Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Bonus Episode: Remembering Stephen Hawking (#15b)

Episode Date: March 15, 2018

In 2007, Erik Viirre, Associate Director of the Clarke Center, was fortunate to share a unique experience with the great Stephen Hawking: taking him into zero gravity. He shares his remembrance of the intellectual giant with Brian Keating here, in honor of Hawking's passing on March 14, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. Five, four, three, and two. Everybody, I'm joined today by my colleague, my co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination, Dr. Eric Veery, M.D.P.H.H. Who is with us? Where are you today? I'm in Denver, Colorado today. Ah, the Mile High City. So I thought we'd share some of your very intimate recollections of the time that you spent as Dr. Professor Stephen Hawking's doctor. And this was a very interesting event that took place over a decade ago.

And it's a, what strikes me is, of course, we're commemorating the passing today, which is March 14th, which is also sometimes known as Pie Day for the, the 3.14 first three digits of the famous irrational number pie plays such an important role in physics and mathematics and was so important to the work of Stephen Hawking. And not only that was also the date that Albert Einstein was born. And today I'm very interested to share some of these recollections that you had working with him both professionally and your service with him. You actually wrote a scientific paper based on this experience, which is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I think I'm so tickled by this because, you know, of course, Professor Hawking spent so much of his life and professional career thinking about gravity and the mystery of

gravity and really not ever fully comprehending it as known, you know, perhaps ever will be able too, but he got as close, some say, as Albert Einstein, who as I mentioned, was born on this day more than a century ago. So, he's sort of, you know, Hawking has this reputation for, you know, for being a larger-than-life character in many ways. And I think that reputation in most cases is not deserved, but in his case it was deserved and more so. And that's another thing he shares with Albert Einstein that his reputation among physicists was equal or greater than his reputation on the popular culture. So it's particularly fitting for us as the co-directors of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human

Imagination at UC San Diego to commemorate his life and really to reflect on his career, including his most recent award that he won, was also the Arthur C. Clark Award for Lifetime Achievement. That was just last December, only a few months ago. I think that was his last major award. Is that correct? I believe so, yeah. So we're going to provide a link in the show notes to his citation and acceptance speech.

But during it, he did say it is no small task to be judged as having met with what we would have been, what would have been Arthur's expectations for intellectual rigor, powered by imagination, insatiable curiosity and concern for our planet and its inhabitants. And this is, you know, just such a perfect encapsulation of everything that we try to do here at the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. So clearly he's going to be missed by people around the world outpouring of grief and remembrances from professionals far and wide and from laypeople far and wide. So I want to go back to that date in 2007 and April when you got a chance to explore the, and nether regions of the Earth's gravitational field with Stephen Hawking.

What was that like? How did that come to occur such a remarkable experience? Well, thanks so much for setting this up, Brian, and giving me a chance to speak about it. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to be able to meet Stephen Hawking and explore gravity with him, go into weightlessness with him, probably the only time he ever did in his life.

And so as I'd like to say, I was his doctor for four minutes, about four minutes of weightlessness. It came about because of a great opportunity presented to me by my friend Peter Diamondis, who was the founder of Zero G Corporation, among many other institutions. And Zero G's product is weightlessness. And Peter asked me, as I had helped him set up

the procedures for people to experience weight for the company to help to lead up a medical team to take Stephen into weightlessness. And we had just a fantastic group that came together to put our plan in place and that was NASA flight surgeon Jim Banderplug who served so many space shuttle flight crews and Stephen's positions Ian McKenzie and Edmund Chilvers and so this team came together and we followed up on the plan that the zero G corporation people put together for us to bring Stephen into weightlessness. So we had several days of activity around that and the day before we had the actual flight with Stephen, we had a practice flight and we worked on our procedures,

worked on the emergencies, set up all the equipment and made sure that we could get the picture, because, of course, getting the picture was the major goal of the events. Everything's a photo op, right? That's right. So we had to get the picture. And that was the primary one. And so we worked on and practiced on that. And then that night, Stephen gave a lecture for all of us called his life in physics. And of course, we got to hear the voice. Of course, you hear that voice all over the place now. It was funny, I was in a parking garage and the machine was speaking to me.

