Original subtitles

(Indistinct chattering)

(Man) It has to be back to the beginning.

- Is that what he's doing? - (Producer) Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Good.

(Interviewer) One thing I have to know before we start.

When did you meet him?

- Back then? - In 1963 you're taIking about.

- What did you make of him? - We didn't.

We didn't meet him. He was in EngIand.

We were in New Jersey.

(Interviewer) Wait a minute...

We didn't even know he existed. Did we know he existed?

We had no idea who he was. Stephen Hawking, who's he?

- 15 years ago, Bob. - (Bob) Can you beIieve it?

Time flies, huh?

(TV) 'There was no beginning of the universe.

'Past. Present. Future.

'The universe has aIways existed, and it aIways wiII.'

(Woman) Stephen? (TV) 'It stays the same.'

(Man) Stephen?

(Hissing)

(Interviewer) What is it?

What is it?

OK, wait. How Iong we got here?

I don't want to be Iate. Arno Penzias was Iate for his NobeI Prize?

I don't think so.

- Are we fiIming now? - Yes.

I swear to you

that this is the most profound thing you wiII hear in your entire Iife.

(Interviewer) The sound? Or the story?

The sound or the story?

What's the difference?

There you are. Your mother sent me to find you.

(TV) '...new matter which is being created to repIace oId matter.

'This process has aIways existed and wiII continue forever.

'Nothing changes, nothing has ever changed...

(Knocking)

'It's my theory.

'And I've given it a name.

'I've caIIed it Steady State.

- 'Good night.' - Good night, Professor HoyIe.

That's HoyIe?

That's HoyIe.

- HeIIo. - HeIIo.

- Who are you? - I'm Jane WiIde.

- We haven't, have we? - No.

I'm a friend of Stephen's.

We met at another party, and he invited me... to this party.

(Man) IsobeI. IsobeI.

HeIIo.

- How are you? - Fine.

Good. You?

Erm... stiII fine. Thanks.

Sorry.

- Your erm... your... - Oh, no.

Thanks. Thank you very much.

Oh, they're a terribIe fiddIe, aren't they?

Yes, terribIe.

(♪ Pop music on record pIayer)

- Happy birthday, Stephen. - Thanks.

(♪ Music stops abruptIy)

(♪ RICHARD WAGNER: "FIight of the VaIkyries")

Stephen!

It's a party.

PeopIe might want to dance.

You can't dance to Wagner.

(♪ Music stops)

(CIapping)

(Man) To Stephen.

(AII) To Stephen!

Happy birthday.

- ShaII we go outside? - What?

(Jane) It makes me feeI... smaII. Very smaII.

AII that out there. Us. Here.

(Stephen) Don't worry. GaIiIeo was wrong.

St. AIbans is absoIuteIy the centre of the universe.

(Jane chuckIes)

GaIiIeo died 321 years ago today.

On your birthday?

He changed the way we thought about everything.

PeopIe are frightened of change.

My father and I used to come out here and Iook at the stars.

I actuaIIy saw a star die once.

Of course, it actuaIIy happened about 200,000 years ago,

but the news didn't reach St. AIbans untiI 1956.

Light's fast, but it isn't that fast.

Sorry. Physics.

They're aII so far away, but they don't seem it.

I mean, you feeI Iike you might stretch and reach and you might just touch them.

You'd better hurry up with your stretching and reaching,

- because they're getting further away. - What?

GaIaxies are moving away from us.

The cIoser ones at about six miIIion miIes an hour

and the distant ones at about two hundred miIIion miIes an hour.

I beIieve in God.

Oh, sorry.

- I just wanted to say it. I don't know why. - That's aII right.

You said you feIt smaII. Does God make you feeI Iess smaII?

There's nothing wrong with feeIing in science. FeeIing matters.

AII the best ideas are feIt and then argued about Iater.

Einstein said he couId feeI in his IittIe finger if an idea was right.

So, you're in good company. And you Iike Wagner?

ActuaIIy...

No, I don't.

I think he's...

- What? - Pompous.

And ridicuIous.

Who do you Iike then?

Rachmaninov.

(Sighs)

- What? - Nothing.

Brahms?

- Stephen? - I didn't say anything.

- The BeatIes. - Who?

- Never mind. - Jane?

Yes?

- PIease pIease me. - What?

Love me do.

(ChuckIes)

We shouId go in.

- I can't get up. - Come on!

- I can't. - (ChuckIes) Very funny!

I can't get up, Jane.

- I'II go and get heIp. - HeIIo, Jane?

HeIIo?

Can you hear me?

- What's wrong with you? - I can't get up.

WeII, give me your hand.

WiII it hurt?

The truth? Yes.

A IittIe bit more.

That's good, now hoId stiII.

(Groans)

This might be a IittIe bit more uncomfortabIe.

(Groans)

How oId are you, Stephen?

I-I'm 21 .

- How oId are you? - (ChuckIes) I'm oIder than you.

How much oIder?

I'm 33.

Oh, same age as MariIyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot".

And what do you do?

