4 Weird Theories of Stephen Hawking That Have Been Proved To Be True, And Still Are Question Marks

Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous theoretical physicists in history.

He is best known for his popular performances and his fight against Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). But his real influence came from his illustrious five-decade career in science.

Beginning with his doctoral thesis in 1966, his groundbreaking work continued relentlessly until his final paper in 2018, completed just days before his death at the age of 76.

His theories often seemed odd when he formulated them. But it is slowly being accepted scientifically, with supporting evidence only emerging later.

From his stunning views on black hole For his explanation of the humble beginning of the universe, here are some of his theories that have been proven correct and some that are still unanswered, as reported by Live Science, Tuesday (27/7/2021).

1. The Big Bang theory is universally accepted

Hawking got off to a great start with his doctoral thesis, on two competing cosmological theories: the Big Bang and the Steady State.

Both of these theories accept that the universe is expanding, but the former has expanded from an ultra-compact or super-dense state for a finite amount of time in the past, while the latter assumes the universe has been expanding forever, with new matter constantly existing. created to support it. constant density.

In his thesis, Hawking showed that the Steady State theory is mathematically self-contradictory. Instead, he argues that the universe began as a very small solid point called a singularity. Today, Hawking’s description is almost universally accepted among scientists.

2. Black holes are real

Hawking’s name is associated with black holes, which form when a star undergoes complete collapse under its own gravity. It emerged from Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which was debated for decades when Hawking turned his attention to it in the early 1970s.

Cleverly, he combined Einstein’s equations with those of quantum mechanics, turning what had previously been a theoretical abstraction into something that seemed to actually exist in the universe.

The evidence turned out to be true when in 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope obtained live images of the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of the giant galaxy Messier 87.

3. Hawking radiation

Black holes are said to have gravity so strong that photons, or particles of light, shouldn’t be able to escape from them. But in his early work on the subject, Hawking argued that there was more to this truth.

Applying quantum theory, in particular, the idea that pairs of “virtual photons” could be created spontaneously from nothing, he realized that some of these photons would appear to radiate from a black hole. This theory is now referred to as Hawking radiation, and was recently confirmed in laboratory experiments at the Technion Institute of Technology-Israel, Israel.

In place of a black hole, the researchers used an acoustic analogue, a “sonic black hole” in which sound waves are trapped and cannot escape. They detected Hawking radiation exactly as physicists had predicted.

4. The area theorem of black holes

The recent discovery of gravitational waves emitted by the merging of black hole pairs suggests that Hawking was right again.

Hawking said the observed nature of the system was consistent with predictions about black holes in 1970, that the area of ​​the last black hole was greater than the total area of ​​the original black hole. further confirmation of Hawking’s “broad theorem”.

Apart from the proven theory, there are still some unproven theories, such as the following:

1. The information paradox

The basic properties of materials that make black holes appear lost forever.

Hawking’s own opinion of the mystery is that it is not actually lost but is stored in a cloud of zero-energy particles surrounding the black hole, which he refers to as “soft hair”.

But Hawking’s hairy black hole theorem is only one of several hypotheses put forward, and until recently no one knew the real answer.

2. Ancient black hole

Black holes are created by the gravitational collapse of pre-existing matter such as stars. But it’s also possible that some were created spontaneously in the very early universe, after the Big Bang.

Hawking was the first to explore the theory behind these primordial black holes in depth. It turns out that they can have any mass, from the very light to the very heavy although the very small ones will “evaporate” into nothing due to Hawking radiation.

One interesting possibility that Hawking is considering is that primordial black holes may be the mysterious dark matter that astronomers believe permeates the universe. However, as LiveScience previously reported, current observational evidence suggests that this is unlikely.

3. Multiverse

One of the topics that Hawking pondered towards the end of his life was the multiverse theory, the idea that our universe, with its beginnings in the Big Bang, was just one of an infinite number of universe bubbles living side by side.

In his last paper in 2018, Hawking tried, to “try to tame the multiverse.” He proposed a new mathematical framework which, while not eliminating the multiuniverse altogether, made it finite.

But as with speculation about parallel universes, we don’t know if the idea is true. And it seems unlikely that scientists will be able to test the idea any time soon.

4. Alleged chronological protection

Einstein’s theory of general relativity includes a “closed time-like curve”, which effectively allows you to travel back in time on your own.

Hawking feels that traveling back in time creates a logical paradox that shouldn’t be possible.

Until now we do not know whether time travel can really happen or not.

5. Doomsday predictions

In the last years of his life, Hawking made a series of predictions about the future of mankind.

This refers to the suggestion that the elusive Higgs boson, which mentions triggering a vacuum bubble that will devour the universe for alien invasions and artificial intelligence (AI) takeovers.

While Stephen Hawking is right about many things, we hope he is wrong about this.

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