Famous Stephen Hawking theory about black holes confirmed - Livescience.com

The black hole area theorem, which Hawking derived in 1971 from Einstein's theory of general relativity, states that it is impossible for the surface area of a black hole to decrease over time.

Because a black hole's entropy is proportional to its surface area, both must always increase.

Black holes have an entropy, and it's proportional to their area.

A black hole's surface area is set out by a spherical boundary known as the event horizon — beyond this point nothing, not even light, can escape its powerful gravitational pull.

According to Hawking's interpretation of general relativity, as a black hole's surface area increases with its mass, and because no object thrown inside can exit, its surface area cannot decrease.

But a black hole's surface area also shrinks the more it spins, so researchers wondered whether it would be possible to throw an object inside hard enough to make the black hole spin enough to decrease its area.

These numbers, in turn, allowed them to calculate the surface area of each black hole before and after the collision. .

The surface area of the newly created black hole was greater than that of the initial two combined, confirming Hawking's area law with a more than 95% level of confidence.

The theory of general relativity — where the area law came from — does a very effective job of describing black holes and other large scale objects.

The real mystery however, begins when we try to integrate general relativity — the rules of big objects — with quantum mechanics — those of the very small.

This is because black holes cannot shrink according to general relativity, but they can according to quantum mechanics.

The iconic British physicist behind the surface area law also developed a concept known as Hawking radiation — where a a fog of particles are emitted at the edges of black holes through strange quantum effects.