Leonard Susskind discusses duel with Stephen Hawking
The two scientists have a long history of opposing theories about black holes. Susskind, a Stanford University physicist, penned 'The Black Hole War.' For two decades, Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind battled cosmologist Stephen Hawking over the behavior of black holes. Hawking said that when black holes eat their fill, they disappear, taking with them everything they consumed over their billions of years of existence. Susskind found this idea so disturbing that he publicly declared war -- a conflict he describes in his new book, aptly titled "The Black Hole War." In a conversation before a recent appearance at the Los Angeles Public Library, Susskind recounted his long struggle to "make the world safe for quantum mechanics."