Gravitational Wave Study Proves Stephen Hawking Was Right About Black Holes

A decade ago, the universe whispered, and humanity, for the first time, had the tools to listen. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history with the first direct detection of gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein a century earlier. This discovery, which won a Nobel Prize in Physics, allowed scientists to "hear" the most violent and energetic events in the universe. Now, on the tenth anniversary of that monumental find, an even more precise gravitational wave detection has provided the clearest evidence yet for a theory from another physics giant: Stephen Hawking.

Hawking's theorem states that the total surface area of a black hole’s event horizon—the point of no return—can never decrease. When two black holes merge, the new, larger black ...