Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet
So imagine you and your friends are going to have a race in the playground. Before the race starts, your friends make a bet on who is going to win. But because they can't decide who is going to win, they come up with a bet that whoever loses the race has to give the winner a cupcake.
Now let's imagine that instead of a race, we are talking about black holes. Black holes are like giant vacuum cleaners in space that suck in everything, including light. Scientists have been studying black holes for a long time, but there are still many things we don't know about them.
One thing we don't know is what happens when something falls into a black hole. Some scientists think that whatever falls in disappears forever and can never be seen again. Other scientists think that maybe some information about what fell in can escape from the black hole somehow.
In 1997, three famous scientists, named Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking, and John Preskill, made a bet about this. Hawking thought that nothing could ever escape from a black hole, while Thorne and Preskill thought that maybe something could escape. They made a bet that whoever was right would win a very expensive encyclopedia.
But they couldn't just wait around and stare at a black hole to see who was right. Instead, they came up with some tricky math to try to figure out what happens when something falls into a black hole. And they kept studying and arguing with each other for ten years, until in 2007 Hawking finally admitted that he might have been wrong!
So Thorne and Preskill won the bet, but instead of a big encyclopedia, they asked for a baseball encyclopedia that was really hard to find. And they also learned something important about black holes - that maybe information can escape after all!
Now let's imagine that instead of a race, we are talking about black holes. Black holes are like giant vacuum cleaners in space that suck in everything, including light. Scientists have been studying black holes for a long time, but there are still many things we don't know about them.
One thing we don't know is what happens when something falls into a black hole. Some scientists think that whatever falls in disappears forever and can never be seen again. Other scientists think that maybe some information about what fell in can escape from the black hole somehow.
In 1997, three famous scientists, named Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking, and John Preskill, made a bet about this. Hawking thought that nothing could ever escape from a black hole, while Thorne and Preskill thought that maybe something could escape. They made a bet that whoever was right would win a very expensive encyclopedia.
But they couldn't just wait around and stare at a black hole to see who was right. Instead, they came up with some tricky math to try to figure out what happens when something falls into a black hole. And they kept studying and arguing with each other for ten years, until in 2007 Hawking finally admitted that he might have been wrong!
So Thorne and Preskill won the bet, but instead of a big encyclopedia, they asked for a baseball encyclopedia that was really hard to find. And they also learned something important about black holes - that maybe information can escape after all!