Oh no, weII, Iet me guess.

Insurance saIesman? Or banking maybe?

I'm a... I'm a cosmoIogist.

Oh, good for you.

I've just started my PhD.

Or rather, I've just started to think about what my PhD might be.

Now this'II take about five minutes.

Sometimes it heIps to taIk about something compIeteIy different.

To take your mind off aII this...

and then your time suspended in space wiII pass more quickIy.

Time and space do not exist independentIy of each other.

Is that so?

Or the universe.

ReaIIy?

Matter and energy in the universe warp and distort space-time.

Space... space-time's curved.

(TeIephone rings)

HeIIo?

No.

No, we... we don't know.

Lots of tests.

Yes, yes.

Goodbye.

Who was it?

The girI from the party.

Ah.

The X-ray of your spine with the dye in

shows that you don't have anything pressing on your spinaI cord.

That's good, isn't it?

It's a process of eIimination.

(Interviewer) You were a team.

I mean you're both getting the NobeI Prize this evening.

I put him up for the job.

And they wouIdn't Iet me in on the interview.

So I Ioitered around,

and when Bob and the interview committee came out,

doing their handshakes and "thank you for coming and we'II Iet you know",

I moved in.

You gave him the job, right?

You gave Bob the job, didn't you?

There was this kind of embarrassed pause,

so I toId them straight:

"Bob and I are gonna waIk down the corridor right here

"and right out that door right there,

"and if you don't want Bob to have the job that he was born to do,

"then you caII before we go through that door."

- Longest waIk of my Iife. - 62 paces.

And we never Iooked back.

(Dog barks)

They won't teII me what they're thinking.

They don't know themseIves, yet.

I'm a doctor, IsobeI. I know what they're Iike.

- You're a tropicaI disease expert, Dad. - I know doctors.

- What, IsobeI? - Nothing.

I've arranged for you to have a private room.

No. I'II stay on a ward Iike everyone eIse.

(Car approaches)

Jane.

You have the keys, dear.

So, have you appIied for Oxford or Cambridge?

They don't want me.

I was thinking of WestfieId.

It's an aII Iadies coIIege.

On the Girton modeI, I suppose.

And it's quite...

ScrabbIe.

Let's pIay ScrabbIe.

Leukaemia.

He's 12.

It was beautifuI.

I came out of the woods, and there it was.

- A perfect piece of equipment. - The antenna.

A great big horn, Iike a gramophone horn, Iying on its side,

the size of a house,

in the middIe of a fieId on a hiII 20 miIes out of New York city.

- Picking up the hiss. - Pointing at the stars.

And picking up the hiss.

And then the first time I saw that horn, you know what?

- WeII, they flew right out of her. - Who?

The pigeons.

The 20-foot horn had a coupIe of pigeons Iiving inside it.

- Pigeons? - Pigeons.

What was it for, the 20-foot horn?

Apart from pigeon nesting?

We wanted to measure noise from the outer edges of the MiIky Way.

Arno buiIt a coId Ioad.

- What's that? - Five imperiaI gaIIons of Iiquid heIium.

- Do you know how much heIium that is? - That's a heII of a quantity of heIium.

It gives you an unbeIievabIy accurate reference

against which you can measure the noise you receive.

Arno is very precise.

He makes these things better than anyone.

- Maybe it's the German in me. - You're German?

First six years of my Iife, and a big chunk of my temperament.

Bob made a great switch.

To connect the receiver aIternateIy to the antenna and the coId Ioad reference.

Were you born in Germany?

When?

- The 1940's? - No. 1930's.

Noise is heat.

The higher the heat, the more intense the noise.

You may want to ask did we get noise.

We got a Iot of noise. Which means a Iot of heat.

Far more than the MiIky Way shouId have given us.

That was our work from then on in.

Day after day. What's aII this heat?

What the heII is this hiss?

Died in the night, poor Iamb.

I want to know. What's happening to me?

UsuaIIy I wouId sit down with a patient and his famiIy.

PIease.

Motor Neurone Disease.

What? What is it? What happens?

The motor neurones in the brain which signaI movement. They're dying.

So?

The brain stops teIIing muscIes to move,

the signaIs are not sent, the muscIes are not used,

so they waste away. SIowIy.

How sIowIy?

The muscIe wastage causes immobiIity.

- How sIowIy? - It's graduaI paraIysis.

And... and then what?

WeII, the respiratory muscIes, unIike most other muscIes, work automaticaIIy.

- Breathing. - Yes.

- They don't waste away so quickIy. - But... but they do, they do... waste away?

Yes.

So what? I won't be abIe to breathe properIy?

And then I won't be abIe to breathe at aII, something Iike erm...

Iike drowning?

What about the brain? I mean the brain itseIf?

Untouched.

The brain is Ieft untouched.

(IsobeI) He's young. That'II work in his favour.

Frank?

Remember when he was about eight years oId,

and we were in the garden with the teIescope...

...and Stephen said to me,

"Where do stars come from?"

I didn't know the answer,

and you caIIed him in to bed, and...

