Black Hole Explosions? Offprint from: Nature, Vol. 248, No. 5443, 1 March 1974

THE DISCOVERY OF HAWKING RADIATION - 'ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS EVER IN FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS'. First edition, extremely rare offprint issue, and Hawking's own file copy, of his most important article, predicting that black holes emit radiation, now known as 'Hawking radiation'. This would cause relatively low mass black holes (less than 1012 kg) to 'evaporate' completely in a time less than the age of the universe. The discovery that black holes radiate was a complete shock to the scientific community since it had been assumed that nothing, not even light, could escape from a black hole (that was, of course, why they were called black holes!). Hawking's Royal Society obituary stated: "It is fair to say that Stephen's discovery [of Hawking radiation] ranks as one of the most important results ever in fundamental physics" (Carr, et al.). John Archibald Wheeler once said that just talking about Hawking radiation was like "rolling candy on the tongue" (ibid.). Hawking's doctoral advisor, Dennis Sciama, said of Hawking radiation, "That's a work of genius, in my opinion, that discovery" (Sciama, Oral History). At the heart of Hawking's theory is an equation (see below) relating the entropy of a black hole, or equivalently the amount of information it contains, to its surface area (the two are proportional). The Harvard physicist Andrew Strominger, who collaborated with Hawking on one of his last works, wrote: "The [area/entropy] equation stands alongside the Einstein equation and the Schrödinger equation among the most important equations of 20th-century physics. However, unlike the other equations, which describe distinct areas of physics, the area/information law unites disparate areas, as indicated by the striking appearance [in the equation] of nearly all the most basic constants of nature" (Page et al.). This formula, which Hawking wanted to have engraved on his tombstone, suggests a profound and hitherto unsuspected relation between general relativity, quantum theory, and thermodynamics. The formula gives a glimpse of a future theory of quantum gravity, the holy grail of theoretical physics. "The challenge of uniting quantum theory and general relativity in a successful theory of quantum gravity has arguably been the greatest challenge facing theoretical physics for the past eighty years. One avenue that has seemed particularly promising is the attempt to apply quantum theory to black holes. This is in part because, as purely gravitational entities, black holes present an apparently simple but physically important case for the study of the quantization of gravity. Further, because the gravitational force grows without bound as one nears a standard black-hole singularity, one would expect quantum gravitational effects (which should come into play at extremely high energies) to manifest themselves in the interior of black holes. In the event, studies of quantum mechanical systems in black hole spacetimes have revealed several surprises that threaten to overturn the views of space, time, and matter that general relativity and quantum field theory each on their own suggests or relies on . it has become increasingly clear that there are profound connections among general relativity, quantum field theory, and thermodynamics . In particular, a remarkable parallel between the laws of black holes and the laws of thermodynamics indicates that gravity and thermodynamics may be linked in a fundamental (and previously unimagined) way. This linkage strongly suggests, among many things, that our fundamental ideas of entropy and the nature of the Second Law of thermodynamics must be reconsidered, and that the standard form of quantum evolution itself may need to be modified" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne wrote: "Few, if any, of Einstein's successors have done more [than Hawking] to deepen our insights into gravity, space and time', and Roger Penrose stated 'We remember Newton for answers. We remember.…