Hawking Radiation

03/14/18

 

To the great sorrow of the world, the great physicist Stephen Hawking has passed away today. To celebrate his life, we here at Isaac’s Science Blog thought that it would be appropriate to write about his most famous work, Hawking Radiation.

 

“What was Stephen Hawking’s crowning achievement?”

 

Let’s think about something for a second. Black Holes are usually thought of as sinks where nothing, not even light can escape. But a few decades ago a very different thinker with the name Stephen Hawking came and looked at these phenomena very closely. After some further research, he found that these black holes actually emit something called Hawking Radiation, or a collection of photons, neutrinos, and other massless particles. An astonishing consequence of this is that since black holes lose this matter over time, they actually shrink and shrink until they completely disappear! This development led to Stephen Hawking receiving many prizes and honors. So on this day forward, let’s take some time to think about all of the contributions this great mind has done for science.

• Physics