Stephen Hawking's final scientific paper released

Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair was completed in the days before the physicist’s death in March

• Black holes and soft hair: why Stephen Hawking’s final work is important

Stephen Hawking’s final scientific paper has been released by physicists who worked with the late cosmologist on his career-long effort to understand what happens to information when objects fall into black holes.

The work, which tackles what theoretical physicists call “the information paradox”, was completed in the days before Hawking’s death in March. It has now been written up by his colleagues at Cambridge and Harvard universities and posted online.