NOTE-This post is being revised for incorrect information.
We (us Simpson fans, anyway) all probably know who Stephen Hawking is - author, physicist, genius with an IQ estimated at nearly 200. While wheelchair bound and nearly immobile, Hawking is by far one of the most prolific and prodigious minds to ever touch on cosmology. He came up with some pretty impressive stuff.
One of my favorite theories is Hawking radiation. Since I plan to make a career on studying black holes, I couldn't resist learning exactly what "kills" these monsterous universal garbage disposals. Accordingly, in the quantum world, black holes do radiate a type of energy: "Hawking radiation".
Hawking theorized that, over time, a black hole expends energy. Every time it swallows an object, it gains a bit of energy, but usually its net intake is negative. According to Dr. Andrew Hamilton, "the evaporation time is prodigiously long - about 10 to the power of 61 times the age of the Universe for a 30 solar mass black hole". Wow. A solar mass, by the way, is the size of our sun. So, theoretically it would take 13.7 billion times 10 novemdecillion years for a black hole 30 times the size of our sun to evaporate.
However, smaller black holes can indeed evaporate within our universe's age. Some micro black holes are predicted to last just a fraction of a second.
For a page written by a college-educated expert (with all the proper facts!), try here. I recommend you check out the rest of the site while you're at it. It's one of my very favorites.
http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/hawk.html#hawking
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I am not aware of evidence that Dr. Hawking's IQ is particularly extra-ordinary as you suggest. Dr. Hawking was actually a very average and un-exceptional student according to at least one of his professors and by Dr. Hawking's own admission. His theory of black hole radiation has been called "poorly reasoned" by at least one physicist, flawed by many and the theory is refuted by several papers.
ReplyDeleteI challenge you to research this issue further, the information is not difficult to find.
This issue is relevant to the safety issue of high energy experiments that are planned to begin later in 2009. Credibility of opposition scientists has been attacked apparently for reasons of bias and politics rather than objective science. (See more at Wikipedia, LHCFacts.org, LHCDefense.org, etc.)