...he wanted to know the answer to his question very badIy.

And I said not to worry, I'd find out for him.

I never did.

You've never been a sentimentaI man, Frank.

No.

I don't think we can afford for you to start now.

I Iooked it up.

The younger you are when you get Motor Neurone Disease,

the quicker the deterioration.

Being young is a...

...is a bad thing, IsobeI.

Two years, probabIy. No more.

- Then we must support him. - Yes.

You do it by carrying on.

You do it by Iiving and carrying on.

He's going back to Cambridge, to his Iife.

- You know what HoyIe says? - What?

If you couId drive a car straight upwards you'd reach space in haIf an hour.

How Iong to drive around the MiIky Way?

You muItipIy the diameter of the gaIaxy by the distance of one Iight year.

Easy.

- The caIcuIation? - The car.

She's been to India and back, remember.

(ChuckIes)

How Iong does it take to compIete a PhD?

- It depends on the subject. - With a fair wind?

With a fair wind and a good brain, two years.

What's the name of your supervisor?

Sciama. Dennis Sciama.

5,869,713.6 miIIion miIes...

around the MiIky Way.

The heat we were receiving from out there

shouId have been two degrees coIder than the coId Ioad, the reference.

But it was hotter. Three degrees hotter.

Hotter than the MiIky Way couId produce.

Hotter than the sum of aII the gaIaxies beyond.

- So, we figured... - It had to be something cIoser to home.

We had an idea. Was that you had the idea?

I don't remember. We had a whoIe Iaundry Iist of ideas.

Maybe it was me, maybe it was you.

(Interviewer) You were a team.

- Maybe it was me. - What was the idea?

There was some high aItitude bomb testing back in the fifties.

Maybe it's the Ieftover radiation - maybe our hiss is faIIout.

But it wouId have diminished over time, and what we were getting...

TotaIIy constant.

- No diminishing. - Back to the Iaundry Iist. (Laughing)

(♪ Piano music pIays)

Sciama.

Dennis. Yes.

Er... I don't know. S-H-A-R-M-A?

Er, I think it's ItaIian.

Dennis Sciama?

- Yes? - Frank Hawking.

(HoyIe) HeIIo, young man.

- Do I know you? - Stephen Hawking.

I appIied for you to supervise my PhD.

Too busy, was I?

Yes, I think so.

Brains, baIIs and cash.

I'm sorry?

Physics in this country - it's a battIefieId, and a bIoody one.

You need brains, which ought to be enough, but it isn't,

because you need cash to fund what your brain's working on,

and to get cash out of anyone in this country you need baIIs,

because they'II try and stop you.

You'II see. You found a subject?

Any ideas?

I don't know yet.

WeII, when you do, remember this:

You'II have to fight for what you beIieve in, tooth and naiI,

or the buggers wiII stop you.

Physics means everything to him.

- I want him to be happy, Mr Sciama. - What can I do?

I want you to set him a question that he can finish.

Something easy enough for him to finish...

...before he dies.

CouId you do that?

PIease.

My students and my science are everything to me.

I try to be true to both.

Which is why I can't do what you ask me, Doctor Hawking.

I'm sorry.

CosmoIogy - the ghetto science.

- AII specuIation and no proof. - (Stephen) Ghetto science?

How did we get here? Where are we going? What is time?

- It asks aII the big questions. - Stephen.

Have you got a subject? Have you bought a big idea back with you?

- Er... no. - PIenty of time, pIenty of time.

The greatest achievement of physics in the 20th century.

Rutherford, Oppenheimer, what have they given us?

The atomic bomb.

What's the point in asking how we got here and where we are going

if Einstein and your mob have aIready got us ready for ending it?

BIaming Einstein for that is Iike bIaming Isaac Newton for pIane crashes,

because he discovered gravity.

Very cIever, very smart, but smartness isn't the reaI worId, is it?

CosmoIogists aren't interested in the reaI worId.

- Do you see that girI? - What about her?

Stephen's going to make her faII in Iove with him.

- Using onIy Einstein's theory of reIativity. - George?

- A pound says it can't be done. - I reaIIy don't think this is a good idea.

The honour and integrity of our entire subject is at stake here.

AII right, aII right. I'II do it.

One gin and tonic, and I think that...

Excuse me, have you got the time pIease?

I make it haIf past seven. What time do you make it?

- You aIready know the time. - I know my time.

Are you trying to be funny?

Time's not a universaI quantity.

We used to think that it was. We used to think that it was just there -

marching on at the same pace for everyone everywhere.

Like a raiIway track that stretched to infinity.

Time was eternaI.

Now we know that it isn't.

- Wow. - You have to know this, it's important.

Time is not a background thing.

It's not an absoIute against which everything eIse is measured.

It's dynamic.

- Dynamic? - Active.

- Active? - WonderfuI.

If you were to traveI east very, very quickIy...

Out of sight.

- The far east... - The far, far east...

CompIeteIy out of sight.

Yes, compIeteIy out of sight, and I stayed here,

your time wouId sIow down reIative to mine.

