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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik
AGPhil 5: Semi-Classical Gravity 1
AGPhil 5.1: Invited Talk
Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 09:30–10:15, PTB SR AvHB
The road to Hawking radiation — •Klaas Landsman1 and Jeroen van Dongen2 — 1Radboud University Nijmegen — 2University of Amsterdam
Almost exactly 50 years ago, the March 1, 1974 issue of Nature contained a short (1.5 page) article by Stephen Hawking called "Black hole explosions?" in which the author showed that black holes evaporate due to the emission of black body radiation, culminating in an explosion "equivalent to 1 million Mton hydrogen bombs." His obituary published by the Royal Society in 2019 stated that "it is fair to say that Stephen's discovery ranks as one of the most important results ever in fundamental physics." Using both public and private sources (including oral history), we sketch the context and history of Hawking's calculation and interpretation, both within his own career and in comparison with his peers in the U.S., the U.K., and the Soviet Union. Our detailed analysis provides clear reasons why at the time it was Hawking who pulled this through, despite being a novice in quantum field theory.
Keywords: Stephen Hawking; Black Holes; History of general relativity; History of modern physics