Question: Hi I was researching Steven Hawking the other day and I couldn't find out what it was that he discovered. I was wondering if you guys could help me. By the way we are having a science week at school (yey.)

Jess Wade answered on 22 Jun 2015:

Cool Florrie! I’ve just been at a school all day for science week. Stephen Hawkings was actually a lecturer of mine’s PhD supervisor. He does lots of work in theoretical physics, which is when you use really complicated maths to explain the universe. He’s discovered a lot about black holes.

In the universe, when a sun runs out of fuel it will start to expand and blow off all of the outside layers of gas. This will make something called a red super giant. When a red super giant runs out of a fuel, there is a huge explosion called a supernova. All of the mass and dust in the super nova will collapse towards the centre of the supernova, and it will get very dense and hot. Eventually it will be so hot and dense it will collapse in on itself, and form a super strong black hole. Black holes are super mysterious. The gravity there is so strong not even light can escape. Stephen Hawkings is the first scientist ever to look at the radiation near black holes, and he uses that to tell us where they are.