Stephen Hawking (46 page)

This assertion stirred a controversy which we discuss in the next chapter. But the G word also appeared in the context of
another controversial assertion made by Hawking, one where, for once, he was proved wrong. We refer to his thoughts about the Higgs Boson, which to the irritation of most physicists is often referred to in the media as “the God particle.”
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The best introduction to the Higgs story is in Frank Close's book
The Infinity Puzzle
.
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In a nutshell, at the beginning of the twenty-first century what is known as the standard model of particle physics, which describes matter in terms of particles such as electrons and quarks (collectively known as fermions), and interactions between fermions in terms of a different kind of particle, such as photons (collectively known as bosons), had a missing link. One more particle was needed in order to explain how the other particles get mass.

It works like this. Bosons are associated with fields; the photon, for example, is the particle associated with electromagnetism. When two electrically charged particles interact, they do so by exchanging photons. In the mid-1960s, half a dozen physicists came up with the idea of explaining mass in terms of a field. Peter Higgs was one of them, and partly through a historical accident his name alone got attached to the then-hypothetical field. The idea that he (and others) came up with is that what is now known as the Higgs field fills the Universe, and that particles have to plow through it. Some particles do not interact with the Higgs field and whizz through it unobstructed; these are particles like photons which have zero mass. Other particles find the Higgs field sticky, so that it impedes their progress to a greater or lesser extent; these particles, like electrons, therefore have mass. Like any field, the Higgs field has to have a particle, this one called the Higgs Boson, associated with it, and this is what the Large
Hadron Collider at CERN began searching for at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The Higgs Boson itself interacts with the Higgs field, so it has mass, and the standard model predicted what sort of mass and other properties it ought to have.

The search depended on accelerating beams of protons to nearly the speed of light, and then smashing them head-on into one another. The energy released in a few of the collisions would be enough, it was calculated, to make a few Higgs particles, in line with Einstein's most famous equation, and these would then “decay” into other particles in a distinctive way. The LHC used 120 megawatts of energy while it was running, the same as the rest of the entire Canton of Geneva, which has a population of half a million people. Hundreds of millions of protons (fed into the main ring from smaller machines) circulate around the accelerator in each run of the experiment, but protons are so small that in an entire year of operation this adds up to about a microgram of material, roughly the same as the mass of the ink in the period at the end of this sentence.

The search for the Higgs Boson was a massive undertaking. But would the effort be in vain? Not everyone was convinced by the idea, and one person who vigorously disagreed was Stephen Hawking. He engaged in what was by academic standards an acrimonious debate with Peter Higgs, arguing emphatically that the Higgs particle would not be found. Higgs, by nature a retiring type who avoids the limelight, was moved to say that Hawking's “celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have” (even, the implication being, when he is wrong).
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In July 2012, however, the
CERN machine discovered the Higgs Boson, with exactly the mass predicted by the standard model, and Hawking had the grace to quickly acknowledge that he was wrong. The following year, Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the Nobel Prize for their contributions to the theory, perhaps a little prematurely since it was only in 2014 that further experiments at CERN confirmed that the particle they had found really was the Higgs, with a mass close to 125 GeV, roughly 125 times the mass of the proton.

But Hawking has been unable to resist making another dramatic claim, which, inevitably in view of his celebrity status, has made headlines. Having previously insisted that the Higgs would not be found, in September 2014 he said that if physicists continue to experiment with it, doing so might bring about the end of the Universe. He bases his argument on the possibility that the Higgs field, in a variation on the cosmic-landscape idea, may not have rolled all the way down to the bottom of the valley we inhabit during the inflationary era. Instead, it may be stuck on a ledge partway up the side of the valley, in what is known as a “false vacuum” state. This is allowed by the standard model but is by no means certain to be the case. If it is, then tinkering with the Higgs field might dislodge it from this ledge and send it rolling down to the valley floor. If that happened, the Universe would undergo a phase transition, similar to the burst of inflation in which it started, switching into a different state, possibly (probably) with different laws of physics. It would happen so fast that we would never know what hit us.

Perhaps, though, we should not lose any sleep over this. It could happen spontaneously—in trillions of years from
now. Or it could happen “artificially”—if physicists build an accelerator capable of colliding particles with energies of above 100 billion GeV (100,000 TeV), similar to the energies that existed at the time the Higgs field rolled out of inflation. That's roughly a hundred thousand times more energetic than the collisions that occur in the LHC, and would require an accelerator bigger than the Earth.

Where next? Hawking turned 73 in January 2015, and it would surely be unrealistic to expect anything new of scientific importance from him now. But then that's what people thought in 1963, 1992, and 2002. We wouldn't bet against it.

20

THE TOPSY-TURVY
UNIVERSE OF A
GLOBAL ICON

I
f we have demonstrated only one thing in this book, it is the fact that Stephen Hawking has led no ordinary life. Even by the standards of globally recognized figures such as famous actors or rock stars, he has—in part because of his illness, but also because he courts attention—experienced a roller-coaster ride of a life. And as he moved on to the eighth decade of that
existence, the ride seems to have become faster and bumpier. Whether co-hosting with Sir Ian McKellen the introduction to the 2012 Paralympics in London or wowing an audience of thousands with his public science lectures, Hawking has become a figure as well known as the most media-savvy star. But it has not been all glamour and adoring acolytes.

