"What tha hell did you just say?"
Posted on 07/14/2004 12:22:21 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week.
The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox.
It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost.
But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics.
Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March).
Big reputation
Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland.
"He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. "I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation."
Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world.
In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think you have to say the jury is still out."
Forever hidden
At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech.
They argued that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed".
"Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet," Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice "from which information can be recovered at will".
Indeed. But we won't hold it against you.
Simple example: the properties of Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi-Dirac statistics can be completely described mathematically. Whether any objects actually follow such statisical laws is a physics question.
"After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong."
This is because all that anyone, including Hawking, can do is THEORIZE about some black spot out in space. Just because the THEORY of a black hole is a cool, interesting idea does not make it so. And just because one appears to be a brilliant scientist does not make him/her so.
True, but for us, what you described are just special cases of broader theory. I wonder if a GUT cannot be found simply because of the observation of that great philosopher Wright: "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
The math is used to model the reality. What the reality actually is might not be known very well. For instance points and waves are used to descibe particles, but the particles themselves are neither. I'm pretty sure that Hawking's solution to this paradox lies in a gain of understanding, or a better insight into what the particles look like. The former singularity of the black hole now has structure provided by string theory.
"What tha hell did you just say?"
I once knew a moebius stripper
Who had trouble when finding her zipper
No matter how hard she tried
She was on the wrong side
But her patrons still found where to tip her!
Another Free Republic original........
I thought that my taking my car as a screen name it would be 100% clear that I'm a guy. Only a guy would want to be known for his car! But on the other hand, I guess "skylark" does have a feminine-ish sound to it, so I understand how there could be some confusion. Maybe I need to trade in my beloved convertible for something more mascuilne, like a "Charger" or a "Stallion" or "Cougar" or something.
I think "Event Horizon" may have been the worst movies I've seen in my life. I guess that means I can't confirm your guy-chick theory about this movie.
I could not agree with you more. His latest thoughts are still denoted as "THEORY" for the simple reason that they are just that. No repeatable scientific proof has been accomplished to support his idea being any more than what it is... Just another well-educated guess.
The true nature of the universe is way more than we can conceive at this point in our scientific manner of investigation. It is like expecting a fish to be able to describe the ocean for what we see it as.
LOL. I take it you aren't the biggest Linus Pauling fan.
These physicists have never worked in information technology. ;)
Whoa; sounds like a case of electric wheelchair/voicebox envy.
When you think about it, the Democrats exhibit the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty perfectly: The closer you scrutinize a Democrat, the more light you shed on their positions, the more uncertain their positions become!
-PJ
When the gravitational fields are relatively weak, the Yilmaz version of general relativity makes predictions that are observationally indistinguishable from Einstein's version. It is only in the limit of strong gravity that the differences between the two theories become apparent in their predictions. This happens when the extra space-time curvature of the gravitational field becomes important. The most dramatic difference is that the Yilmaz version of general relativity is better behaved mathematically and contains no singularities or event horizons. In particular, the Yilmaz theory predicts that there are no black holes. A massive star may collapse to a state more dense than a neutron star, but it never reaches the pathological black hole state of a time-frozen event horizon cloaking a singularity.
At first glance, this prediction would appear to be fatal to Yilmaz relativity. The headlines from recent astronomical observations, particularly those with the new x-ray and gamma ray telescopes, are said to have confirmed the existence of black holes. However, careful examination shows that the new data confirms the existence of collapsed stars that have extremely hot accretion disks and are too massive to be neutron stars. That observation is compatible with Yilmaz relativity. There has never been an indication of actual event horizon. In fact, up to now there have been no astronomical observation that would falsify the Yilmaz version of general relativity.
They **want Black holes to exist..cuz its neato..and good for sci-fi.
when critical idents are marked....they avoid them....or counter with more Theory. : )
There's a possibility that the so-called Hawking Radiation is information in itself..
The possibility is that it can be read..
As to what that information could be is possibly the clue or the proof.. well, who knows at this point..
This is just as momentous as the recent discovery of possbile neutrino resonance.. and the possibility of changing neutrino states...
New science? New disciplines?
Interesting article.. got a link ?
Nothing more macho than blasting chlorine-breathers..
They may be soon..
Recent experiments have allowed "information" to be recieved before it was even sent...
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