At premiere
of film about his life, physicist says it's theoretically possible to copy
brain on to computer to provide life after death
theguardian.com,
Staff and agencies, Saturday 21 September 2013
 |
| Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking with his sister Mary at the premiere of the documentary Hawking in Cambridge. Photograph: Andrew Cowie/ AFP/Getty Images |
Stephen Hawking has said he believes brains could exist independently of the body, but
that the idea of a conventional afterlife is a fairy tale.
Speaking at
the premiere of a documentary film about his life, the theoretical physicist
said: "I think the brain is like a programme in the mind, which is like a
computer, so it's theoretically possible to copy the brain on to a computer and
so provide a form of life after death.
"However,
this is way beyond out present capabilities. I think the conventional afterlife
is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark."
The
71-year-old author of A Brief History of Time, who earlier this week backed the
right for the terminally ill to end their lives as long as safeguards were in
place, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and given two
to three years to live.
"All
my life I have lived with the threat of an early death, so I hate wasting
time," Hawking said on Thursday night, using the computer-generated voice
he controls with a facial muscle and a blink from one eye.
The
documentary explores the headlong rush of a brilliant schoolboy with illegible
handwriting who enjoyed the dilettante life of Oxford University before illness
sparked a lifelong frenzy of discovery about the origins of the universe, which
began as a graduate at Cambridge University and has astounded the world.
The film
premiered in the same year as the release of his autobiography, Stephen
Hawking: My Brief History.
His sister
Mary says in the film that her brother was highly competitive and curious about
everything in a household which friends described as very academic, and
explains how she received a doll's house as a present when they were children,
to which Stephen immediately added plumbing and electricity.
She told
Reuters that life with her brother was engaging, exciting and occasionally
frustrating. "It's a waste of time arguing with Stephen, he always manages
to turn the argument round," she said.
The film
goes back to his childhood and his student days and shows the scientist, who
uses a wheelchair, at home with carers. It also explores his family life with
first wife, Jane, and their three children, the breakdown of their marriage and
his subsequent marriage to one of his carers.
Jane
appears on camera to explain how the pressures of caring for the children and
the increasingly disabled Hawking became even worse once full-time nurses were
brought into the home, obliterating any privacy.
His second
wife and former nurse, Elaine Mason, does not appear in the film, and Hawking
portrays their 1995-2007 marriage with a few pictures and a brief description.
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