"Ummm, the writer says that information about the matter is lost, not the matter itself."
Do you believe it is possible to have information about all matter in the universe? Of course not because some matter is simply inaccessable. Same goes for matter that is within a black hole. The author simply doesn't know what he is talking about.
"Ummm, the writer says that information about the matter is lost, not the matter itself."Do you believe it is possible to have information about all matter in the universe? Of course not because some matter is simply inaccessable. Same goes for matter that is within a black hole. The author simply doesn't know what he is talking about.
Nothing I said suggested that I do. I simply pointed out that you appeared to have mis-read what the author had written. He wasn't speaking of lost matter but rather of information about lost matter—for example, whether it was a '57 Chevy before it fell into the black hole.
A black hole (should such there be) reduces all matter that falls into it to mass, charge and momentum. If a '57 Chevy falls into it, that Chevy is crushed by the singularity and only the mass of its former constituent particles, their collective charge and their collective momenta remain available for measurement (in principle). Hence the information carried by the particulate make-up of the Chevy is (allegedly) lost (unless Hawking is right, or somebody else comes up with a way of 'saving the information').
Of course, the New Scientist writer, Merali, was simply recording the views of George Chapline and his collaborators, so I suppose you're criticizing them. It's unlikely that you know as much physics as, say, Chapline or the Nobel laureate, Robert Laughlin; I know I don't. Do you remain confident that your criticism is justified?