Betting on the Cosmos

Betting on the Cosmos

 TO  :  ALL
 Re  :  bet Dr. Stephen W. Hawking lost

 Press-Telegram [http://www.ptconnect.com/]
 Monday, February 17, 1997
 EDITORIAL
 Page B6

 Betting on the cosmos

 If we had to choose sides in a dispute over the cosmos between Dr. Stephen
 W. Hawking and just about anyone, we'd put our money on Hawking.  But if we
 had in one recent bet, we'd have lost.
      Hawking, the brilliant Cambridge University scientist who is regarded
 as being almost in the same theoretical league as Albert Einstein, made a
 bet with two California Institute of Technology professors six years ago that
 naked singularities could not exist.  Last week Hawking paid off:  100 pounds
 sterling, plus a T-shirt inscribed, ''Nature Abhors a Naked Singularity.''
      That message isn't exactly a total concession, but that's because
 Hawking lost on a technicality.  We'll explain.
      Actually, we can't explain because we don't quite get it.  So we'll
 borrow the description of New York Times science writer Malcolm W. Browne.
      First, Browne's definition of the terms:  A singularity is a
 mathematical point at which space and time are infinitely distorted, where
 matter is infinitely dense, and where the rules of relativistic physics and
 quantum mechanics break down.  Singularities are believed to lurk at the
 hearts of black holes, which conceal their existence from the outer world.
      A naked singularity would be a singularity without a black-hole shell,
 and therefore visible, in principle, to outside observers.
      Black holes can't actually be seen, but they can be observed because
 their gravitational effects suck in matter, which spirals toward the hole,
 is heated and gives off light; their X-rays and other radiation have been
 detected by observatories.
      By the way, this sort of stuff isn't just the whimsical speculation of
 astrophysical theorists.  The right answers could help explain the working
 of one naked singularity of singular importance to us:  the Big Bang, which
 theoretically spun off our universe, and perhaps countless others, 15 billion
 years ago.
      The winners of the bet with Hawking are Dr. Kip S. Thorne and Dr. John
 P. Preskill who, like Hawking, are researchers into cosmic relativity.  They
 based their victory, such as it is, on some recent supercomputer calculations
 by Dr. Matthew Choptuik of the University of Texas at Austin, who concluded
 that there could be special circumstances in which a naked singularity could
 be created from a collapsing black hole.
      Choptuik concedes that the circumstances are a long shot, comparable to
 standing a pencil on is sharpened tip:  improbable, but theoretically
 possible.
      Now you can see why Hawking hasn't given up easily.  He's never seen a
 pencil stand on its tip, either.
      Hawking promptly made another bet with his two Cal Tech peers:  Although
 there may be a very limited set of conditions that could result in a naked
 singularity, no general conditions for such a phenomenon would be found.
      That makes sense to us.  We're putting our money on Hawking.
 _______________________________________________________________________________

 ''TIME'' [http://time.com/]
 February 24, 1997

 PEOPLE BY BELINDA LUSCOMBE
 Page 77

 In Physics, the Naked Win

 Scientists are not what you'd call high rollers.  But in 1991 STEPHEN HAWKING, 
 the brilliant, paralyzed British physicist, bet American colleagues KIP THORNE 
 and JOHN PRESKILL that there is no such thing as a naked singularity in 
 physics.  A singularity is an object of such density that the laws of physics 
 do not apply to it.  A naked singularity is such an object outside a black 
 hole, but Hawking believes it can exist only inside a black hole.  He lost his 
 bet when someone else proved that you could, in theory, focus gravity waves so 
 precisely as to create a naked singularity.  ''Stephen took a while to accept 
 the result,'' says Preskill, but now Hawking has paid up:  #100 (about 
 [US]$163), some ''clothing to cover the winner's nakedness'' and a thumbprint 
 on a concession statement.  The physicist didn't give in easily.  The message 
 on the T shirts he gave Thorne and Preskill reads, NATURE ABHORS A NAKE 
 SINGULARITY.
 _______________________________________________________________________________

 Till later, MAC??? / tNATOA / [PRo-iauR]