Number 308 (Story #4), February 20, 1997 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein NAKED SINGULARITIES COULD EXIST, concedes Stephen Hawking. In cosmological terms, a singularity is a place of incalculably large---essentially infinite---mass density. Singularities are supposed to reside inside black holes but could never be observed because light is forever bottled up within the black hole's event horizon. In 1991 Hawking bet Caltech physicists Kip Thorne and John Preskill that such singularities must always be thus imprisoned within a black hole. But a computer study has since shown that singularities unencumbered with any event horizon could, at least in principle, exist. Although he doubts whether a naked singularity could ever actually form, Hawking has now paid up on his bet. (Caltech press release, 6 February 1997.)