Dr. Mathur came in to talk to us about Stephen Hawking. He began to tell us a little about black holes, a star will burn and begin to shrink, until it becomes a white dwarf, which is somewhat stable. He also talked about a runaway collapse, which will just become more dense as it shrinks and have more gravity. Then all the mass comes to a single point that is known as a black hole. Singularity kinda means that that thing is infinite, and we don’t really know how to deal with it. Hawking found something called Hawking radiation that lead to a disastrous problem called the black hole information loss paradox, which is what made him famous. Hawking basically discovered that if you put an electron very close to a black hole, its total energy is negative. The particles leaving the black hole are known as hawking radiation. If you make a black hole you basically defy all laws of physics. If you go beyond the horizon of the black hole, this is where you can never come back. Dr. Mathurs style of presentation kept it pretty interesting. His drawings made it a little easier to understand because I am a visual learner. I also liked that he gave the opportunity for us to ask questions if we had any during the lecture because it broke up the lecture a bit and kept it interesting.
I agree that the lecture style was conducive to those of us not so familiar with theoretical physics. It s nice to get an appreciation for a field outside of your own and have someone break it down for you. It s also something Hawking is well known for, particularly at the end of his life.