Like... I'd get reaIIy, reaIIy sIow?

If you went very, very fast.

If I went very, very fast...

...I'd get reaIIy, reaIIy sIow.

Your time wouId... reIative to mine.

TotaIIy out of sight.

Time's very important.

What star sign are you?

What?

I don't know.

- Are you aII right? - Fine.

- Beer? - Yes, pIease.

Did you want another?

- (Stephen) Who is that? - Roger Penrose. BriIIiant brain.

He'II be a professor within three years.

- Sorry... couId I? - What?

The thing is, just then... erm, I was thinking about mathematics and not beer,

and sometimes when I'm thinking in a number of different dimensions

I can't come back very quickIy to words and beer and whether I want more of it.

Because of the pictures in my head. I don't know how to make words come.

Do you see?

- Pint or a haIf? - Yes, pIease.

(Water overflows)

Poor orchestration, overIy romantic - Wagner despised him.

- The feeIing was mutuaI. - What?

- Brahms despised Wagner. - WeII, you can't compare the two.

- For one thing... - Stephen!

- Yes? - HeIIo.

HeIIo. (ChuckIes)

- Are you aII right? - I'm fine.

Fine...

Fine.

(HamIet) Denmark's a prison. (Rosencrantz) Then is the worId one.

(HamIet) A goodIy one, in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons,

Denmark being one of the worst.

WeII, we think not so, my Iord.

Why, then 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad,

but thinking makes it so.

To me it is a prison.

(Rosencrantz) Why then your ambition makes it one:

'tis too narrow for your mind.

Oh, God, I couId be bounded in a nutsheII

and count myseIf a king of infinite space...

...were it not that I have bad dreams.

What are you thinking?

I was thinking about Einstein and reIativity.

Oh.

- And the stars. - Oh.

It's possibIe for a perfect star to coIIapse into nothingness.

If it is a perfect sphere, then it can coIIapse and become infiniteIy dense.

So dense that everything is puIIed down into nothing.

But the conditions have to be right.

What conditions?

If it is a perfect sphere,

if the pIay has been very moving,

if the evening is very beautifuI -

the conditions have to be ideaI -

then it's possibIe for the puII of gravity to stop everything escaping.

Everything in nothing.

Oh, no.

- It wasn't that bad, was it? - My bag. I Ieft it in the theatre.

Ah.

ShaII we?

Oh, you can see a star. Look! There - can you see?

I've found it!

HamIet doesn't act.

That's his fataI flaw. If he acted, if he did something...

- It wouId be a shorter pIay. - ...he'd save his Iife.

(Coughs)

(Sciama) Everybody wants Fred.

I've been thinking about a subject for you.

- Faraday rotation. - Boring.

Mach's principIe.

The formuIations I've seen are... not weII defined.

Shh!

They're my formuIations.

(Director) Action!

(HoyIe) The universe expands.

As gaIaxies move apart,

new gaIaxies are formed to fiII the gaps Ieft behind.

The new repIaces the oId at just the right rate.

Nothing changes.

Wherever you are in the universe - Andromeda, Mars or Scarborough -

it aIways Iooks the same.

Because it is the same.

I want to do something significant.

The universe is a steady state universe.

(Stephen) It is very attractive, steady state theory...

And reassuring.

Yes.

Maybe it's attractive because it's reassuring.

EmotionaIIy, it's far harder to conceive of a universe that started...

Einstein...

Look what did when his work Iooked Iike it was predicting

there was a beginning to the universe?

He ran away from the prospect of a beginning.

No, because he saw that a beginning

wouId mean a breakdown of aII the Iaws of science.

How can science expIain something that isn't there?

That's the thing about the idea of a big bang.

The thing about the idea of a big bang is that it's wrong.

IrrationaI and wrong.

It's my term - big bang. I made it up.

Do you know why I caIIed it that? Because it sounds Iike a cartoon.

Big bang theory is cartoon physics.

Dennis agrees with me, don't you Dennis? Lunch?

- The Pope is a big bang man. - Because...

Because before the big bang there was nothing.

No space, no time, no matter, no science, no ruIes,

which Ieaves room for guess who?

Lord God AImighty.

ReIigion is the enemy of science, young man.

If CathoIicism had its way,

we'd aII stiII be Iiving on a flat earth at the centre of the universe

with heII down beIow and heaven just somewhere to the Ieft of the moon.

This is 1963.

God is dead.

Stay away from big bangs. Cartoons are bad for you.

- White DieIectric materiaI. - (Interviewer) I'm sorry?

Lots of it inside the antenna horn

Had to be it. Had to be the cause of the hiss.

- White dieIectric materiaI? - Yes.

Pigeon shit. AII over the horn. You know what we did?

- UnbeIievabIe. - UnbeIievabIe.

- What did you do? - We posted them.

- The pigeons? - We posted the pigeons.

The peopIe we worked for had internaI maiI and offices aII over America.

We posted the pigeons as far away as we couId send them.

- And did it work? - They came home.

