Hawking Page #3

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The higher the heat the more intense the noise.

You may wanna ask, did we get noise?

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

Far more than a Milky Way should have given us.

That was our work from then on in.

Day after day, what's all this heat?

What the hell is this hiss?!

Died in the night, poor lamb.

What's happening to me?

- Usually, I would sit down with the patient and his family

- Please.

Motor neurone disease.

What, what is it, what happens?

Motor neurones in the brain,

which signal movement, they are dying.

So?

The brain stops telling muscles to move, the signal's not sent,

the muscles are not used, so they waste away slowly.

- How slowly?

- Muscle wastage causes immobility.

- How slowly?

- It's gradual paralysis.

And then, then what?

The respiratory muscles unlike most other muscles,

work automatically.

- Breathing.

- Yes. They don't waste away so quickly.

- But they do, they do waste away.

- Yes.

So what, I won't be able to breathe properly?

Or I won't be able to breathe at all,

something like, um, drowning?

What about the brain, I mean the brain itself?

Untouched.

The brain is left untouched.

He's young, that'll work in his favour.

Frank?

I remember when he was about eight years old

and we were in the garden with a telescope.

And Stephen said to me:

where do stars come from?

I didn't know the answer.

And you called him into bed and...

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

And I said not to worry,

I'd find out for him.

I never did.

- You've never been a sentimental man, Frank.

- No.

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

- I looked it up.

The younger you are when you get motor neurone disease,

the quicker the deterioration.

Being young is a

...is a bad thing Isobel.

Two years probably, no more.

- Then we must support him.

- Yes.

You do it by carrying on!

You do it, by living and carrying on!

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

- Do you know what Hoyle says?

- What?

If you could drive the car straight upwards,

you'd reach space in half an hour.

How long to drive around the Milky Way?

You multiply the diameter of the galaxy

by the distance of one light year.

- Easy.

- The calculation?

The car. Just been to India and back, remember?

- How long does it take to complete a PhD?

- Depends on the subject.

- With the fair-wind?

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

- What's the name of your supervisor?

- Sciama. Dennis Sciama.

5 869 713,6 million miles - around the Milky Way.

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