Stephen Hawking

For two decades, Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind battled cosmologist Stephen Hawking over the behavior of black holes. Hawking said that when black holes eat their fill, they disappear, taking with them everything they consumed over their billions of years of existence. Susskind found this idea so disturbing that he publicly declared war -- a conflict he describes in his new book, "The Black Hole War."

Famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking will retire from his prestigious post at Cambridge University in Britain next year but intends to continue his exploration of time and space. Hawking, 66, is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title once held by 17th and 18th century physicist Isaac Newton. The university said Friday that Hawking would step down in September but would continue as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.

One of the world's foremost scientists slipped the bonds of his wheelchair Thursday to float in zero gravity in the skies above the Atlantic Ocean. Stephen Hawking, a renowned British physicist who has Lou Gehrig's disease, experienced about four minutes of simulated weightlessness aboard a modified Boeing 727 jet operated by the Zero Gravity Corp.

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said. Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference.

Some questions even stump Stephen Hawking. The famed British astrophysicist and bestselling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded. Hawking's question: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"

Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist who wrote the bestselling "A Brief History of Time," is planning a new book for Bantam Dell Publishing that will examine how and why the universe was created. "The Grand Design," which is expected to be released in the fall of 2008, will be co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist and author who collaborated with Hawking on "A Briefer History of Time," which was published last year.

Black holes, those fearsome galactic traps from which not even light can escape, may not be quite so terminally destructive after all, according to physicist Stephen Hawking. The author of "A Brief History of Time" now believes some "information" sucked into black holes escapes over time, contradicting some of his most famous work on the phenomenon. Hawking will present his findings at a scientific conference in Ireland next week, New Scientist magazine said.

Stephen Hawking formally presented a paper Wednesday that said he was wrong about black holes for almost 30 years. The renowned Cambridge University physicist's paper argued that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out "in a mangled form."

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking says technology won't be the only thing more advanced in the next millennium: People will be better too. "I don't believe science fiction like 'Star Trek,' where people are essentially the same 400 years in the future," the Cambridge University physicist said Friday night during a lecture in the East Room of the White House.

A combination elf, oracle and rock star, Cambridge University physicist Stephen Hawking makes waves in physics that other people ride. So scientists listened when Hawking proposed in a technical talk Thursday at Caltech that the universe sprang from nothing into something in the shape of a wrinkly pea, and that the universe can be both open and closed, depending on how you look at it.