Black Holes and Hawking Radiation

Black Holes

• Black holes are real, not just science fiction
• They are strange but scientifically factual
• Hawking's quote: "Black holes are stranger than anything dreamed up by science fiction writers, but they are firmly matters of science fact."

Hawking Radiation

• Hawking's black hole theories incorporate quantum mechanics
• This considers the behavior of particles and energy at the atomic scale
• Pairs of particles and antiparticles constantly meet, annihilate, and appear near black holes
• One particle falls in, the other escapes
• This escaping particle is radiation, called Hawking Radiation

Roger Penrose

• Worked on black hole singularities
• Contributed to work on black holes and the Big Bang
• In 1969, collaborated with Hawking to prove that black holes can arise from the collapse of massive stars.
• Developed the twistor theory and Penrose diagrams to visualize the effect of gravity on objects near black holes.

Fame and Recognition of Stephen Hawking

• Earned the Lucarian Professor position at the Cambridge University in 1979.
• Held this position until 2009
• High honors for his contributions to physics.
• Popularized science through books (e.g. A Brief History of Time)
• Gave public lectures and traveled extensively.

Origin of the Universe

• The Universe may have started from a singularity
• This can be compared to the South Pole which has no location "south of it"
• A singularity was a single dense point of energy from where Time, Space, Energy, and Matter began.