Nobel winner: We can see dead black holes
Veteran British scientist, who has won Nobel Prize for Physics, is adamant his good friend was correct
An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang and can still be observed today, Sir Roger Penrose said yesterday as he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Sir Roger, 89, believes that dead black holes from earlier universes or “aeons” are observable now. If true, it would prove the theories of his good friend, the late Prof Stephen Hawking, were correct. Sir Roger shared the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics with Prof Hawking in 1988 for their work on black holes.
AN EARLIER universe existed before the Big Bang and can still be observed today, Sir Roger Penrose said yesterday as he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Sir Roger, 89, who won the honour for his seminal work proving that black holes exist, said he had found six “warm” points in the sky – nicknamed “Hawking Points” – which are around eight times the diameter of the Moon.
They are named after Prof Stephen Hawking, who theorised that black holes “leak” radiation and eventually evaporate away. The timescale for the complete evaporation of a black hole is huge, possibly longer than the age of our current universe, making the process impossible to detect.
But Sir Roger believes that dead black holes from earlier universes or “aeons” are observable now. If true, it would prove Prof Hawking’s theories were correct. Sir Roger shared the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics with Prof Hawking in 1988 for their work on black holes.
Speaking from his home in Oxford yesterday, he said: “I claim that there is observation of Hawking radiation. The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before and that something is what we will have in our future.
“In this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon. So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon and there would have been similar black holes evaporating away – via Hawking evaporation – and they would produce these points in the sky, that I call Hawking Points. We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the Moon and are slightly warmed up regions. There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points.”
Sir Roger has recently published his theory of Hawking Points in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The idea is controversial, although many scientists do believe that the universe operates in a perpetual cycle in which it expands before contracting back in a “Big Crunch” followed by a new Big Bang.
Sir Roger said that black holes had also once been controversial. They were first theorised by English country parson John Mitchell in 1783, who speculated t hat if an object became extremely dense, its massive gravitational pull would stop even light escaping.
But even Albert Einstein dismissed them as mathematical curiosity, rather than a physical reality.
It was not until 1964, nine years after Einstein’s death, that Sir Roger proposed that black holes were an inevitable consequence of general relativity.
Sir Roger proved that when objects become too dense they suffer gravitational collapse to a point of infinite mass where all known laws of nature cease – called the singularity. His groundbreaking article is still regarded as the most important contribution to the theory of relativity since Einstein and increased evidence for the Big Bang.
Sir Roger, 89, was in his mid-30s when he first stumbled upon the idea when walking to a Tube station in London on his way to Birkbeck College. Now, 56 years later, he has finally been recognised for his work by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“I think it’s a bad thing to get a Nobel Prize too early. I know scientists who got their prize too early and it spoiled their science,” he said.
“If you’re going to get a Nobel Prize for science, it’s good to get in when you’re good and old, before you’re absolutely clapped out, when there is still something to do, that’s my advice. This dates back to 1964 but the significance of black holes took a long, long time to realise, so it’s not surprising, and I think I’m just about old enough now.”
Sir Roger, was awarded the honour alongside Prof Reinhard Gerzel, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and Prof Andrea Ghez, of the University of California, who proved there is a supermassive black hole at the
1964
The year Sir Roger Penrose announced his groundbreaking idea, that black holes were a consequence of general relativity
‘Penrose and Hawking are the two who have done more than anyone else since Einstein to deepen our knowledge of gravity’
centre of the Milky Way, by studying its impact on the stars around it.
Commenting on the prize, Prof Martin Rees, astronomer royal and fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, said: “Penrose is amazingly original and inventive, and has contributed creative insights for more than 60 years.
“Penrose and Hawking are the two individuals who have done more than anyone else since Einstein to deepen our knowledge of gravity. Sadly, this award was too much delayed to allow Hawking to share it with Penrose.”
Announcing the prize, Prof Göran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said this year’s award was about “the darkest secrets in the universe”.
Had it not been for the London traffic, Sir Roger Penrose would not have had the brainwave that has now won him the Nobel prize for physics. One day in 1964 he was deep in conversation with the physicist Ivor Robinson, when they had to break off to cross the road. A sudden insight then came to him into how matter collapses into a black hole. When they reached the other side, Robinson began talking again, and only later in the day, when Penrose wondered why he felt so elated, did he fish the idea from his memory. Few of us mortals understand the connection between the theory of general relativity and black holes, but we do not doubt that Sir Roger, 56 years after that inspiration near Malet Street, deserves the Nobel prize. And that Britain should continue to be a country where such prizes are won.