Back in 1971, the late physicist Stephen Hawking made an intriguing prediction: The total surface area of a black hole cannot decrease, only increase or remain stable. So if two black holes combine, ...

There are certain rules that even the most extreme objects in the universe must obey. A central law for black holes predicts that the area of their event horizons — the boundary beyond which nothing ...

For the first time, we've observed a 50-year-old theorem from Stephen Hawking in the natural world. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology, ...

More than 50 years ago, acclaimed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking theorized that the area of a black hole could never decrease. On Sept. 10, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration, a global network ...

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration has used the sharpest to date gravitational wave signal from two merging black holes to precisely test Hawking’s ...

Stephen Hawking’s 50-year-old theorem on how black holes merge together has been successfully tested thanks to huge advances in gravitational wave astronomy, which helped astronomers catch the waves ...