The world is mourning as it lost one of its brightest stars on the fateful morning of March 14th. Renowned scientist Stephen Hawking breathed his last on Wednesday morning at his Cambridge residence. It was a peaceful death, as told by his family members to media. There’s no doubt that Stephen Hawking has left behind a legacy that will live with us for ages to come. His ‘energy’ is still around, as per the law of conservation of energy stated by physics. Among the mourners was Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt’s sister Shaheen Bhatt who shared her emotions through an emotional post, which is an eulogy penned by Aaron Freeman on Hawking's death.
She shared a black and white picture of Stephen Hawking with an elaborate caption, consoling the readers who have once lost their loved ones. The writer is narrating what if a physicist was there to tell you family on your funeral, that your energy is still there. The emotional post is explaining how death is nothing but a conversion of energy that our body stores in the form of our soul.
Here's how the post goes.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy so they’ll understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, & none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
You'd hope that the physicist would walk to your brokenhearted spouse & tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
The physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he’ll tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy & found it accurate, verifiable & consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence & satisfy themselves that the science is sound & that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
In the end, it read, “Not a bit of you is gone, you’re just less orderly.” As much as it breaks our heart to realise that everyone is mortal, it’s pacifying to know that our energies are immortal.
