... now at last we know what physicists think about....

baseball!..

07/22/2004 2:30 Black-hole physicist pays up, By Brian Wilson   

After 30 years of arguing that a black hole was basically a cosmic version of Brooks Robinson, Dr. Stephen Hawking has lost his bet, and the stakes were a baseball encyclopedia. The Cambridge University physicist had to pay up on a 1997 bet with a California Institute of Technology physicist, when he admitted his original assertion, that anything "swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden and can never be revealed," was incorrect.

Dr. Hawking spoke Wednesday at the 17th International Conference of General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin. His revision now states that eventually some of the information about the black hole can be determined from what it emits. His original offer of a cricket encyclopedia was turned down in favor of "Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia" -- from which the winning physicist, Dr. John Preskill, can recover information at will.

Preskill told the assembled media he'd always hoped there'd be witnesses when Hawking conceded, but "this really exceeds my expectations."