During 2003, some nasty rumors began to circulate around Cambridge that Hawking was the victim of physical abuse, and several of his nurses claimed that Stephen's then-wife, Elaine Mason, was behind the ill treatment, neglect, and at times actual physical attacks. One particular nurse, Sue Masey, claimed that Elaine Mason was “a monster” and resigned, claiming she could no longer stand working for the family. “The injuries,” she claimed, “. . . only happened when Elaine and Stephen were left alone. What if I did see physical abuse? Hundreds of people have seen evidence of physical abuse on Stephen Hawking. . . . I have certainly seen umpteen times the results of what happened to him.” On one occasion, three slash marks appeared on the side of Hawking's face. He claimed he had fallen forward in his wheelchair, hitting the attached computer screen. “But,” says Masey, “. . . this was totally impossible since the computer screen was on the opposite side of his wheelchair from his injuries.”
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Another nurse who wished to remain anonymous described how one evening Hawking left her a message on his screen that read
I CANNOT BE LEFT ALONE WITH HER. PLEASE DON'T GO. GET SOMEONE TO COVER THE SHIFT
.
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A third nurse spoke to the
Daily Mail
and stated: “She [Elaine] gets angry and has thrown him on the bed where he kicks his limbs or hurts himself. She allowed him to slip down
low in the bath so the water goes in the hole in his throat. She has left him in the garden without his computer mouse so he cannot talk and call for anyone. She gives him lots of verbal abuse and calls him a cripple and an invalid, which depresses him. She would withhold the bottle he used to go to the toilet so he wet himself, which he does not like because he is a very dignified person and a very private person. The verbal abuse is unbelievable. Her mouth is like a sewer.”
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Some of these reports of domestic abuse actually dated back to the autumn of 1999, when, in mysterious circumstances, Hawking broke his wrist. The following year, a police investigation turned up no evidence to support the claims. Things came to a head in August 2003, when one of Hawking's nurses phoned his daughter, Lucy, to tell her of a particularly serious incident. Her father had been left stranded in the garden on the hottest day of the year and suffered severe heatstroke and sunburn. Jane Hawking and the couple's 24-year-old son, Tim, also waded in. Tim Hawking said that he felt certain his stepmother was behind a string of assaults. And described the alleged abuse as “. . . completely despicable and unacceptable. I believe quite strongly that it's true, based on what I have been privy to in the past. It makes me feel sick, as I'm sure anyone would be in my position. I feel completely helpless. He denies it every time I speak to him and I would hope he would respect me enough to tell me the truth.” Jane Hawking commented: “The situation is far worse than any of us imagined.”
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Lucy has said, “I went to see a lawyer and discussed the matter with him. And as the law stood at the time, my father was the only person who could make a complaint. And he didn't want to make a complaint. He asked me not to interfere in his relationship with Elaine.”
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But then, at the insistence of Jane and her children, the Cambridgeshire Police Constabulary opened a second and more thorough investigation. They spoke to staff and students who worked closely with Hawking, including ten nurses, some of whom, like Sue Masey, were no longer in the employ of the family. Both Stephen and Elaine Hawking volunteered to talk to the police and spent several hours with their lawyer going over the claims with the investigating officers. The investigation found no concrete evidence and Stephen Hawking absolutely denied the claims against his wife. “I firmly and wholeheartedly reject the allegations,” he told the press in February 2004 from Addenbrookes Hospital, where he was being treated for pneumonia. “My wife and I love each other very much, and it is only because of her that I am alive today.”
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He told the BBC: “The report in yesterday's
Daily Mirror
that I'm being attacked is news to me. I object strongly to my privacy being invaded. There is absolutely no substance to the reports and I would ask the media to dispense with this ‘non' story.”
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This terrible episode in Stephen Hawking's life had far-reaching consequences. By this time, he and Jane spoke only rarely and he was estranged from his children. Many of course have claimed that by marrying Hawking in the first place, Elaine Mason was purely gold-digging and some, who understandably wish to remain anonymous, have even implied that from the first years of the new millennium, some six years into their marriage, Hawking's second wife was trying to kill him.

Although these claims have never been substantiated, whether true or false, they caused Hawking considerable distress. We will probably never know the truth about what
happened during those few years in the Hawking home, but at the very least the strain and stress surrounding the matter was too much for Stephen and Elaine's marriage. Soon the couple had separated, and they announced they were divorcing in 2006. Again, Hawking was tight-lipped about events. Asked whether he would be making any statement about his divorce, his secretary, Judith Croasdell, responded on his behalf: “He is far too busy. This is just a distraction, which is really annoying. We don't have any time for any of this. We have no interest in any of the gossip that is going on.” Pressed for a comment, Tim Hawking said: “It's not really my business to discuss. I'm not the one getting divorced.”
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None of these troubles were mentioned in a new TV film about Stephen Hawking that was being filmed in Cambridge at the very time the police were delving into the Hawkings' marriage. The film was simply called
Hawking
and starred the completely unknown young actor Benedict Cumberbach, who the critics agreed did a stunning job of portraying the film's subject through the various stages of his physical degeneration. The producers were also congratulated on the accuracy of the scientific material in the film.

The success of
Hawking
probably did little to relieve the emotional strain in Stephen's life during this time, but at least it was a positive thing for the press to talk about rather than their seemingly limitless thirst for sordid stories documenting a marriage breakup and allegations of abuse. Around the same time, a little more much-needed light relief came when Hawking was voted the second most popular role model for teenage boys (in a poll produced by the magazine
Good Housekeeping
). He was only beaten by the England rugby captain
Jonny Wilkinson and managed to nudge David Beckham into third place. It prompted Hawking to observe: “Over the years I've been voted the Second Most Intelligent Person in Britain (First was mathematician Sir Andre John Wiles) and was amused to be listed in the world's ‘10 Sexiest Men.' But I'm honored to be an inspiring role model. Thank you.”
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