a rounded projection, bend, or protruding part; protuberance; hump: a bulge in a wall. 2. any sudden increase, as of numbers, sales, or prices: the bulge in profits. 3. a rising in small waves on the surface of a body of water, caused by the action of a fish or fishes in pursuit of food underwater. verb (used without object), bulged, bulging.
View full size image. For most people, the name Stephen Hawking calls to mind the brilliant, wheel chair-bound physicist and his renowned theories about space-time and black holes. But a new film depicts a different side of Hawking: his relationship with his first wife, and his battle with a brutal disease. The Theory of Everything tells the story of Stephen Hawking 's life with Jane Hawking, and his struggle with motor neuron disease, or ALS. The movie reveals how the couple's bond allowed Hawking to persist in the face of increasing disability, and develop the theories that made him so famous.
Hawking has devoted most of his life to studying these questions. Initially, cosmologists believed the holes were like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything in their path. Hawking revolutionized the study of the holes when he demonstrated in 1976 that, under the strange rules of quantum physics, once black holes form they start to evaporate away, radiating energy and losing mass in the process.