Stephen Hawking publishes paper on black holes that could get him 'a Nobel prize after all' The most prestigious award in science is only given to those who have experimental evidence of their work — and Professor Hawking may just have published that Monday 11 January 2016 18:18 GMT Stephen Hawking has published what he claims could be evidence that his theories on black holes are true — a publication that could win him the Nobel prize. The physicist hinted last year that he may have solved the black hole information paradox, which is concerned with the apparent problem of what happens to matter when it goes into a black hole. Professor Hawking has published a paper outlining his theory that the solution to the paradox could be that “hairs” are left on the edge of the black hole. That creates a kind of hologram of what went into it, meaning that it can be conserved. Those claims, made last year, were a part of Professor Hawking’s long-running work on black holes.
But it was a grand claim that didn’t at the time get published — but that work is now available. The new work concerns a decades-old debate about whether black holes are “hairy” or “bald”. If they are bald they would preserve nothing of what fell into them — but if they are hairy, as Professor Hawking proposes, bits of information would get left on the edges. Hairy black holes would mean that each of them would be a little different. Each of the black holes would have tiny differences, and preserve small parts of information. The new work — which is written with Cambridge University’s Malcolm J Perry and Harvard’s Andrew Strominger — claims to be able to show concrete proof of that argument. That would be important because it would put Professor Hawking in line for a Nobel, which can’t be won without experimental evidence of a scientist’s claims. Professor Hawking told comedian Dara O'Briain during a lecture that he will not be able to spot Hawking radiation coming out of black holes.
But another kind of radiation might be detectable, leading to prove of the theory. Science news in pictures "I am now studying whether one might detect Hawking radiation in primordial gravitational waves,” he said, reported The Times. “So I might get a Nobel prize after all." But some have already criticised Professor Hawking’s paper, which has not gone through a formal peer-review process. "I am not at all convinced that the new idea proposed by Hawking, Perry, and Strominger solves the information loss problem," Sabine Hossenfelder of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics wrote on her blog. "But it seems an interesting avenue that is worth further exploration."You were all clearly inspired by our December competition, which asked you to tap into your inner Lego sculptor. To get those creative juices flowing, we showed you Lego models of a dissected frog, Stephen Hawking and a Morse code key, all from the book Beautiful LEGO by Mike Doyle, published by No Starch Press.
In response, we received everything from a red Tyrannosaurus rex to a multi-coloured double helix, not to mention a stripy version of Isaac Newton’s famous prism experiment, and interpretations of a Sierpinski pyramid and a linear accelerator. The prize in your sights was threefold: the showcasing of the winning entry in the magazine and online; a rare, fan-designed collectors’ model of the Hayabusa, the uncrewed Japanese craft that went deep into space in 2003 to collect asteroid samples and bring them home; plus a copy of Beautiful LEGO. Step up, Jason Brown from Olalla, Washington. His amazing entry, which he calls The womb (pictured above) stole first prize. The womb itself is a computer cabinet-style box, in which a fetus nestles, painstakingly created, layer by layer from Lego, and complete with facial features and placenta. Backlit, as in this photograph, it is astonishingly like a scan of a real baby. Another biological effort won Liga Strazdina from Skrunda, Latvia, a runner-up place and a copy of Beautiful LEGO.
We loved the model of the T4 virus, which infects E. coli bacteria. The virus really does look like a cross between a space module and an alien. The other runner-up slot went to Richard Hayler and his family from Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey, UK, who sent us so many fun photos we were spoilt for choice. The huddling penguins were charming, but it was their model of an American astronaut on the moon that clinched it. Among the other entrants were some we just couldn’t allow, but they do deserve a mention. First up are the Lego fans who meet once a month in the Princess Louise pub, near New Scientist‘s London office. They built a futuristic cityscape around a monorail. Far too big for our competition (which restricted entries to 30×30×30 centimetres), but a great effort. And then there is 9-year-old Tim von Felten from Zurich in Switzerland, who was ruled out because he was under the 18-plus entry rule. His wonderfully minimalist entry is his interpretation of Magdeburg hemispheres, designed in 1856 by German scientist Otto von Guericke to demonstrate the air pump he had invented, and the concept of atmospheric pressure.
Guericke showed that even teams of horses could not separate two hemispheres once the ball they have made has had the air sucked out of it. Please try the following: Return to the home page Click the Back button Stephen Hawking wird am Sonntag 75. Er ist der größte Star der Wissenschaft, selbst zur Legofigur hat er es gebracht. Das kann man gut finden - oder bedenklich. Viele Wissenschaftler haben schon den Nobelpreis erhalten, aber nur einer hat es bis zur Lego-Figur gebracht: Im Internet finden sich Anleitungen, wie man aus 122 Plastiksteinchen einen waschechten Stephen Hawking samt Rollstuhl bastelt. Womit wir beim Thema wäre: Der britische theoretische Physiker Stephen Hawking, der an diesem Sonntag 75 Jahre alt wird, hat zwar vor vielen Jahren wichtige Beiträge zur Theorie der schwarzen Löcher geliefert, aber er ist keiner der ganz Großen der Physik, nicht zu vergleichen mit Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg. Oder kennen Sie Freeman Dyson? Stephen Hawking kennt fast jeder.
Zumindest jene drei Millionen Menschen, die ihm bei Facebook folgen, schon mal Madame Tussauds Wachsfigurenkabinett in London besucht oder bestimmte Folgen der TV-Serien "Raumschiff Enterprise", "Simpsons", "Dilbert" oder "The Big Bang Theory" gesehen haben. Das sind nur einige Sendungen, in denen er Gastauftritte hatte. Hinzu kommt sein 1988 erschienener populärwissenschaftlicher Bestseller "Eine kurze Geschichte der Zeit", der in 40 Sprachen übersetzt und rund zehn Millionen Mal verkauft wurde. Stephen Hawking ist ein Popstar. Das kann man feiern, man kann es aber auch bedenklich finden. Das Positive: Auch wenn Hawkings öffentliche Wahrnehmung in keinem Verhältnis zu seiner Bedeutung in der Wissenschaft steht, hat er es immerhin geschafft, viele Menschen für Kosmologie und theoretische Physik zu interessieren - wobei dahingestellt sei, wie viele Käufer sein Buch auch gelesen haben. Der vermeintlich genialische Geist im gelähmten Körper Schon problematischer ist es hingegen, dass er als vermeintlicher genialischer Geist im gelähmten Körper ein verzerrtes Bild der Forschung vermittelt.