It is devoted to the study of the temperature of black holes.
The Cornell University Library website has published the latest scientific work of physicist Stephen Hawking, written in partnership with colleagues from Cambridge and Harvard. The article deals with black holes, one of the main objects of the scientist's research.
In Entropy of Black Holes and Soft Hair, Hawking explores the long-standing mystery of what happens to the information stored in objects when they disappear into a black hole. It is not clear how any property of an object can exist when it is completely absorbed, but the scientist's last article offers an idea.
The authors of the work suggest that if an object falls into a black hole, it must increase the temperature inside it. In turn, its entropy (a measure of irreversible dissipation of energy) should also change in response.
In addition, not far from the black hole's event horizon, there is a region, through the study of which specialists can determine the temperature of a mysterious space object. "Soft hair" physicists have called information that is stored not in the black hole itself, but on the event horizon.
“The main goal of this article is to show that 'soft hair' can explain entropy,” said Malcolm Perry, co-author and professor of physics at Cambridge University.
Perry completed the article after Hawking's death in March 2018. He says work is a sign of progress for humanity, but scientists still have a long way to go.
Some of Hawking's most important research has involved black holes in one way or another. The formula for the temperature of a black hole - Hawking's temperature - is engraved on the memorial to the great scientist at Westminster Abbey.
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After providing the theoretical framework for this temperature in 1974, Hawking and other physicists worked to bring this idea in line with the fundamental laws of classical and quantum physics. These laws stated that if an object was swallowed by a black hole, it would not be possible to get it back.
This is formally known as the "information paradox": Throughout his scientific career, Hawking has worked to explain how black holes can simultaneously erase all information from an object and still retain it.
And it’s at this point that “soft hair” emerges, first proposed by Hawking in 2016: a way of explaining temperature and entropy shifts to match what scientists know about the universe.
Popularization physicist Stephen Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018 at the age of 76.
GRIGORY PUSHKAREV