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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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The Reith Lectures

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series.

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The Reith Lectures: Professor Stephen Hawking: Black Holes

The Reith Lectures: Professor Stephen Hawking - Black Holes: Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

Factual: Science & Nature

Professor Stephen Hawking - Black Holes

02/02/2016

Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

BBC Radio 4 - The Reith Lectures, Professor Stephen Hawking - Black Holes, Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

Professor Stephen Hawking delivers the second of his BBC Reith Lectures on black holes.

Professor Stephen Hawking delivers the second of his BBC Reith Lectures on the nature of black holes. Sue Lawley hosts.

The Cambridge cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking delivers the second of his BBC Reith Lectures on black holes. 

Professor Hawking examines scientific thinking about black holes and challenges the idea that all matter and information is destroyed irretrievably within them. He explains his own hypothesis that black holes may emit a form of radiation, now known as Hawking Radiation. He discusses the search for mini black holes, noting that so far "no-one has found any, which is a pity because if they had, I would have got a Nobel Prize." And he advances a theory that information may remain stored within black holes in a scrambled form.

The programmes are recorded in front of an audience of Radio 4 listeners and some of the country's leading scientists at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. 

Sue Lawley introduces the evening and chairs a question-and-answer session with Professor Hawking. Radio 4 listeners submitted questions in their hundreds, of which a selection were invited to attend the event to put their questions in person to Professor Hawking.

Producer: Jim Frank.

The Reith Lectures: Professor Stephen Hawking - Black Holes

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Professor Stephen Hawking delivers two lectures on the nature of black holes.

Professor Stephen Hawking delivers two lectures on the nature of black holes. Sue Lawley hosts.

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Professor Stephen Hawking - Black Holes

Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

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