And it was Stephen Hawking's voice. The Steve was giving me my parking. Iconic. Yeah. So that very recognizable voice gave us a lecture about his experiences in physics. And then the next day, we had the actual flight, which happened at the Kennedy Space Center, where we used the same runway that the space shuttles landed on. And the zero-g aircraft was brought in.

and we loaded up all the physicians and the support staff and of course Professor Hockey and his assistants and took off out over the Atlantic. So it was just a great flight and we had a plan. So as I said, the first goal was to get one parabola in the picture and everybody would be thumbs up and that would be good. and if we thought everything was okay, maybe we would do some more parabolas. As you understand, the way that we create weightlessness with surgery is that this airplane flies up to 32,000 feet, so about six miles up. I'm a mile up here.

They go up about six miles, but then in 30 seconds, we drop back down to 24,000 feet. We drop about two miles in 30 seconds. And during that time, we have the experience of weightlessness. So we're passing through Earth's gravity fields at just the same speed as gravity is pulling down on us, and we experience weightlessness just as if you were in Earth orbit or away from the Earth. Unfortunately, the price for going down like that so fast is that you've got to go back up again. And so at the bottom, the plane pulls out, and you experience an interval of hypergravity, about 1.8 times your weight.

So what you do is you lie down on the floor and if you try and lift your arms and legs up, you feel they're double their normal weight. And so, of course, for Professor Hawking, who would spend decades in his wheelchair, that was really the risky time in our flight. So we had to make sure that we had him down safely on the floor. We had a specially configured couch set up so that he would be comfortable during those pullouts. And then the medical team was all around and we were monitoring in real time and making sure that he was okay And then if we got the four thumbs up Then we would say okay, we could do one more parabola and then we would do another one so the flight plan

Was for six parabolas if everything was going okay At the end of the six parabolas Stephen was communicating to his assistants who could can read his facial expressions he wasn't wearing his computer interface then and so they can tell what he needs and what he wants and they said he says no no I want to keep going I want more I want to keep going so we actually put on two extra parabolas for him because he was having such a great time just see it in his face in the pictures in the video from from those from that flight he just has a great big grin on his face and he was having a

ball and you know so often we remember with his that posture that he had in the wheelchair with his head turned but he has his glasses off and a big grin on his face and he just had a fantastic time did you guys have any other ways of commemorating the event that you know what that you came up with in the flight whether to monitor him or maybe just for fun right Well, we did monitor them, and that's what our medical team were doing, but I had one extra special job that came up sort of ad hoc. During our practice flight, a quick-minded passenger noted a bowl of fruit with an apple in it. So, of course, you remember that Stephen was the location professor of physics at Cambridge University, the very same chair of professorship chair that Isaac Newton held at Cambridge.

And so, of course, we thought, this passenger thought, hey, we got to have Newton's apple. Of course, instead of falling on his head in weightlessness, it would just float. Wow. Well, luckily, because I was part of the medical team and just right there immediately beside Stephen, I got volunteered to release the apple into the shot. So it would be floating during weightlessness Some of those pictures and in fact in the picture in behind me you can see it on the floor of the aircraft Right

The the apple is floating there so that's our tribute the weightless apple is for Stephen Hawking Outdoing Isaac Newton with the apple falling on his hair right a vantage point that's right That was a super fun little little extra that we came up that somebody came up with on the spot and really just made that such another little special event. But it wasn't all fun in games, was it? There was a serious medical aspect of the flight as well? Well, absolutely. So as I said, Professor Hawking has had ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. So this was the disease that weakened his muscles so much that he could barely move. move and essentially was sitting in a wheelchair or in bed for about 50 years, which is kind

of unbelievable. You know, as a physician in the Department of Neurology, we just see so many amazing people who persevere through these unbelievable experiences, and he was absolutely one of them. And so we had to take care of him and his precious friends. body and make sure that that he was safe. And so we were all kind of holding our breath and came through our eight parabolas and landed back at the Kennedy Space Center

where the shuttles landed and we were good. So we started breathing again when we got it. All right. That's right. So then what happened was they had a bus that took us over to the press conference and literally he wrote his the words of his speech while he was on the bus so they put on the glasses that he had with the special detector of his eye movements and that links to his computer and he through

moving his eyes and cheeks he moves lines down and then columns across and we'll pick words now Brian you're a book author and we're very excited for your book that's coming out soon. You wrote a book with a word processor and typing, you know, probably 100 words a minute. Imagine this guy writing physics books, moving his eyes. Equations and painstaking. Stunning, stunning kinds of stuff. In fact, that was a fun little story that he mentioned in his talk the night before

because of his limited ability to write words. He did so many things in his mind, including physics equations. And he was telling us that in his talk that he was at a party one time and he was kind of hunched over and his wife was looking at him and she says, you're doing physics, aren't you? You're not even paying attention to this party. Yeah. He ran on his face.

