Stephen William Hawking Biography

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World of Scientific Discovery on Stephen William Hawking

Born on January 8, 1942, three hundred years after the birth of Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking is continuously attempting to synthesize physics as effectively as Newton explained mechanics.

Hawking attended Oxford University, where he became very interested in thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and relativity. He went on to Cambridge University where he received his Ph.D. At about this time, he was diagnosed as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), which causes the central nervous system to degenerate. It has trapped his brilliant mind in an unresponsive body, but he has continued with his work.

His research has concentrated on the concept of singularity, in which an object has extremely high density in a very small volume. Such an object is called a black hole, one way a massive star can end its life-cycle.

Considering quantum mechanics, which deals with matter at the subatomic level, Hawking has suggested that black holes are not the end result in stellar evolution. The black hole itself continues to evolve by "evaporating," giving off thermal radiation. If this is the case, it would require the creation of virtual particles. Virtual particles, unlike "real" particles, can not be detected; they can only be observed by their effect on other objects. Hawking suggests when a particle pair is created near a black hole, half disappears into the hole while the other half radiates away as thermal energy.

The rate of evaporation is relative to the mass of the black hole; the smaller the black hole, the faster it evaporates. For mini-black holes, the evaporation could occur so fast the result would be an explosion that would leave behind gamma radiation. Hawking is hopeful that someday this Hawking radiation will be detected.

According to Hawking, if Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct, there is another way for black holes to form. At the time of the "big bang" (one of the leading theories on the creation of the universe), there was a great deal of mass in a very small area. Conditions were right for the production of numerous mini-black holes following the initial explosion. They could still be in existence throughout the universe today.

In April, 1992, NASA announced its Cosmic Background Explorer satellite had discovered ripples in the fabric of space. Hawking called these remnants of the "big bang" the "discovery of the century, if not all time."

Hawking has authored several best-selling books (most notably A Brief History of Time) that have attempted to make these difficult concepts understandable to the general public. He has also received numerous honors. Hawking is working to combine the four basic types of interaction (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear physics) into a single "Grand Unified Theory." The merging of quantum mechanics with the theory of relativity would result in a full quantum theory of gravity and would greatly advance scientists' understanding of the beginnings of space and time.

Recent Updates

July 21, 2004: At the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, Hawking announced that his previous theory about black holes was wrong. Rather than objects disappearing into a black hole without a trace, he now theorizes (and backs up that theory with mind-boggling new calculations) that black holes can preserve information from objects swallowed up. Hawking said, "If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state." He went on to say, "There is no baby universe branching off (inside a black hole), as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe. I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes." Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com, July 22, 2004.