Hawking radiation shows black holes slowly evaporate through quantum effects.

The interaction of quantum fields with black hole curvatures makes Hawking radiation

The classic explanation of Hawking radiation depicts virtual photons emitted from a black hole's event horizon. A more accurate explanation involves null geodesics, Bogoliubov transformations, and scattered quantum field nodes to explain the emission of thermal radiation.

Stephen Hawking's biggest discovery—Hawking radiation—came from a major mistake

Hawking radiation may not have been discovered without Jacob Bekenstein first convincing Stephen Hawking that black holes follow the laws of thermodynamics. The graduate student showed that black holes could shrink, setting the stage for Hawking’s most significant contribution.

Hawking suggested studying black holes could reveal truths about the universe's start

After predicting black holes could evaporate and before undergoing a tracheotomy, Stephen Hawking conducted interviews in his voice, explaining phenomena like black holes and the Big Bang. In this clip, he explains how curiosity drives humans to become “masters of the universe.”

Despite his disability, Stephen Hawking reshaped our understanding of black holes

His theoretical work—especially on black holes emitting radiation, now known as Hawking radiation—challenged long-held ideas. He also brought complex physics to the public through bestselling books like "A Brief History of Time."

LIGO confirmed Stephen Hawking's theorem about black hole surface areas

Black holes are known to grow with increased mass but lose energy during mergers through the emission of gravitational waves. Amid these competing factors, the black hole area theorem—confirmed in 2021 using LIGO data—states that a merged black hole's size cannot be smaller than the combined surface area of its progenitors.

Watch a simulation of a collapsing star becoming a black hole

When a massive star can no longer release enough energy through fusion in its core to fight off gravitational collapse, the dense core collapses first, producing an event horizon that traps light within it, including some light produced within the star at the time of collapse. As more material falls into the growing event horizon, the star will appear to eclipse itself from the inside.

The Big Bang became physically plausible thanks to Stephen Hawking’s thesis

Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis mathematically showed that singularities—points of no volume and infinite density—are an expected feature of nature. It laid the theoretical groundwork for a model of the universe where everything originates from a single point.

The black hole information paradox comes to an end

Quanta Magazine provides a deep dive into black holes and the black hole information paradox. For a very long time it was believed nothing could escape a black hole. Therein lies the paradox. Per quantum mechanics, whatever falls into a black hole should not necessarily be lost forever, and may eventually return. In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information.

The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first photo of a black hole in 2019

Predicted by Einstein in 1916, these invisible objects can be indirectly seen through their accretion discs and X-ray bursts. Over 40 million trillion black holes may be scattered throughout the universe.

Time seems to stop for objects at the event horizon of black holes

At that location, the warping of space-time is so severe that the entirety of an object's space-time motion is solely through space, leaving it immobile in the time dimension. Faraway observers looking at the object would see it appear frozen before slowly dimming and reddening.

Through gravitational redshift, light loses energy as it leaves a massive object

Just as one becomes exhausted as they walk up a flight of stairs against gravity, light is predicted to lose energy as it travels out of a gravitational well created by an object warping spacetime. This is observable through a decrease in the frequency of light toward longer, redder wavelengths.

Black holes do not 'suck' matter and energy in like a vacuum cleaner

Despite its immense magnitude, the force of gravity exerted by black holes acts in the same way as provided by stars and planets, allowing objects to maintain stable orbits around them. Even in cases where tidal forces and friction cause objects to change their orbit and fall towards a black hole, they are more likely to glance by, be whipped around, and get ejected rather than absorbed.

Collisions between cosmic rays and atmospheric particles dwarf particle accelerators

According to Einstein's model of gravity, confining immense energy into a sufficiently small region would warp space-time enough to create a black hole. If accelerators actually did create black holes, then trillions more would be produced daily in the atmosphere, where collisions are millions of times more energetic.

Try to catch the 'sound' of black holes in gravitational wave detector data

In "Black Hole Hunter," users try to listen for gravitational wave signals from black holes in four sample data files that include substantial background noise. With each level, learn more about black holes while being faced with ever-quieter signals.

Quasars are extremely luminous cores of distant galaxies

Discovered in the 1950s through their intense radio signals, they are fueled by supermassive black holes with prominent accretion disks. The disks emit extreme radiation that heats and expels gas, halting star formation and altering the future of their host galaxies.

The ultraviolet catastrophe is the infinite energy prediction of classical physics

When scientists first tried calculating the radiation emitted by a heated object, their assumption was that energy was equally distributed across wavelengths and produced infinite energy at low wavelengths. This contradicted observations, which showed near-zero energy intensity at those values.

Neutron star collisions may be the universe's gold factories

In his last broadcast interview, Stephen Hawking comments on detecting gravitational waves from the collision of neutron stars. The event may serve as a new means of measuring cosmological distances and help identify revisions to general relativity.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Black-body radiation is emitted by everything in predictable ways

All objects above absolute zero emit electromagnetic radiation, with the amount and distribution determined by temperature alone. The shape and intensity of this radiation follow Planck's law, while Wien's law governs the peak wavelength.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Time disappears when encompassing all quantum configurations across the universe

The Wheeler-DeWitt equation, a modified version of the Schödinger equation—the formula that describes the evolution of the quantum configuration of a system—describes the quantum state of space-time across the universe. The transformation causes the variable of time to disappear, suggesting it is not a fundamental, physical parameter of the cosmos.

Simulate the decay of a radioactive substance to visualize its half-life

By definition, the half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of a radioactive sample to decay. With each half-life that has elapsed, half of the starting sample is left, leaving less to decay each time. This results in the number of undecayed atoms decreasing exponentially, with less stable substances having shorter half-lives and decreasing exponentially more rapidly.

Mars' orbit may provide evidence that dark matter is made of primordial black holes

Physicists at MIT have found that, statistically, one such microscopic black hole should pass through the solar system every decade, which they predict would introduce a detectable wobble in Mars' orbit. Such black holes would have formed in the early universe from collapsing gas clouds and scattered as the universe expanded.

No one showed up to the party for time travelers organized by Stephen Hawking

In 2009, Hawking hosted a reception but only sent out invitations afterward, hoping that time travelers from the future would attend and prove time travel possible. He later joked it was "experimental evidence" that time travel doesn’t exist.

An early burst of dark energy may resolve discrepancies in the universe's measured expansion

The Hubble tension refers to mismatches in the calculated rate of expansion of the universe derived from different methods, such as supernova data and the cosmic microwave background. By allowing dark energy to become active at a different time, models of the universe on which some of these methods depend are revised, altering the calculated values.

Why Earth will be made uninhabitable by the sun far sooner than when the sun dies

The star has enough fuel to continue fusing hydrogen into helium for another 5 billion years, but the gradual increase in core temperature from these reactions will brighten the sun by 10% every billion years. Some models predict that the increased radiation will be enough to vaporize all of Earth's surface water about 1 billion years from now, long before the sun becomes a red giant and disintegrates the planet.

Defying the odds, Stephen Hawking outlived his ALS diagnosis by over 50 years

When diagnosed with ALS, Stephen Hawking was given two years to live. However, he survived with the progressive neurodegenerative disease for over 50 years, highlighting the disease's variability and complexity.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.