HAWLING FINALLY FIGURES OUT BLACK HOLES (7-2004)

I was just reading a news report about physicist Steven 
Hawking, who has finally discovered what happens to the 
matter sucked up by black holes. It has taken him 30 years 
of research to reach his conclusion, which will be 
published in a paper next month.

Hawking is arguably the most brilliant physicist in the 
world today. He is a modern-day Einstein. Confined to a 
wheelchair with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis since his 
20’s, Hawking, now 62, must use a computer voice 
synthesizer to speak.

He has made the study of black holes his major life’s work. 
When asked what he would do next, he simply answered, “I 
don’t know.”

Black holes are the remnants of collapsed giant stars. They 
are called black holes because nothing, not even light 
itself, can escape the intense gravitational field that 
surrounds them, and because any debris falling into one 
will be lost forever. At least that was the traditional 
view.

Everybody learned about atoms when they were in elementary 
school. Atoms are the smallest unit of an element. They 
consist on three very tiny particles: protons, neutrons, 
and electrons.

Everything is made of atoms. But atoms contain mostly empty 
space. That’s because the protons and neutrons are held 
together in the nucleus, or center, of the atom and the 
electrons whirl around the nucleus in something similar to 
an orbit. In everyday life, the only parts of an atom we 
ever interact with are the electron clouds orbiting the 
nucleus.

But if one were to enlarge the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, 
the smallest atom there is, to the size of a pea, the 
entire atom, including its electron cloud, would be as big 
as the RCA Dome. The electron would be orbiting out around 
the nosebleed seats if the pea-sized nucleus were placed on 
the 50 yard line.

If a massive star collapses, the immense pressure squeezes 
all the space out of its atoms, driving the electrons into 
the nucleus. The new material formed, called neutronium, is 
so dense that one teaspoonful of it would weigh as much as 
Mt. Everest. If the earth were suddenly squeezed into a 
ball of neutronium, it would be only the size of a 
basketball, yet it would still weigh the same as the earth 
does now.

Collapsed stars made of neutronium are called neutron 
stars. But they are not as dense as black holes.

Black holes are produced when super-massive stars collapse 
and shrink even beyond the neutronium stage. The matter in 
them collapses into an infinitely tiny point called a 
singularity. 

It was once thought that whatever matter entered a black 
hole would be lost to the universe forever. But that 
scenario conflicted with another theory of physics. So 
Hawking made it his life’s work to find out what really 
happens to the matter entering a black hole.

He figured out that the black hole itself will decay in 
time – eons of time. After that, the matter it contained 
would be leaked back out into the universe in a mangled 
state.

Hawking had originally postulated that the matter entering 
a black hole would go through it and wind up in a parallel 
universe. That scenario would make great fodder for science 
fiction writers.

But, alas, what really seems to happen is a bit more 
ordinary. The matter just gets stored up for awhile, and 
then comes back to our universe. 

“It is great to solve a problem that has been troubling me 
for nearly 30 years,” Hawking said.  “Even though the 
answer is less exciting than the alternative I suggested.”

It may be less exciting to science fiction writers, but 
ruminating on the nature of black holes and the origin of 
the cosmos is anything but mundane. Way to go, Steven.