About This Video

Stephen Hawking’s premise was sound; his math irrefutable. As matter falls into a black hole, quantum events cause it to emit particles. These particles—what became known as Hawking radiation—lead to the eventual evaporation of the black hole, and any information about the matter that fell in would be lost forever. But for physicists Leonard Susskind and Gerard ’t Hooft, something didn’t sit right. In fact, it seemed to go against the very laws of physics—a contradiction which ultimately led to the radical possibility of the knowable universe as encoded information. They discuss with moderator John Hockenberry the delicate challenges of arguing with a man whose theories were for all intents and purposes “unassailable.”

More videos from this series: A Thin Sheet of Reality

Image courtesy of Brian Sahagun; Recorded June 2011; Posted August 2011