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?

[DING-DONG YO]

Like the Jet Li movie?

srsly, that is very interesting. Nice post.

[dzh90]

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

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I'm skeptical of superstar physicists trying to reshape/save their theories when they are well into their 60s

[cbloom]

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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.


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No it didn't "shake up" anything. It was seen as a problem with the current working theory, that something was certainly amiss and needed more work to clear up. In general the basic Standard Model + General Relativity model of the universe is incredibly accurate for almost every phenomenon in the universe; there are however a few very extreme cases where the physics isn't completely worked out and more work needs to be done.

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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.


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That's a preposterous conclusion. Even if black holes did do something bizarre to information (which they probably don't) that doesn't invalidate the physical laws across the universe.


In the real world, there has been a lot of work on the entropy (information content) of "quantum hair" on black holes. I'm not sure what the latest results are but there is no "paradox".

Certainly black holes are one of the cases where the difficulty of merging quantum field theory with gravity come into play. That doesn't invalidate either of those theories, we already know that they are only models which are accurate within certain domains.


ps. this is why non-scientists shouldn't be allowed to have opinions on scientific matters such as global warming, stem cell research, corn ethanol, evolution, or any of the other scientific issues that they completely misunderstand and make horrible policies about.

[Suwalski]

I studied it once, my teacher insinuated that she didn't believe his theories and that he only had got this much attention due to his handicap.
What i did learn in that class was that most knowledge concerning outerspace and astronomy in general is based on a huge amount of assumption that could not be proven(atleast not at the level which i was studying)

[jafeather]

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ps. this is why non-scientists shouldn't be allowed to have opinions on scientific matters such as global warming, stem cell research, corn ethanol, evolution, or any of the other scientific issues that they completely misunderstand and make horrible policies about.

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lol...."If you are not an expert, please don't think about it." Get off your high horse. He made a post about a extremely complex topic that he didn't fully understand. Few do. You find the same kind of thing in the strategy forums on here...posts from people who are *gasp* trying to learn about something new by stating their thoughts based on the information they do have. That should be encouraged, not trampled upon.

[Stagger_Lee]

Scientists should stick to science, and stay out of political matters such as global warming, stem cell research, corn ethanol, evolution, or any of the other political issues that they try to hijack. Comment as citizens, but drop the psuedo science justifications for their positions.

[guids]

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I studied it once, my teacher insinuated that she didn't believe his theories and that he only had got this much attention due to his handicap.
What i did learn in that class was that most knowledge concerning outerspace and astronomy in general is based on a huge amount of assumption that could not be proven(atleast not at the level which i was studying)

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I used to think like this, and than I realized the problem of politics and science mixing and being misunderstood is a lot better than scientists making decision. And least with teh former you sometimes find some unbiased scientists out there.

[CharlieDontSurf]

Dom if you like these type of shows I highly recommend "The Universe" on The History Channel

[amplify]

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Scientists should stick to science, and stay out of political matters such as global warming, stem cell research, corn ethanol, evolution...

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yeah, science has obviously fcked those things up