bet made by Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne
description: a public bet about the existence of black holes, which Stephen Hawking eventually conceded
2 results
A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking · 16 Aug 2011 · 186pp · 64,267 words
ALSO BY STEPHEN HAWKING A Briefer History of Time Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays The Illustrated A Brief History of Time The Universe in a Nutshell
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Bantam illustrated hardcover edition published November 1996 Bantam hardcover edition/September 1998 Bantam trade paperback edition/September 1998 All rights reserved. Copyright © 1988, 1996 by Stephen Hawking Illustrations copyright © 1988 by Ron Miller BOOK DESIGN BY GLEN M. EDELSTEIN No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
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from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hawking, S. W. (Stephen W.) A brief history of time / Stephen Hawking. p. cm. Includes index. eISBN: 978-0-553-89692-3 1. Cosmology. I. Title. QB981.H377 1998 523.1—dc21 98-21874 Bantam Books are
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few years we should know whether we can believe that we live in a universe that is completely self-contained and without beginning or end. Stephen Hawking CHAPTER 1 OUR PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He
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future (like the singularities of gravitational collapse) or entirely in the past (like the big bang). I strongly believe in cosmic censorship so I bet Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Cal Tech that it would always hold. I lost the bet on a technicality because examples were produced of solutions with
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all rather far-fetched. A black hole seems to be the only really natural explanation of the observations. Despite this, I had a bet with Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology that in fact Cygnus X-l does not contain a black hole! This was a form of insurance policy
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do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would bring me four years of the magazine Private Eye. In fact, although the situation with Cygnus X-l has not changed much since we made the bet in 1975, there is now so much
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, my nurses, colleagues, friends, and family have enabled me to live a very full life and to pursue my research despite my disability. Stephen Hawking ABOUT THE AUTHOR STEPHEN HAWKING was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors
What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
by Marcus Du Sautoy · 18 May 2016
. In fact, there was one notable person who made a bet in 1975 to the effect that Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole: Stephen Hawking. This was somewhat odd, given that he’d dedicated much of his research to probing the nature of black holes. If Cygnus X-1 turned
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waste of time, then at least he’d won the bet. His prize? A subscription to Private Eye magazine to distract him from the misery of his failed research. He made the bet with fellow cosmologist Kip Thorne. Convincing evidence that proved that Cygnus X-1 was indeed a black hole would win Thorne
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. A black hole in two-dimensional space-time. The event horizon is a circle inside of which we cannot know. In collaboration with a young Stephen Hawking, Penrose went on to prove that the same infinite density is predicted when we rewind the universe back to the Big Bang. Both black holes
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, which is that they are reversible. This means that information is never lost. This is very counterintuitive. For example, if I took a subscription to Private Eye and a subscription to Penthouse magazine and I burned a year’s worth of both, then it seems impossible that I could ever determine which
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, in 1974 the extent to which the event horizon masks what’s going on inside a black hole was queried. This is because, according to Stephen Hawking, black holes are leaking. NOT-SO-BLACK BLACK HOLES Once my dice is thrown into a black hole, there seems to be no mechanism to
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. The puzzle of what happens to the information is called the black hole information paradox. In 1997 Hawking took out another bet, and this time Kip Thorne sided with him. Their bet was with Caltech theoretical physicist John Preskill. They believed that this loss of information was inevitable. But, given that it
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the notion of time doesn’t mean anything before the Big Bang. ‘Before’ is a meaningless question. Don’t ask that question. I’ve heard Stephen Hawking saying not to do so, and I would have agreed. But the view I take now is that you really are allowed to ask that
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have any chance of maintaining my faith as I venture into the unknown. Being aware that we don’t know is crucial to making progress. Stephen Hawking appreciates the danger of believing we know it all: ‘The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.’ For me, the