Friday, October 24, 2008

Hawking must resign...

According to policy at Cambridge University, officeholders must retire at the end of the academic year in which they become 67. For Mr. Hawking, that date is January 8th.

But he does intend to continue his exploration of time and space, and will continue working as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Thank goodness! This guy is a genius.

Basically, he theorized the nature of time, and disproved the typical black hole theory. He showed that yes, they do leak some radiation and light. That radiation is known as "Hawking radiation."

When I tried to read A Brief History of Time, I was mesmerized, but I never finished! I'm going to try again, but this time with A Briefer History of Time. Want to buy it for me?

3 comments:

JTankers said...

I started reading a brief history of time but I stopped when I found it "too" incredible.

Recent papers conclude that Hawking Radiation[1] is not based on sound physics, black holes do not evaporate[2][3][4].

But Dr. Hawking's legacy is not about whether Hawking Radiation existis or not, I think Dr. Hawking's legacy is his creative mind, humor, and ability to inspire dispite significant challenges.

[1] http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?view=body&id=pdf_1&handle=euclid.cmp/1103899181, Particle Creation by Black Holes, S. W. Hawking (12 Apr 1975)
[2] www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf Abraham-Solution to Schwarzschild Metric Implies That CERN Miniblack Holes Pose a Planetary Risk, Prof. Dr. Otto Rossler (2008)
[3] xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0304042 Do black holes radiate?. Dr. Adam Helfer (2003)
[4] arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0607137, On the existence of black hole evaporationyet again, Prof. VA Belinski (2006)

The Clever Cat said...

JTankers, it certainly is too incredible. That's what makes his theories... nay, theories and general achievements... so great. Discovering/having Hawking radiation named for your findings must surely be validating, but it's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of his contributions to modern scientific theory.

Thank you very much for the links. I'm not a scientist, I just enjoy science and physics and find Mr. Hawking interesting and cool. In summation, I agree with you, but for different reasons. Thanks for writing!

The Clever Cat said...

I poked around some more and found this article:

Hawking admits he was wrong on black holes:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2004/07/21/hawking040721.html

Thanks again JTanker for bringing this to my attention! It still doesn't change the fact that he is a genius, though... ;^)