Talk:Timeline of black hole physics

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Copyright Permission to modify and distribute this and other timelines originally developed by Niel Brandt have been granted to wikipedia. See Talk:Timeline of transportation technology


Where's the fecund universes theory of Lee Smolin ? That's about black holes.


This page should include the date that John Wheeler coined the term "black hole." I'd add it, if I knew it. --Carl 08:40, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Done. Note that it was in a public lecture, 29 December 1967, so some sources may give the publication date of 1968. (http://www2.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/kerrfest/timeline.html) Davepape 15:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Actually, I just came across documentation that John Wheeler did not coin the term "black hole."

    • Michael Quinion of World Wide Words provides a reference to an earlier use of "black hole" to describe these objects, which I verified by going to the article. Writing in the January 18, 1964 edition of SCIENCE NEWS LETTER, Ann Ewing quotes an unattributed person or persons using the term. The name of the article is "'Black Holes' in Space," and the following passage appears: "According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, as mass is added to a degenerate star a sudden collapse will take place and the intense gravitational field of the star will close in on itself. Such a star then forms a ‘black hole’ in the universe." Quinion provides an interesting discussion of the record of naming black holes. It considers that Wheeler himself is quoted as saying he did not coin the term. See: http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm
    • The NAME section of the Black Holes Wiki entry makes mention of this but seems to attribute the Ewin article as a "letter."

Bh-reader (talk) 19:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Finkelstein?[edit]

According to the main black holes article, David Finkelstein discovered the causality boundary nature of the Schw. Radius in 1958. Have amended accordingly. 188.220.171.33 (talk) 19:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]