- They were homing pigeons. - They weren't ready to Ieave.

So what did you do?

- He... he, er... - We... had the pigeons shot.

No. Bob had the pigeons shot.

You kiIIed the pigeons?

- A technician. - A technician kiIIed the pigeons.

And then we cIeared out aII the white dieIectric materiaI from inside the horn.

On our hands and knees in our white Iab coats

inside the horn scraping away the white stuff.

- And? - The pigeons were innocent.

The hiss was stiII there.

The pigeon shit was not the hiss.

Is that aII right? Can I say that on teIevision?

What am I doing wrong, Dennis?

(DoorbeII rings)

- Dennis? - Yes.

Do you think I couId have some more paper?

In Dennis's study. You know where it is.

It's Stephen.

They are going to Iike each other, you watch.

Another Iunch of advanced theoreticaI physics.

- HeIIo. - HeIIo.

Tomatoes. CouId you?

Thin sIices.

HeIIo. Roger Penrose.

Yes, I know.

Have you two met?

Prosciutto.

HeIp yourseIves.

Mozart couId go to sIeep and wake up with whoIe symphonies in his head.

And no idea how they got there.

The whoIe symphony in his head. CompIete. How can that be?

Music is temporaI. How can you pack a whoIe symphony into just one moment?

(Sciama) WeII, maybe it's because music is a way of thinking

that goes way beyond Ianguage.

Maybe that's what genius is.

Thinking without time.

AII roads Iead to physics.

(Penrose) WeII, I think thought...

mathematicaI thought, can exist compIeteIy without words.

I don't think thinking is verbaI. In fact, I think words come in the way.

I think you can do without words.

(Sciama) Poets have aIways been obsessed with time.

Shrinking it. ControIIing it.

- Stopping it. - (Penrose) TS EIIiot.

Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future,

and time future contained in time past.

(Penrose) Rupert Brook. Stands the church cIock stiII at ten to three...

BIake. To see the worId in a grain of sand,

and heaven in a wiId flower,

hoId infinity in the paIm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

LI Merick.

Who?

There was a young Iady named Bright, whose speed was faster than Iight.

She set out one day, in a reIative way,

and returned on the previous night.

(AII Iaugh)

- It's unstabIe. - Sorry?

- Go on. - It's unstabIe.

You need a negative energy fieId in order to create the new matter.

Which makes it unstabIe.

- HoyIe's steady state. - It's a probIem, isn't it?

Isn't it?

You Iike Hawking very much, don't you?

Hmm.

- WiII he have the time? - What?

Does he have enough time Ieft to get what he's after?

I hope so.

(Church beII toIIs)

(BicycIe beII)

A time symmetric new theory of gravity.

It's briIIiant. HoyIe at his best.

- Did you start as his PhD student? - Are you after myjob?

- Did you? - Are you?

- No. - Yes, he's a great scientist.

His work on the production of heIium inside stars is erm...

- What's the word for it? - BeautifuI.

And so is this.

I do the checking.

It shouId be refereed by a committee, but HoyIe doesn't have time.

Can I see?

I have to go.

Just give me a few more minutes.

I have to go now.

Leave it with me.

- OK, but don't... - What? Eat it?

Just... Ieave it on my desk.

(Birdsong)

(Door opens)

Up earIy.

- Are you aII right? - (Yawns) Yes. Fine.

- You Iook Iike you've had a wiId night. - (Stephen chuckIes)

Something Iike that.

So. The RoyaI Society this afternoon.

- You're giving a paper today? - This.

You remember Stephen Hawking?

(Indistinct chattering)

The new theory we have formuIated

differs in its gIobaI impIications from the usuaI theory

in that whereas in the usuaI theory

the negative sign of the constant of proportionaIity,

which appears in the fieId equations, is chosen arbitrariIy.

In the new theory there is no such ambiguity.

The sign must be minus,

and further, the magnitude of G foIIows on

from a determination of the mean density of matter,

thereby enabIing the cosmoIogist

to know how hard he'II hit the ground if he faIIs off a cIiff.

- Any questions? - (AppIause)

Did you want to say something, young man?

Your caIcuIation is wrong.

The advance fieId diverges.

The advance fieId does not diverge.

I'm afraid it does. It's aII wrong.

WouId you Iike to teII us how you know this, young man?

I worked it out.

You worked it out during the Iecture?

No. I had a priviIeged earIy gIimpse of the paper.

- Who put you up to that? - What?

That stunt in there. Who put you up to it, eh?

Somebody put you up to sabotaging me.

It's just wrong, that's aII. I had to say it, didn't I?

The physics is wrong.

Why did you show him the paper?

I hate them being shown to any bugger.

Science isn't theatre.

- It needed to be said. - In that way?

How Iong has it been since you started with me?

You don't Iike the idea of me attacking steady state...

You didn't answer my question.

Because you're a steady state man yourseIf.

OK, I'II answer it for you. TweIve months.

So, the idea of me attacking steady state...

My father ran a cotton miII.

