Black-hole physicist pays up
I don’t know what’s more cool. . . the fact that the theory on black holes was changed by Hawking, or that it’s being reported on
The Cambridge University physicist had to pay up on a 1997 bet with a California Institute of Technology physicist, when he admitted his original assertion, that anything “swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden and can never be revealed,” was incorrect.
Dr. Hawking spoke Wednesday at the 17th International Conference of General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin. His revision now states that eventually some of the information about the black hole can be determined from what it emits.
His original offer of a cricket encyclopedia was turned down in favor of “Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia” — from which the winning physicist, Dr. John Preskill, can recover information at will.
Neat stuff.