Stephan Hawking’s long-debated black hole theory finally proven

Stephan Hawking’s theory of black hole area has finally been confirmed after years of debate in the scientific community.

The confirmation of widely-contested came on the heels of an event where scientists “heard” the merger of two black holes in a single gigantic cosmic entity after using a gravitational wave detector.

According to black hole theorem which was proposed in 1971, when two black holes merge, the resulting new black hole’s event horizon area does not shrink, in fact its area is larger than the sum of two original black holes.

The recent breakthrough was made possible through the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) which offers the best possible evidence on the authenticity of the theorem.

The recent study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters and led by Adrian G. Abec.

LIGO is known for detecting the gravitational waves which are caused by the cosmic events, such as the collision of black holes in the time-space horizon.

The first detection of waves occurred in 2015 as the result of merging of two black holes, thereby confirming Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The recent detection was witnessed on January 14, 2025 when two black holes collided. After the merger, the newly formed and gigantic black hole had an area bigger than the sum of its parts, thereby substantiating Stephan Hawking’s theory.

Study co-author Maximiliano Isi, assistant professor at Columbia University said, "It tells us that general relativity knows something about the quantum nature of these objects and that the information, or entropy, contained in a black hole is proportional to its area."