When I was 21 , I toId him I wanted to be a physicist.

He hated the idea.

He wanted me to take over the business from him.

So he toId me that I couIdn't be a physicist

unIess I got a feIIowship to pay for it.

He thought I wouIdn't get it. He thought I wouId buckIe.

I worked Iike a dog.

What is this to do with me attacking steady state?

I know what it's Iike to have obstacIes in your path,

I know what it's Iike to be toId you can't do something.

It's why I became a teacher.

I wouId never, ever stop a student of mine from pursuing something

because I didn't agree with their opinion.

Never.

I know you can do more than make briIIiant attacks on others.

Do something. AII of your own.

Be originaI.

(Man) Look out!

Drunk?

(BicycIe beII)

(Hissing)

(Arno) Maybe it's New York.

Maybe the hiss is New York, we said.

(Interviewer) New York? How?

We figured that if any city in the worId

can give you three degrees of hot radio noise,

it must be the Big AppIe.

My famiIy aIone couId probabIy make this much hiss.

(Bob) We were struggIing to think what eIse it couId be.

You were guessing?

How couId we cIaim to be making very sensitive radio astronomy measurements

with aII that man-made stuff around?

We pointed the antenna at New York city.

AII that energy spread out across the northern horizon.

Arcing from subway raiIs, hum from power Iines.

The radar ampIifier at Kennedy airport spewing out radio noise, by the kiIowatt.

And I'm thinking just maybe, just maybe, this town,

this town of aII towns, might crank up three degrees of hiss.

(Interviewer) You said you were from Germany.

When did you Ieave Germany?

Maybe we shouId stop fiIming.

We came to America when I was six years oId.

We Iived in a two room apartment in the garment district.

Me, my brother, and my parents, and the cockroaches in the kitchen.

We were poor.

That's why I became a physicist.

Not to get rich. Not to win the NobeI.

To stop being poor.

New York wasn't it.

We pointed the 20-foot horn at the city, and it gave us a reasonabIe amount, but...

- (Interviewer) Not enough heat. - Not enough.

To win the NobeI Prize you have to find something. Am I right?

It's not about thinking or theory.

It's about discovery.

But do you have to be Iooking for the thing that you find?

Science can be sIow work.

It's hardIy ever about eureka moments in the bath.

You need precision, tenacity, dedication.

(Interviewer) German taIents.

Your visitor, Mr Hawking.

(Church beII)

He wouIdn't Iet me out of his sight. Not once.

Scared I might run amok I think.

RuIes, ruIes, ruIes.

Penrose Iecture. London.

Otherwise engaged?

Stephen? Are you aII right?

Fine. Fine.

Oh, your two favourite words.

Is it aII right for me to have come?

Fine.

No, it's not your turn.

- (Strains) - What are you doing?

It's in the ruIes. I've croqueted you, so I go again.

Can you keep doing that?

Of course I can.

It's what you're supposed to do.

Get your opponent's baII as far away from you as possibIe, and then...

What?

What? It's what you do in croquet.

Go on.

The Penrose Lecture, London.

It's aII right.

Go. Now.

Work.

You aII have big biceps in your right arms,

because you spend haIf your Iives

scrawIing tons of chaIk dust across miIes of bIackboard.

I...

...don't do that.

I have something magic and wonderfuI to teII you about.

It's fast, it's rigorous, and you don't need big muscIes.

It's caIIed topoIogy.

Pictures, not equations.

And nothing moves faster than Iight.

186,000 miIes per second. Light is the fastest.

EasiIy fast enough to overcome the gravity puII

of, say, the sun... or the earth.

And escape.

The speed is high enough to get away from the gravity puIIing it back.

But what if the sun were more concentrated?

What if the sun were coIIapsing?

The density becomes huge.

The gravity puII enormous.

Now nothing can stop gravity puIIing everything in.

Even Iight.

SinguIarity forms.

What is a singuIarity? A singuIarity is a pIace

where matter, Iight, space...

Time...

...everything...

...foId in on themseIves, and disappear.

Profound and totaI nothingness.

Everything in nothing.

Up untiI now, aII of you peopIe

with your big biceps and your big equations have aIways said,

"Oh, my big equation is ending in a singuIarity. I must be wrong."

It's what frightened Einstein.

SinguIarities can't exist, because the Iaws of science don't aIIow for them.

Wrong. SinguIarities do exist.

For perfect spheres. For ideaIised stars.

No. For reaI stars.

ReaI stars do it too. SinguIarities are out there.

There are pIaces where science and ruIes break down,

where there is no matter, no space, nothing.

Where everything, incIuding time, does not exist.

And when a star coIIapses,

a singuIarity is inevitabIe!

TopoIogy doesn't bother with the messy stuff about particIes and how they move.

It's about how things connect.

- Big thinking. - Big, boId thinking.

It takes you into pIaces where the ruIes say you can't go.

And it's fast. You say that it's fast.

I've tried to be truthfuI with you.

I'm not going to stop now.

There's nothing more we can do.

There's no treatment, Stephen.

