In 1783, John Michell wrote a paper in which he noted that Newtonian gravity predicted the existence of an object so massive and dense, that the escape velocity from the surface would be equal to or greater than the speed of light. This remained an anomalous consequence of Newtonian mechanics for well over 100 years, until Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity. Before Einstein, it was generally assumed that light did not "feel" gravity. Einstein described a new theory of space and time, where gravity was no longer a force but curvature in space-time. His theory predicted that light will "feel" gravity in the Newtonian sense, although the true explanation is that light is following the curvature of space-time through what it considers to be a straight line. Since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, these dense, massive objects were assumed to absorb everything and radiate nothing, prompting John Wheeler to coin the term "black hole" in 1969. Six years later, Stephen Hawking published a paper in which he applied quantum mechanics to black holes. What he derived was the unbelievable consequence that black holes do radiate and, given enough time, can even evaporate. This website is dedicated to one of the strangest phenomena in the universe: Hawking radiation.