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Hawking goes deeper into black holes
After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole
destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking
is saying he was wrong.
The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University
of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in
1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing
puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information
paradox.
It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976,
he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing
mass by radiating energy.
This "Hawking radiation" contains no information
about the matter inside the black hole and once the black
hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts
with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information
can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was
that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow
unravel the laws of quantum physics. Other physicists have
tried to chip away at this paradox.
Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum
and he has requested at the last minute that he be allowed
to present his findings at the 17th International Conference
on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. EU gets tough on MobilCom aid
The EU Commission decided that market competition
was unfairly distorted due to MobilCom’s
use of 2002 aid money. The aid was not only used
to restructure the company physically but also
to reorient its marketing strategy and to focus
on more profitable customer segments in its core
business area as a mobile phone service provider.
The aid thus had a particularly damaging effect
on competitors, as they too are having to target
their business strategies at more profitable
customer groups due to a saturation of the German
market.
On top of that, in the years leading up to the crisis MobilCom
had been focusing on the UMTS sector, using aggressive pricing
to pursue an expansion strategy aimed solely at boosting its
market share. In the end this strategy failed, forcing MobilCom
to withdraw from the UMTS sector. However, the aid granted
meant that MobilCom did not have to bear alone the negative
consequences of the risky strategy it had pursued, while at
the same time being able to benefit from the positive effects,
such as the fact that, in slimming down its customer portfolio,
it could count on a larger customer base. This meant that
the aid gave MobilCom a substantial advantage over its competitors.
As a result, the EU Commission is imposing a ban on direct
online sales of MobilCom mobile telephony contracts for seven
months. This, they feel, will offset the competitive distortions
created. For the company, direct online marketing represents
an increasingly important channel for selling mobile phone
contracts. Halting such marketing for a while will offer competitors
a chance that customers will go to their websites and sign
up for contracts. AI: Talk of the future
Having computer systems and appliances that communicate
intelligently is fast becoming less sci-fi and
more of reality for the modern consumer.
Due to a five-year collaborative link between
Edinburgh University and California's Stanford
University, Scotland is fast emerging as the world
leader in computer science research and artificial
intelligence.
For example, the seemingly ridiculous early visions
of consumer AI, such as the talking car in Knight
Rider, has not stopped researchers from developing
a car that you can operate using voice commands. “In-car
navigation systems have been giving directions
to drivers for a couple of years now”, says
Nick Wright, commercial manager for the program. “The
computer creates the language on the fly. It doesn’t
have a recording of every place name in the UK.”
Other areas of language technologies being developed
include a search engine that will understand what
you’re looking for, and search documents
using meaning, rather than keywords and even machines
that can ask you questions and respond in a seemingly
intelligent manner.
”What we use is something called a ‘clarification
strategy’. In short, speech recognition turns
voice into text, but the computer needs to understand
in order to react. If it doesn’t understand,
or isn’t sure, it should ask a sensible question
to find out.” states Wright.
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