Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge.According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking s black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world.
In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything.Instead,they keep emitting radiation for a long time,and eventually open up to reveal the information within.“It s possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution,”says Gibbons.“But I think you have to say the jury is still out.”
Forever hidden
At the con ference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case.If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology ( Caltech ) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech.
They argued that “ information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed”.
“Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet，”Preskill said.The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice“from which information can be recovered at will”.
Notes on language and culture
1.paradox: an assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
2.crack: to break without wanting3.about-turn: complete change of opinion,policy, etc.
4.evaporate: to disappear, vanish.
5.mass: the measure of the quantity of matter that a body or an object.
contains.The mass of the body is not dependent on gravity and therefore it.
is different from but proportional to the weight of the body.
6.quantum: the smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.
7.wipe out : to remove from existence completely.
8.unravel: unfold.
9.chip away: to remove, break or withdraw gradually.
10.vibrate: to move back and forth or to and fro.
11.tangle: a confused mass12.emit: to give or send out matte.r or energy.
13.conundrum: a riddle or difficult problem.
14.abuzz: noisy like the sound of a bee.
15.sketchy: giving only major points, incomplete, rough.
16.gobble: to eat greedily or rapidly.
17.eventually: finally.
18.duo: two performers or singers who perform together; a pair who associatewith one another.
C.Post-reading activity
Think and answer the following questions:
1.What is Stephen Hawking s about-turn on black hole theory?2.What did Hawking s original idea about black hole conflict with?3.What are other physicists attitudes toward Hawking s black hole paradox?4.How do you understand“But I think you have to say the jury is still out”?
Ⅳ.Fast Reading
In this part, you are required to read three passages and choose the best answersafter each passage, using the skills you have just learned.
About Stephen - A Brief History of Mine
Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo ) in Oxford, England.His parents house was in North London,but during the second world war,Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies.When he was eight,his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles away from the north of London.At eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father s old college.Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine.Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead.After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science.
Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time.His supervisor was Denis Sciama,although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge.After gaining his PhD, he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973, Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University.It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton.
Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe.
With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein s General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century.One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear.Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time.This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.