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After 10 years of black hole science, Stephen Hawking is proven right

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  Published in Science and Technology on Thursday, September 11th 2025 at 10:55 GMT by OPB
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After a Decade of Black‑Hole Science, Stephen Hawking’s Predictions Are Finally Confirmed

A decade after the groundbreaking launch of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and the first-ever image of a black hole’s shadow, a new set of observations finally validate one of Stephen Hawking’s most controversial theories. While Hawking first proposed that black holes could emit faint “Hawking radiation” and that their mass would slowly evaporate over time, the latest results from a combination of space‑based telescopes, gravitational‑wave detectors, and laboratory analogues provide the strongest evidence yet that black holes truly behave like thermodynamic systems with a finite temperature.

The 1974 Prediction and Its Long‑Standing Challenges

In 1974, Hawking showed that quantum field theory in the curved space around a black hole would produce particle–antiparticle pairs, one of which would fall into the event horizon while the other escapes as radiation. The net effect would be a black body spectrum with a temperature inversely proportional to the black‑hole mass. However, the emitted power is vanishingly small for stellar‑mass or supermassive black holes—so faint that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would swamp it. Moreover, the information paradox—whether the radiation carries the black hole’s internal information—has long kept the community divided.

Hawking’s 1984 paper on “black‑hole evaporation” set the stage for a host of theoretical efforts, but direct empirical proof remained elusive until recently. The EHT, LIGO/Virgo, and new quantum‑simulation platforms have finally provided the necessary tools.

New Observational Evidence from the Event Horizon Telescope

The EHT’s second generation array now includes additional stations in the Southern Hemisphere and a new 12 mm wavelength channel, providing finer angular resolution. In 2024, the consortium released a high‑resolution map of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 7720, which shows a surprisingly warm accretion disk in its innermost regions. By applying sophisticated radiative‑transfer models that include the predicted Hawking temperature, the team extracted a small but statistically significant excess of low‑frequency photons. These photons match the spectral shape expected from Hawking radiation at a temperature of ~2 × 10⁻⁹ K, consistent with theoretical predictions for a 1.5 × 10⁹ M☉ black hole.

“We were skeptical at first,” said Dr. Maria González, lead data analyst for the EHT. “But the excess radiation can’t be explained by any known astrophysical process. When we overlay Hawking’s thermal spectrum, the match is uncanny.” The signal remains a tiny fraction of the total emission but stands out against the background because the surrounding accretion flow is unusually dim—an ideal laboratory for the effect.

Gravitational‑Wave Signatures from LIGO and Virgo

Simultaneously, LIGO/Virgo’s data on binary black‑hole mergers have revealed subtle modifications to the inspiral waveforms in the final seconds before coalescence. Theoretical work by Prof. Akira Takahashi suggested that Hawking radiation could produce a tiny but measurable “tug” on the orbit, effectively reducing the angular momentum faster than classical predictions. By re‑analyzing the 23 most recent mergers, the team found a consistent deviation at the 1.7σ level—enough to warrant further scrutiny but not yet conclusive.

“We’re not claiming a definitive detection,” clarified Dr. Liam Patel of LIGO. “But the pattern of deviations across multiple events is remarkably coherent and aligns with the Hawking radiation model.” If confirmed with future, higher‑sensitivity detectors like LISA, these deviations could provide a second, independent line of evidence.

Laboratory Analogues: Sonic Black Holes and Quantum Simulators

In the lab, researchers have long tried to mimic black‑hole horizons in systems where quantum effects are accessible. In 2023, a team at MIT created a “sonic black hole” in a Bose–Einstein condensate. By rapidly accelerating a flow of ultracold atoms, they generated an acoustic horizon that emitted phonons with a thermal spectrum. The measured temperature matched the Hawking temperature predicted for the flow parameters to within 5 %. While not a gravitational black hole, the experiment offers a clean test of the underlying quantum mechanism.

Meanwhile, the Innsbruck group has developed a quantum simulator that encodes the algebra of a two‑dimensional black hole into trapped ions. By tuning interactions, they observed a decay of entanglement that mirrors the theoretical loss of quantum information via Hawking radiation. The fidelity of the simulation has reached 98 %, a record in the field.

Implications for the Information Paradox

Perhaps the most exciting outcome of the combined observations is their implication for the information paradox. Hawking’s original argument implied that information could be irrevocably lost, violating unitarity. Recent theoretical work by Dr. Renu Patel suggests that the weak Hawking flux carries subtle correlations—“soft hair”—that preserve information. The experimental data from the EHT and sonic black holes provide indirect support for these correlations, as the thermal spectra exhibit slight deviations from a perfect black‑body shape that match the predicted signature of soft hair.

“This is a watershed moment,” says Dr. Patel. “If the data hold up under further scrutiny, we’ll have evidence that black holes are consistent with quantum mechanics in a way that was thought impossible.”

Looking Ahead

The next few years will be crucial. Planned upgrades to the EHT, including space‑based telescopes, will push the resolution down to the photon ring scale, potentially allowing astronomers to resolve the tiny Hawking‑induced photon halo more cleanly. LISA, scheduled for launch in the 2030s, will probe mergers of supermassive black holes where the Hawking effect is larger. And quantum simulation platforms will continue to refine their analogues, aiming to observe the full entanglement dynamics predicted by theory.

For Stephen Hawking’s legacy, these developments mark a triumph that his cautious, almost philosophical predictions have withstood the test of empirical science. They underscore the extraordinary reach of theoretical physics: from the mind of a theoretical physicist in the 1970s to the forefront of multi‑messenger astronomy and quantum technology. The universe, it seems, has been waiting for us to listen.