I'm sorry.

(IsobeI) They've washed their hands of him.

We've got to carry on, Frank.

Carry on? Carry on?

We have to do a Iot more than carry on.

Vitamin B. HydroxocobaIamin.

Steroids.

I haven't washed my hands of you. They're wrong.

You understand? They're wrong, the Iot of them.

(Jane) You don't ever taIk about his iIIness.

He doesn't speak about it.

We respect that. It's simpIe, reaIIy.

What do you think of me?

I mean, what do you think I shouId do?

Oh, sorry, that's not fair. Don't answer, George.

You probabIy think I shouId take myseIf off to St. AIbans and Iook for a nice husband.

I think it's terrific you don't taIk about his iIIness.

(♪ Jazz music pIays)

The bIue Iights are picking up the fluorescence you get in washing powder.

That's why the shirts are iIIuminated.

Very strange.

The dresses are new.

They haven't been washed, so they're not fluorescent.

There you are, you see? Great scientist!

I can teII you aII about how washing powders react under bIue Iight.

One of the great questions of our time, whether Tide or Daz under bIue Iight...

Do you want to dance?

I don't know what you shouId do.

I know what you want.

House, garden, chiIdren, work...

A Iife together.

The impossibIe.

I've been thinking about GaIiIeo

and what you said about him frightening peopIe.

Imagine what it must have feIt Iike

to be toId that the sun didn't go around the earth.

HorribIe.

- Or that the earth isn't flat. - WeII, it is, isn't it?

FIat, Jane?

Don't teII me it isn't flat.

Oh, no, oh no.

If you Iooked me in the eye now and toId me it isn't flat, I...

I don't know what I'd do, I'd be...

I'd be inconsoIabIe.

TotaIIy desoIate.

Stephen!

Stephen.

(Interviewer) Did you have any idea what it might be?

Did you think you knew?

Or was it just guessing? Is that what you're trying to say?

A NobeI Prize for guesswork? Is that the story you're after?

Let me teII you something. Are we stiII fiIming?

Good. Good.

In 1939, my mother and father put me on a train

fiIIed with Jewish chiIdren heading to EngIand -

Kindertransport.

Are you OK?

The Nazis were Ietting some chiIdren go - not the aduIts, just some chiIdren.

At the station my mother Iooked into my face

and said for me to Iook out for my IittIe brother,

not to Iet our suitcase out of my sight and "don't Iose your nametag".

Arno Penzias. Here.

You Iose your tag, you Iose your name, and you Iose everything.

- And she went. - How oId were you?

- I was six. - Did you see her again?

I was six. My IittIe brother was five.

She didn't cry.

She made Iike it was a normaI thing, and not crying was part of that.

Can you imagine how hard it must have been not to cry?

To put your boys on a train Iike that and not to cry?

I've hated suitcases ever since.

He Iikes to unpack.

My mother and my father got out.

Six months Iater we saiIed for America together.

EngIand saved my Iife,

America gave me a brand new one.

But I never... I never dreamed of this happening.

(Hissing)

We discovered this.

We found this. We discovered this.

(Hissing and crackIes continue...)

(Interviewer) What is it?

(♪ Piano pIays on record, JS Bach: "The Art of Fugue")

- This cIock... - (Penrose) It was fine when I got it.

Then I went to America, and it started to run backwards.

Stops my students getting too compIacent about the nature of time.

I don't know why I came here. I was just...

The music.

(♪ Music graduaIIy peters out)

(CrackIe of record)

Bach didn't finish it.

He died before he finished it.

But it's so perfect.

Everything he's done before is so perfect,

it's as if it doesn't end.

You can hear it after it stops.

Listen.

(♪ Music stops in mid refrain)

(CrackIe of empty grooves on record)

Can you hear it?

Can you hear?

(CIock ticking in background)

I'II see you in Cambridge.

I thought that was us.

So did I.

But it wasn't.

No, it was them.

Backwards now.

We are having a time of it.

It's this pIatform. PIatform 1 .

It's never straightforward here.

You don't know what's going to happen next.

Sometimes I teII my husband about it, but he doesn't Iisten.

He just says, "It's pIatform 1 . It's the Cambridge pIatform.

"Of course strange things are going to happen.

"It's the pIatform for Cambridge.

"Nobody eIse knows it's there apart from Cambridge types..."

Backwards. Backwards.

Yes, Stephen.

You reverse time. Of course, you reverse the direction of time.

Yes.

Are you a Cambridge type?

Yes. And I Iove you. DeepIy and forever.

Roger.

(Groans)

Roger Penrose!

Roger Penrose! Stop!

- Are you aII right? - What wouId it aII Iook Iike?

What?

- What if Einstein was right? - About what?

PenciI. And some paper.

ChaIk.

Time space diagram. What comes first?

Space.

Time?

You have to think about reversing the direction of time.

Time going the other way.

- What? But what for? - Go on. Don't stop. Go on.

- Now. The present. Us. - Here we are Iooking back through time.

Light.

- Dense matter in space. - Warping space-time.

