to spend decades hunched over a radio telescope gathering data. Instead, he ponders complex ideas and deciphers brain-numbing equations in his head, searching for new explanations, new connections. Hawking's mind has grown mighty with time, tirelessly producing equations and theories that inspire and challenge researchers all over the world. Hawking himself has said that lacking a functional body has forced him to use his brain more and made his thinking more original.Perhaps the most famous of Hawking's ideas relates to black holes and their potential role in the birth of the universe. First found by the French mathematician Pierre LaPlace in the 1700s, black holes are actually not holes at all. They don't have an opening at the top and a solid bottom, nor are they like a tear in a cloth. Black holes engulf everything around them, and unlike stars, planets, and comets, they are invisible to the naked eye.Still, in contrast to the theories spawned by his idols, Einstein, Galileo, and Newton, Hawking's ideas about black holes have not been substantiated. So to consider Hawking their historical equal is premature. He is not likely to win a Nobel Prize, and a collective scientific assessment of him will not emerge for decades, until colleagues have attempted to prove his theories. However, there is no question that Stephen Hawking has shaped the nature of scientific debate throughout the world. Now to explain the mystifying (very so to me) theories of Steven HawkingAnti-MatterEvery type of particle in the universe has a corresponding anti-particle that has the opposite charge. The anti-particle of the negatively charged electron has a positive charge and is called the positron, while the anti-particles of the proton and neutron are the anti-proton and anti-neutron, respectively. The anti-proton has a negative charge (opposite the proton’s positive charge), and the anti-neutron is neutral, since the opposite charge of a neutral parti...
