

Stephen Hawking to retire from prestigious post - jwilliams
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/10/24/2035422-stephen-hawking-to-retire-from-prestigious-post

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Allocator2008
Prof. Hawking is probably one of three thinkers that have had the greatest
influence on me, the other two being Prof. Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.

And for what it is worth, personally, I agree with his 2005 solution to the
black hole information paradox, in non-technical terms, that universes
(euclidean metrics) with no black hole solutions essentially cancel out those
with black hole solutions in the quantum gravity path integral, so from the
point of view of the path integral, there effectively are "no black holes",
and therefore no information paradox. Cute I know, but if somebody has a
better answer I'd like to hear it! (I like it because for example in string
theory I have read there are dualities involved by virtue of which one can
grab information back out of black holes, which may well be true, but
Hawking's solution does not depend on string theory being true, which I like
because it is more conservative, i.e., it is in the world of ordinary quantum
gravity and not in the world of string theory which for my money the jury is
still out on.)

Anyway, my personal best wishes to Prof. Hawking!!