So he does all this stuff in his mind and then brings it out on the computer. So I got to watch him create his speech and the first three words that he selected were. it was amazing. Wow. And so I was sitting behind him and I just got to watch this and then we brought him to the reporters and he had this whole speech that he made about about what it was like to experience weightlessness. So as I said, just an incredible privilege that I was so lucky to be a part of, to be invited to explore gravity with them. And then just in a couple of closing comments from the flight and your recollection of it.

So in addition to the experience for him personally, he was also not only a great promoter of science among those of us who practice science as our profession, but also for the popular understanding of science. And I wonder if you could talk about the outcome of the research component of the flight that you took with him that you published in The Lancet, which is arguably one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world.

Right. So our little team came together. We were able to talk about the various medical regimes and what we were monitoring. And the amazing thing that we found was that his breathing capacity was really unimpaired by being on board the plane, which of course flies with a reduced pressure altitude, as you know, as a pilot. The plane is and his pressurizes down at sea level. but he was breathing comfortably and beautifully and maintaining his oxygen levels and not allowing carbon dioxide to build up in his body and we were able to monitor that.

And so you remember, I'm the doctor of gravity disease. So my patients are the ones who have problems with gravity because their gravity sensors and their inner ear malfunction. So the other thing that happens, of course, in these kinds of things is motion sickness. Imagine being on a roller coaster that is two miles high. No thanks. But in fact it's a great, it's great fun, and we have a super time, and he had no motion sickness as well. Wow. So we were able, we were very lucky, and as I said, he just had a great time and wanted more.

In fact, his ambition was really to go beyond the experience of weightlessness in Parablas to actually fly. in orbit and that was one of the things that he was hoping for in the years as these new companies are coming on board to bring you and I the general public up into space. Yeah. So, you know, as part of the long lasting impact of his life and career on so many, you know, members of the human species, I think the thing that most speaks to many of us is the indomitable spirit that he had. And really as an icon, you know, know, of the human mind, almost this, this purely mental entity and really carved in the pantheon of success in all things intellectual. But he was also, you know, a very staunch advocate for

people with disabilities and, of course, you know, one of the most, you know, just distinguished scientists that have ever lived. I wonder if you could say anything in closing about his long-term impact on your patients and on young people, older people. around the world who suffer with debilitating diseases and how he inspires and continues to inspire both them and and and and people all around the world. Well, and that's right. So in fact, he's been asked many times, why would he do such a risky thing to his own fragile body?

But of course, he wanted to experience what gravity was like. But equally, he wanted to demonstrate that he could do this, that people with disabilities, can do incredible things and that he had been provided so much. He told us, and as he's told many people, the National Health Service in Britain really gave him his life and all the equipment and support that kept his body going through the Lou Gehrig's disease. And there's been so many people,

and we've seen this in the tributes today about people with disabilities who've been inspired to persevere through the top times to become professors of physics and all kinds of things. And in fact, we even had a fun inspiration where we were able to take four children who had never walked, who were paraplegics from birth, and we took them up in zero G and we got them upright, which again was just a signal experience, and that was through the inspiration of Professor Hawking. For all of us, all of humanity, he told us, we have, we have,

no excuses. Right, no limitations. Right. That's the most indelible impression he left on everybody. So Eric, what a remarkable experience you got to have. And I know you kept up with with Professor Hawking for years. And it's with sadness that we have to commemorate his passing. But we do look forward to reaping the benefits of this giant intellect in the decades to come. Well, and with joy. And so you as a cosmologist, perhaps better than almost any of us understand his contributions to physics. And I think that will really ring through eternity from humanity. So it's with sadness, but also with joy for the so many amazing things that he did. So thank you so much for the chance to talk about. Thank you, Eric.

Thank you so much for sharing these recollections. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. Five, four, three. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back.

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