The UC Blue Ash professor that proved Stephen Hawking right

Before his death, the physics phenom Stephen Hawking had some revolutionary ideas about our cosmos, including black holes, but even he wasn't able to prove some of his conjectures.

The work of proving one of those ideas fell to a professor of physics at the University of Cincinnati's Blue Ash campus.

Cenalo Vaz took second place in the 2014 Gravity Research Foundation Awards for his work that presented a new idea of how black holes work.

Hawking said the traditional collapsing star model was incomplete saying black holes would be better thought of "gravitational atoms" or "dark stars."

Vaz produced an essay presenting a model that confirmed Hawking's proposal.

"Hawking was my idol as a graduate student," Vaz told the Enquirer in an email Wednesday. "His passing is a loss to the community as a whole."

Vaz said Hawking's brought physics to a broader audience. He said its vital that society understands and is excited about what scientists do, "not least because it pays for the work."

The professor said Hawkings is responsible for much of what he's achieved.

"It would not be an overstatement to say that Hawking’s insights have informed much of what I and others have worked on during our careers," Vaz said. "I expect that his work will continue to inform research in theoretical physics for decades to come.

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