Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics


5 comments:

Lenny Susskind said...

That picture of a black hole on the front cover of my book is no more fake than this blog.

I took the photo myself, but it may have been in one of the parallel universes of the cosmic landscape of string theory, because I've forgotten where the camera was pointing at the time.

Although it looks like a cup of stirred coffee with a sprinking of sugar grains, that's just an illusion.

Anonymous said...

I've seen a black hole just like that in your photo.

It had an immensely strong attraction.

(I think, from memory, that I saw it in a poorly lit brothel, and they didn't allow me to take a photo, so I have no proof. However, in the true spirit of science, I'm saving up for another trip of exploration.)

Lenny Susskind said...

anonymous,

Please stick to speculative theoretical physics in comments, not experimental field studies which I (and many professional colleagues) find amateurism and deeply offensive.

The kind of experiments and observations needed to confirm our theory of black holes is way more sophisticated than those you amateurs can fund!

Anonymous said...

Professor Susskind,

I'm sorry. But it was a black hole all right! It didn't have any hair around it...

Lenny Susskind said...

anonymous,

You're referring to Wheeler's theorem: "Black holes have no hair."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_hair_theorem#Origin_of_name