Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (ⁱ/ˈstiːvən ˈhɔːkɪŋ/; born 8 January 1942) is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and has achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his book A Brief History of Time appeared on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Yuri Milner

Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner (Russian: Ю́рий Бори́сович (Бенцио́нович) Ми́льнер; born 11 November 1961) is a Russian entrepreneur, venture capitalist and physicist. He founded investment firms Digital Sky Technologies (DST), now called Mail.ru Group and DST Global. Through DST Global, Milner is an investor in Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Flipkart, Spotify, ZocDoc, Groupon, JD.com, Planet Labs, Xiaomi, OlaCabs, Alibaba, Wish and many others. Milner's personal investments also include a stake in 23andMe and Beepi.

Fortune magazine's list of the world's fifty most prominent business people in 2010 placed Milner at 46th place, making him the only Russian on the list. In 2010 Milner was recognized by Russian business magazine Vedomosti as "Businessman of the Year". In 2012 he was included in the 50 Most Influential list of Bloomberg Markets Magazine. The Foreign Policy magazine included Milner to its "Power List" - an inaugural list of 500 most powerful people on the planet released in May, 2013.

Starshot

Starshot is a huge "half-circle target" that was designed as a new way to enjoy clay target skeet shooting. Invented in Scotland in the 1980s, the structure stands almost 30 feet high and is divided into 12 scoring segments. Clay targets are released on command and the shooter's score is valued according to the zone in which the target is broken. Some Mobile units were made to be towed behind a vehicle and sold in the UK.

ESPN ran a program with the same name - Starshot, in the late 80s and early 90s, with two teams of two playing against each other, with one person on each team being a professional marksman, and the other person being a popular athlete or celebrity of the time (usually one who did have some experience with guns though). Celebrities included Rollie Fingers and Blair Underwood.

The BBC also started a series of TV programmes on the same format, with the first based at Hever Castle in Kent. The series was cancelled after the second programme which was based in Hungerford and recorded just one week before the Hungerford massacre in August, 1987. Celebrities such as the cricketer Ian Botham and Jackie Stewart appeared on the show. Commentary was by David Vine, and the programme produced by Peter Hylton Cleaver.

Alpha Centauri

Alpha Centauri (α Cen), also known as Rigil Kent (/ˈraɪdʒəl ˈkɛnt/)(the "Centaur's Foot") or Toliman, is the closest star system to the Solar System at 4.37 ly (1.34 pc). It consists of three stars: the pair Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B and a small and faint red dwarf, Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, that may be gravitationally bound to the other two. (Beta Centauri, or β Centauri, should not be confused with Alpha Centauri B, and is a separate, trinary, system of its own.) To the unaided eye, the two main components appear as a single object of an apparent visual magnitude of −0.27, forming the brightest star in the southern constellation Centaurus and the third-brightest star in the night sky, only outshone by Sirius and Canopus.

Alpha Centauri A (α Cen A) has 110% of the mass and 151.9% the luminosity of the Sun, and Alpha Centauri B (α Cen B) is smaller and cooler, at 90.7% of the Sun's mass and 44.5% of its visual luminosity. During the pair's 79.91-year orbit about a common center, the distance between them varies from about that between Pluto and the Sun to that between Saturn and the Sun. Proxima is at the slightly smaller distance of 1.29 parsecs or 4.24 light years from the Sun, making it the closest star to the Sun, even though it is not visible to the naked eye. The separation of Proxima from Alpha Centauri AB is about 0.06 parsecs, 0.2 light years or 15,000 astronomical units (AU), equivalent to 500 times the size of Neptune's orbit.

100000000 (number)

One hundred million (100,000,000) is the natural number following 99999999 and preceding 100000001.

In scientific notation, it is written as 10⁸.

East Asian languages treat 100,000,000 as a counting unit, significant as the square of a myriad, also a counting unit. In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean respectively it is yì (億) (or wànwàn 萬萬 in ancient texts), oku (億), and eok (억/億). These languages do not have single words for a thousand to the second, third, fifth power, etc.)

Selected 9-digit numbers (100,000,001–999,999,999)