Public lecture with Stephen Hawking
Stockholm’s Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Laura Mersini-Houghton organizes a world-class science event with founding members of modern physics.
In an especially rare and historic event, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) will host many of the founding members of modern physics in Stockholm in an attempt to solve one of the most complex and mind-twisting topics of our time: whether singularities in black holes exist and whether Hawking radiation has any bearing on their existence.
About the public lecture
Stephen Hawking, who is known to many as one of the greatest minds of the modern age and is a cultural icon admired by millions across the globe, met the suggestion for the one-week conference with immediate enthusiasm. “I am delighted to visit Sweden to attend this important conference on Hawking radiation and give a public lecture on quantum black holes,” said Professor Hawking in a pressrelease from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to participating in the week-long conference starting on Monday, Aug. 24, Hawking will give a public lecture at 7 p.m. entitled “Quantum Black Holes” at Stockholm Waterfront. Here you can read more about the open lecture global.unc.edu/events/hawking/
About the conference
Nordita, is an international research institute for theoretical physics, which is jointly hosted by KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University. Nordita Director and internationally renowned cosmo-particle physicist Katherine Freese says “It is an exceptionally exciting opportunity for Stockholm and the Nordic countries to host Stephen Hawking and other world leaders in black hole research at Nordita for this important conference. “
Conference organizer Mersini-Houghton, an internationally well-known theoretical physicist at UNC-Chapel Hill, who initiated the event, says “In all likelihood, we will never have so many of the founding members of modern physics in the same place again to try to solve one of the most fundamental questions related to black holes and the nature of space-time.”
Hawking, in January 2014, suggested that black holes may not exist. Mersini-Houghton in June and September 2014 showed that when Hawking radiation is taken into account, singularities in black holes may not form. These new ideas helped reignite an ongoing debate about a fundamental paradox in modern physics. That paradox pits Einstein’s theory of gravity, which predicts the formation of black holes from which information is lost forever, against a fundamental law of quantum theory, which states that no information from the universe can ever disappear. Since the 1970s, efforts to combine these two theories have led to mathematical nonsense and have become known as the information loss paradox.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nordita, The Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University och The Julian Schwinger Foundation will support the conference. In addition to Mersini-Houghton, the organizing committee includes Malcolm J. Perry, of Cambridge University, United Kingdom, and Yen Chin Ong, of Nordita.
In addition to Hawking, invitees include many luminaries who together with Hawking laid the foundations of this field. The information about the conference can be found here global.unc.edu/events/hawkingradiation/
Media Inquiries should be addressed to:
Nordita contact: Elizabeth Yang, +46 8 5537 8473, eyang@kth.se
In the US:
Communications and Public Affairs contact: Thania Benios, 011 + 1 (919 ) 962-8596, thania_benios@unc.edu