“My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected.”
- January 8, 1942 – March 14, 2018
- British
- Theoretical physicist, science writer
- Announced the black hole singularity theorem and Hawking radiation, and contributed to the popularization of science with his book “Talking about the Universe”
Quote
“My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected.”
Explanation
This quote reflects one of Stephen Hawking’s most groundbreaking and famous contributions to theoretical physics: the idea that black holes are not completely black, but rather emit a form of radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. In the 1970s, Hawking’s work revealed that black holes, contrary to the conventional understanding that nothing can escape from them, actually emit radiation due to quantum effects near their event horizon. This radiation is the result of quantum fluctuations and leads to the gradual evaporation of black holes over time. However, this discovery raised significant paradoxes and challenges to existing theories, particularly the tension between general relativity (which describes the behavior of large-scale objects like black holes) and quantum mechanics (which governs the behavior of the smallest particles).
The “serious problems of consistency” Hawking refers to here were rooted in the fact that Hawking radiation implied that information could be lost in black holes, which contradicted the principle of information conservation in quantum mechanics. This posed a serious problem for the consistency of the laws of physics, as it suggested that information could be destroyed, which was thought to violate one of the foundational principles of quantum theory. Hawking himself famously described this as the “information paradox”, which became one of the most hotly debated issues in theoretical physics.
Despite the initial controversy and the difficult questions raised by his discovery, Hawking eventually found a resolution, although it was not the one he had originally expected. His later work, especially in collaboration with other physicists, explored ideas such as the holographic principle and the firewall hypothesis to address these paradoxes. In doing so, he contributed to a broader reconciliation between quantum theory and general relativity, though the full resolution of the black hole information paradox remains an ongoing challenge in modern theoretical physics. This quote highlights Hawking’s intellectual honesty—he was willing to follow where the evidence led, even if it meant confronting inconvenient truths or revising earlier assumptions. It also reflects the complexity and unexpectedness of scientific discovery, where solutions to deep questions often take us down paths we might not have anticipated.
