Stephen Hawking is Not Getting a Nobel This Year

Over at the Nobel betting pool, some have put forward Stephen Hawking as a possible candidate for the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. While it would be great to see Hawking receive this prize, it just ain't gonna happen this year, for a number of very good reasons.

"Why?" you may ask. Hawking's most noteworthy and popular work has been in black holes, specifically in the application of quantum physics to black holes, and even more specifically through the prediction that black holes emit Hawking radiation. The problem is that to date no one has directly observed a black hole, and certainly no one has been able to test the existence of Hawking radiation.

It's very rare for purely theoretical work, which hasn't been experimentally confirmed in any fashion, to be awarded the Nobel, which was created for the purpose of rewarding "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics" (per Alfred Nobel's will). It's hard for an unconfirmed theoretical discovery to be the "most important" until it's been confirmed - it might, after all, be just plain wrong. (Although, in fairness, a wrong theory can provide a great deal of insight, so it could still be highly important.)

Stephen Hawking
Source: NASA

The good news? If the Large Hadron Collider is successful in generating some microscopic black holes, and if those black holes exhibit the properties that Hawking has attributed to them, then he's very likely to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. (Possibly in conjunction with some combination of either Sir Roger Penrose, Jacob Bekenstein, Brandon Carter, or Werner Israel, or possibly on his own.) In theory these sorts of results could begin coming in within the next year or so.

Unfortunately, Hawking himself has expressed some concerns that the LHC won't actually have enough power to generate microscopic black holes. In fact, in an interview that gained the ire of Peter Higgs (another man who has a potential Nobel in the wings if the LHC delivers good results, for the prediction of the Higgs boson), Hawking went so far as to estimate the probability of generating black holes at less than one percent.

Still, as prestigious as the Nobel Prize is, even without it Hawking holds the current reigns as the most recognizable scientific figure in the world, having shown up in popular culture venues as varied as Star Trek: The Next Generation to The Simpsons.  Sir John Maddox, late Nature editor, put together this appreciation of Stephen Hawking, that is going along with the article "Stephen Hawking is Making a Comeback" over at the Discover magazine blogs.