Earlier this year, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking turned 75. Here’s our pick of his career highlights…
1 As a postgraduate student, Hawking began working on cosmic singularities – points in space-time that have zero volume and infinite gravitational strength, predicted to exist according to General Theory of Relativity. Inspired by Roger Penrose’s theory that singularities exist at the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same concept to the Universe, concluding that it must have started in such a singularity: the Big Bang.
2 In 1974, Hawking published a paper showing that quantum effects around black holes leads them to emit radiation (later dubbed ‘Hawking Radiation’), shrink, and explode. Such radiation or explosions have never been detected, but the theoretical link he demonstrated between thermodynamics, quantum theory and gravity is still being explored, and may well be crucial to an ultimate theory of everything.
この記事は BBC Earth の August 2017 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は BBC Earth の August 2017 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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