow down for those on board. Such a spaceship could travel thousands of years into the future at close to the speed of light, reaching distant star systems within the lifetime of its crew.
In theory it could allow humans to “colonise the future” — perhaps even returning to repopulate Earth if a disaster caused extinction on this planet during the flight.
“Time travel was once considered scientific heresy and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank, but these days I’m not so cautious,” Hawking said.
He makes his comments in Stephen Hawking’s Universe, a documentary to be screened by the Discovery channel from next Sunday. A suggestion in another part of the series — that alien life is highly likely to exist but humans should try to avoid it — has already generated global interest.

Hawking’s views on time travel could be just as provocative. He suggests humanity could build a giant “relativistic” spaceship, so called because it would exploit the science set out by Albert Einstein in his theories of relativity.
Einstein found that as objects accelerate through space, the rate at which time passes for them slows down. For objects such as cars and aircraft the effect is negligible, but Hawking’s spaceship would exceed 98% of the speed of light, when such effects would be extremely powerful.
Hawking said such a ship could theoretically reach speeds of more than 650m miles an hour, but would have to be built on a huge scale simply to carry all the fuel that would be needed.
“It would take six years at full power just to reach these speeds. After the first two years it would reach half light speed and be far outside the solar system. After another two years it would be travelling at 90% of the speed of light,” he said.
“After another two years of full thrust the ship would reach full speed, 98% of the speed of light, and each day on the ship would be a year on Earth. At such speeds a trip to the edge of the galaxy would take just 80 years for those on board.”
Hawking dismisses the prospect of time travel into the past. Some scientists have suggested this could be done by exploiting wormholes, gateways linking different parts of the universe or which provide a short-cut backwards or forwards through time.
Theory suggests such wormholes do exist at the quantum scale, meaning they are far smaller even than atoms, so the challenge would be to enlarge them to a human scale.

Hawking dismisses this idea, pointing out that time travel into the past would create the “mad scientist paradox” where a researcher could travel back in time and shoot his past self, raising the question of who could have fired the shot.
“This kind of time machine would violate a fundamental rule that cause comes before effect,” said Hawking. “I believe things cannot make themselves impossible. So it won’t be possible to travel back to the past — using wormholes or any other method.”
Other physicists back Hawking’s theories but also acknowledge the technical challenges. Among them is Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University and presenter of the recent BBC television series Wonders of the Solar System.
“We can already see how time slows down for objects travelling at high speed by looking at what happens in particle accelerators,” he said.
“When we accelerate tiny particles to 99.99% of the speed of light in the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva, the time they experience passes at one seven-thousandth of the rate it does for us.”
“If we could build a spaceship that was fast enough, then it could reach other stars in the lifetime of the crew — but maybe 2.5m years would have passed by on Earth.”
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Aliens may exist but contact would hurt humans: Hawking

AP – FILE - This April 5, 2010 file photo shows astrophysicist
Stephen Hawking of England presenting a lecture …

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LONDON (AFP) – Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned Sunday.
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.
The programmes depict an imagined universe featuring alien life forms in huge spaceships on the hunt for resources after draining their own planet dry.
"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," warned Hawking.
The doomsday scenario is suggested in the series "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" on the Discovery Channel, which began airing in the United States on Sunday.
On the probability of alien life existing, he says: "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.
"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."
Glowing squid-like creatures, herds of herbivores that can hang onto a cliff face and bright yellow predators that kill their prey with stinging tails are among the creatures that stalk the scientist's fantastical cosmos.
Mankind has already made a number of attempts to contact extraterrestrial civilisations.

Click image to see more Stephen Hawking photos

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In 2008, American space agency NASA beamed the Beatles song "Across the Universe" into deep space to send a message of peace to any alien that happens to be in the region of Polaris -- also known as the North Star -- in 2439.
But the history of humanity's efforts to contact aliens stretches back some years.
The US probes Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973 bearing plaques of a naked man and woman and symbols seeking to convey the positions of the Earth and the Sun.
Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977, each carry a gold-plated copper phonogram disk with recordings of sounds and images on Earth.

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Hawking's Universe