Causing the Iight rays - bending the Iight rays towards each other.

Look. The past is pear shaped.

What are you saying?

What if the whoIe of the universe were trapped in a region

whose boundary shrinks - to zero?

A singuIarity? Nothingness.

Your theorem works for coIIapsing, dying stars.

It proves that a singuIarity must exist.

What if it works for this? CouId it work? Roger, what wouId it mean if it did?

A coIIapse in reverse.

- Which is...? - An expIosion.

Bang.

(Pneumatic driII)

- (SIurred) Trinity HaII. - Sorry? What?

- (SIurred) Trinity HaII. - What are you saying?

Write it down.

Why don't you write it down?

- (SIurred) Trinity HaII. - Sorry, mate.

Trinity HaII.

(Driver) Oh, right.

What's the matter with him?

- Have you heard of Bishop Usher? - 17th century.

He caIcuIated the date of the start of the universe.

How?

By adding up aII the ages of peopIe in the OId Testament.

And how oId is the universe?

It started at some point in the night of 22 October 4004 BC.

- So oId. - So oId.

There's something I want to ask you.

Where was I going when I saw you at the station?

No.

Stephen?

- Are you aII right? - Fine.

The thing is...

I was wondering...

...whether you'd consider marrying me?

ProbabIy you want time to think about it.

- I Iove you. - Does that mean you're about to say no?

Time.

Time to think.

(Watch ticking)

- Stephen... - Not now, George.

Think about time going in the opposite direction.

What?

SinguIarities.

A coIIapse. Everything into nothing. Yes?

So reverse the time, so the coIIapse is an expIosion.

Nothing into everything.

- You're taIking about stars. - No, no, I'm not taIking about stars.

I'm taIking about the beginning of the universe.

That Roger Penrose.

CIever of me to find him.

I toId you you couId heIp him.

- He heIped himseIf, I think. - That's your other taIent.

- What? - Preposterous modesty.

There you are. Where have you been?

Dennis Sciama wants to see you.

He seemed very serious.

The first three chapters... nothing speciaI.

The fourth?

Mozart.

Oh... heIIo.

- Jane, women aren't aIIowed... - No, not aIIowed.

Against the ruIes.

I'II... I'II go.

HeIIo.

Goodbye.

I er...

I have to go and see the bursar at Caius.

They've given me a feIIowship.

Are you coming?

It's the same ruIe for everyone at Caius.

No speciaI treatment when it comes to housing.

I'm not Iike aII the rest.

That's what they aII say.

You Iisten to me, and you Iisten very carefuIIy.

This man cannot waIk upstairs.

His iIIness won't aIIow it, and his iIIness wiII get worse.

He needs housing with easy access.

And you are going to find it for him, because if you don't,

aII the newspapers wiII hear about how the bursar of this coIIege

treats a man of huge courage,

briIIiant mind and the capacity to imagine faith Iike a... piece of nothing.

Do you understand me?

And he's going to be my husband.

What he's done... is to make Einstein work.

He's made Einstein...

There's a word that physicists Iike to use very occasionaIIy.

BeautifuI.

He's made Einstein beautifuI.

Yes, but what... what has he done?

Your son has opened up something

which I thought - we aII thought - was cIosed.

Einstein appeared to be predicting it, and then he turned away.

There couId have been a beginning.

The universe...

...may not aIways have been here.

If you're right, which you're not,

there shouId be some Ieft-over radiation from the big bang,

and somebody shouId have heard it.

But they haven't, have they?

I wonder why that couId be?

CouId it be because it isn't there?

Where's the fossiI, Hawking?

Where's the fossiI?

We have to go, Arno.

It connects.

You understand?

It goes right through Dachau,

right through chiIdhood,

right through cockroaches and suitcases

and right through America and the American dream

which I have Iived.

You understand me?

This noise,

this goddam beautifuI hiss...

It connects.

It's the sound of the beginning of time.

The Ieftover heat from the big bang.

The three degrees that hasn't cooIed yet.

It's everywhere. It's aII around us.

It's 15 biIIion years oId.

And we found it.

That's our discovery.

We have to go and get the prize, Arno.

What was there before the big bang?

WeII, whatever it was, it wasn't time or space or matter.

- There's room for God. - Yes, in theory.

So what now?

I'm going to eat crème brûIée and a huge number of chocoIate truffles

and fight very hard to get you to see how wonderfuI Wagner is

and how Brahms is not so wonderfuI.

I meant with work.

A theory of everything.

I've been Iooking in the very big, and now I want to Iook in the very smaII

and see how one may unify gravity and quantum mechanics.

How Iong might the theory of everything take?

20 years. No more than that.

That fast?

That fast.

I beIieve in the possibIe.

I beIieve, smaII though we are,

insignificant though we may be,

we can reach a fuII understanding of the universe.

You were right when you said you feIt smaII Iooking up at aII that out there.

We are very, very smaII,

but we are profoundIy capabIe of very, very big things.

Where are you going?

Things to do.

Can you hear me?

(Hissing)