stephen hawking tours jpl from the jpl universe april cosmologist stephen hawking tours lab by karre marino some years after his first visit to jpl prof stephen hawking lucasian professor of mathematics at cambridge university and author of a brief history of time returned to the lab april on a tour hosted by jpl chief scientist dr moustafa chahine and merle mckenzie manager of the international affairs office hawking visited a variety of facilities met with lab director dr edward stone and various project scientists and managers and felt like royalty he said hawking whose theories attempt to explain the origin of distant galaxies black holes and alternate dimensions wanted to re visit jpl he explained because while i m most interested in those things in space that are farther away i know that here is where the first steps are taken hawking who was accompanied by his family two graduate students and his aides began the tour in von karman auditorium as david evans deputy assistant lab director in the office of flight projects and dr arden albee mars observer s project scientist briefed him on current and past flight projects voyager was pointed out to him with special attention paid to a gold plate with a series of engraved images should extraterrestrial life stumble upon the spacecraft evans noted they would find a variety of images that would explain something of earth the professor asked if we were still communicating with the spacecraft and evans affirmed that we are using a model of mars observer albee spent several minutes describing the project and the spacecraft s features in answer to a question from hawking chahine described a proposed drag free satellite but confirmed that at this point it s only a concept chahine who had met hawking at caltech about five years before described the professor as a living miracle of the power of the brain he s miraculous and he has such a good sense of humor the next stop a demonstration on scientific data visualization in section s digital image animation lab entertained and delighted the group as everyone donned goggles to view d images of mars project scientist dr eric de jong showed off the latest data a comet that had only recently been discovered in orbit close to jupiter hawking was curious about its composition and as he was shown how images are developed he asked several questions on their interpretation norman haynes ald office of telecommunications and data acquisition briefed the professor on the space flight operations facility and then hawking spoke with stone the day ended with two technical discussions of particular interest to the professor technical group leader dr frank estabrook and senior research scientist hugo wahlquist described a three spacecraft gravity wave experiment currently under way then planetary astronomer dr richard terrile explained the philosophy and plans for extra solar system planetary detection the hawking party which had been visiting southern california for five weeks was headquartered at caltech and planned to leave for england within a few weeks after the lab tour upon departing the cambridge based scientist promised chahine that he would return to jpl for another visit ron baalke baalke kelvin jpl nasa gov jet propulsion lab m s telos the aweto from new zealand pasadena ca is part caterpillar and part vegetable
