Stephen Hawking

Hawking began serious work on his breakthrough calculation a decade after he was diagnosed with ALS. By this point, he was unable to read books on his own or write down equations. Hawking had friends “turn the pages of quantum theory textbooks as [he] sat motionless staring at them for months.”

When this happens near the event horizon of a black hole, one of these particles call fall in, stopping them from annihilating.

• The escaping particle is hawking radiation. ultimately the mass of this particle must come from the black hole, so over eons black holes...