The Information Paradox of Black Holes

[Dominic]

Black Hole Information Paradox

Just saw this show on the Science Channel, "The Hawking Paradox." Fantastic. I find it very interesting that physicists are still debating whether or not the information paradox exists...

for those who don't know: thirty years ago Hawking created an equation that showed that matter ("information") that falls into a black hole might actually "disappear" from the universe. This shook up the scientific community because it goes against one of the basic tenets of physics: information does not just "go away." The particles of the universe will always remain, no matter what form they take.

If Hawking's equation is correct, then cause and effect is meaningless and the universe is basically chaos. Naturally, a lot of scientists do not feel this could be true even while agreeing that Hawking's equation is simply elegant.



Another scientist finally proved that due to the mathmatical voodoo that happens when one crosses the Even Horizon of a black hole, a person could be both alive (in his own perception) and dead (in a viewer's perception outside the black hole). What he figured out from this is that information is not in fact lost in a black hole, rather, it is "spread" across the Event Horizon and does not "go away."

Trippy stuff.

Recently, Hawking has agreed that his original hypothesis is wrong, but he believes that the reason information is not lost is that there are an infinite number of parallel universes where there are no black holes. So in this universe we may lose some infomation to black holes, but in these other parallel universes, since there are no black holes, that same information does not disappear - hence, the two universes cancel one another out.

He's still busy trying to prove this...thoughts?