Hawking Colloquium Packed CERN Auditoriums

Stephen Hawking's week long visit to CERN included an 'exceptional CERN colloquium' which filled six auditoriums.


Stephen Hawking during his visit to the ATLAS experiment.

Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Cambridge University, visited the Theory Unit of the Physics Department from 24 September to 1 October 2006. As part of his visit, he gave two lectures in the main auditorium - a theoretical seminar on 'The Semi-Classical Birth of The Universe', attended by about 120 specialists; and a colloquium titled 'The Origin of The Universe'. As a key public figure in theoretical physics, his presence was eagerly awaited on both occasions.

Those who wanted to attend the colloquium had to arrive early and be equipped with plenty of patience. An hour before it was due to begin, the 400 capacity of the main auditorium was already full. The lecture, simultaneously broadcast to five other fully packed CERN auditoriums, was attended by an estimated total of 850.


Stephen Hawking attracted a large CERN crowd, filling the main auditorium one hour before the start of his talk.

After much anticipation, Prof. Hawking finally entered the room. A flood of camera flashes were interrupted by Hawking's familiar computer voice - 'no flash'. He does not allow flash photography because it affects the process of communication with his computer. A switch attached to his glasses projects an infra-red beam onto his right cheek. Movements of his cheek muscles activate the switch, allowing him to select words from a computer database and create sentences. When a message is completed, it is sent to a speech synthesizer.

In the colloquium, Prof. Hawking took us through attempts by ancient philosophers to answer the fundamental questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from? He went on to describe the Steady State Theory proposed in 1948, and its replacement by the current Big Bang model, after the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965. He explained that in order to understand the origin of the Universe, we need to combine Einstein's general theory of relativity with quantum theory. When both are considered together, time can behave as another direction in space under extreme conditions. The combined theory predicts that small fluctuations would develop, leading to the formation of galaxies, stars and other structures in the Universe. This hypothesis is supported by the observation of small irregularities in cosmic microwaves.

Despite a profound change in our understanding of cosmology, there is still much to be discovered. We lack a good explanation of why the Universe's rate of expansion is accelerating again, after a long period of slowing down. Will it continue to expand forever, or will it eventually collapse again?

The LHC experiments may help us to answer some of these questions. In a meeting with the Director General Robert Aymar, Prof. Hawking congratulated him and the CERN community on the LHC. 'You have an exciting two years ahead of you', said Hawking, after touring the various facilities of the LHC earlier in the week. When asked what he considered to be the most important discoveries that the new experiments can make, Prof. Hawking commented, 'There are three candidates: superpartners, black holes and the Higgs'. He considers superpartners and black holes to be the most important findings.

Prof. Hawking's lectures are available here: