If we had a starship, we could move near a black hole, stay there for a half hour and then come out. Outside hundreds of years could have gone. So we… - Carlo Rovelli

Hawking was one of the good physicists of his generation, not the universal genius the popular press has depicted. It is a pity, because this confusion fogs the memory of a remarkable man.

What makes the difference is the mass. ...[T]he earth is a big mass and it slows down time. If you go to a bigger mass, like Jupiter, it's stronger. If you go near a big star it's stronger. If you're near a black hole... it's even more strong, so strong that if you go very near... time essentially stops down. It goes very, very, very slowly.

... theoretical physics is less clean than the way it's usually solved. You can always change parameters and save yourself. ... it's very rare that theories are ruled out by just an experiment or a group of experiments. Theories usually come with flexibility. Theoreticians can add flexibility. And so new experiments — you can just patch up your theory.