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Stephen Hawking
has often been known for making tough bets on his
theories.
This time he is
willing to admit losing this bet. So what's the bet
all about? Well it has to do with Black holes and
whether they actually make all matter and energy
really disappear out of the universe.
Hawking orginally
proposed that black holes actually emit a little
bit of radiation. As particles go into the hole
there is a duplicate produced that comes out (
particles like being in pairs in quantum mechancis)
so called Hawking Radition.
His bet, with
John Preskill, a theoretical physicist at the
California Institute of Technology, was that once
a black hole has evapourated itself way in a puff
of radiation it would be theoretically impossible
to get any information out of it.
According to
Garry Gibbons, a collegue of Hawking, it now seems
that information may still be able to be retrieved
from a black hole again due to to some rather
perculiar quantum mechanical principles.
Stephen Hawking
is due to discuss this whole issue in more detail
at the 17th International Conference on General
Relativity and Gravitation
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