Physicist may shoot holes in own black hole theory

The world of physics is abuzz with news that celebrity physicist Stephen Hawking -- widely regarded as this generation's Einstein -- will appear at a conference next week to offer a solution to a longstanding paradox about black holes, possibly refuting his own three-decades-old theory.

His presentation next week at a conference in Ireland could have repercussions for scientists' understanding of the most basic physical laws that govern the universe. It may also settle a bet, sending a set of encyclopedias to a rival physicist.

''We are all sitting on tenterhooks," said mathematician Petros Florides, the chairman of the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, where Hawking is scheduled to speak on Wednesday. Florides says he has been inundated with phone calls regarding Hawking's appearance.

The burst of attention is unusual in the abstruse world of theoretical physics, but Hawking is the rare physicist who has captured both the public and scientific imagination. The English scientist, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, became a household name in 1988 with his best-selling book, ''A Brief History of Time." Hawking uses a special computer program to speak and has been confined to a wheelchair for nearly all of his adult life. He is responsible for some of the most original thinking in physics over the last 40 years.

He was a late, surprise addition to next week's conference, submitting a one-line message that he wanted to give a talk.

Hawking is expected to address a controversy he started 30 years ago. In what physicists consider a tremendous discovery, Hawking found that as black holes swallow light and matter, they also boil off a steam of pure energy until nothing is left. He contended that even information coded in each captured particle or ray of light was unable to escape destruction in the black hole -- a conclusion that would require the laws of quantum physics to be rewritten.

In 1997, Hawking and colleague Kip Thorne were challenged to a bet by physicist John Preskill, who argued that such information could never be destroyed. They playfully wagered an encyclopedia -- ''from which information can be recovered at will."

Hawking will present his new findings on Wednesday. Although there is speculation that Hawking may concede the bet, most physicists are simply curious about what he will say.

The physics community has been slowly moving away from Hawking's original view. Many physicists now believe that black holes are like ''fuzzballs," rather than sharply defined boundaries beyond which matter and light are crushed.

As for the bet, it isn't Hawking's first. He gambled on the existence of ''naked singularities" in the universe, in which ''the loser will reward the winner with clothing to cover the winner's nakedness"; he lost on a technicality. He also lost a bet about whether a black hole existed, and awarded the physicist who won the bet with a subscription to Penthouse.

Physicists have mixed feelings about the possiblity that an encyclopedia will be exchanged. ''I'll be sorry if he retracts it," said Andrew Strominger of Harvard University, ''because I've enjoyed arguing with him a lot."

Carolyn Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.