Stephen Hawking, the British physicist and black-hole theorist who brought science to a mass audience with the best-selling book A Brief History of Time, has died. A Cambridge University professor, Hawking redefined cosmology by proposing that black holes emit radiation and later evaporate. This process helps explain the notion that black holes have existed at a micro level since the Big Bang, and the smaller they are, the faster they evaporate. Black holes are formed when a massive star collapses under the weight of its own gravity. In 1970, Hawking realised the mathematical approaches he developed with Penrose could be applied to black holes, a term coined by physicist John Wheeler.

Source: The Star March 14, 2018 04:30 UTC