A Solution to the Black Hole Information Paradox

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Analog

Analog

Lifer
Jan 7, 2002
12,755
3
0
blackhole_2.jpg


It might sound like heresy, but three researchers from Case Western Reserve University have concluded that there’s nothing inside a black hole. The math is mind-boggling, but it might explain a paradox that has challenged physicists for decades.

The researchers are Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss, and they published their theories in an article called Observation of Incipient Black Holes and the Information Loss Problem, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review D.

Here’s the problem: the information paradox.



When matter is consumed by a black hole, it passes across the event horizon, and all information about the matter is lost. No big deal, right? Well, according to physicists, this loss of information violates the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity.



Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes evaporate slowly over time, releasing matter back into the Universe, but this matter is stripped of its original information. Since this loss of information violates those laws of physics, something’s got to give to solve the paradox.


Vachaspati, Stojkovic and Krauss propose that from the point of view of an outside observer, objects falling into a black hole take an infinite amount of time to reach the event horizon, where the information would be lost. In other words, the black hole completely evaporates before the event horizon is able to form, and no information is lost.


Any existing black holes would need to have been formed at the beginning of time.
 
Locut0s

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
22,205
44
91
Interesting thanks. There has to be more to this theory than just that though I suspect. It's been known since Einstein formulated general relativity that from the point of an outside observer it in falling matter around a black hole would stop forever at the event horizon.
 
TastesLikeChicken

TastesLikeChicken

Lifer
Sep 12, 2004
16,852
59
86
I thought Hawking already admitted a while back that information was not lost and conceded his bet with Preskill? Did that change?
 
zinfamous

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,892
31,410
146
wasn't it Leonard Susskind who proposed the theory that information passing across the event horizon and into the black hole essentially leaves its "memory" dangling just before the event horizon? The observer outside the event horizon would "see" the matter frozen in place at that spot, indefinitely, whereas the matter would have long passed without any hindrance into the hole.

This rejects Hawking's proposal that matter is lost, which was always a problem for Susskind (the "heresy" thing). and after 2 decades, Hawking eventually agreed that Susskind was correct. This was ~2002, I believe?
 
zinfamous

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,892
31,410
146
okay, so reading more of what you pasted, that sounds exactly like the solution that Susskind proposed almost a decade ago.

Is there anything new to this?

edit: well, the article is from 2007...
:hmm:

shame on you, Analog. Don't you know that if you're posting a research article and it is more than 2 months old, that it's already dated?
:p
 
destrekor

destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
I didn't know Hawking went back on his theory. I missed that, apparently. :)

From the general gist of things I have gotten from reading things that hurt my brain and go way over my head...
it would seem that things that fall into a black hole, are lost forever. But what they leave behind is information in a holographic form. It is by nature of a paradox that a whole new "wait, wtf?" is born. :D
See, things fall into a black hole. But, because light cannot escape a black hole, and light that is near the time horizon is going to be heavily influenced due to the immense gravity, an outside observe would never see anything actually get consumed by a black hole. Anything outside the black hole would only see things that are at the event horizon, as they were the moment they immediately reached that line, but not them touching or crossing that line. Kind of like a parabola - it gets close to a known point, but will never touch it.

To anything outside of that black hole, it is proposed it would see everything that ever approached the black hole, billions of years after the fact. Yet, these things have been consumed by the black hole and have been gone for a very long time.

What we would see is information preserved on the event horizon, this information is a hologram representing information that once was hole, but is now merely information.

I've personally never even recognized this paradox.
I don't even get the need for this whole information thing.

Matter, radiation, and everything that is, must not remain in the same condition forever. A black hole is not some destroyer of matter - it merely transmutes. It's not some gate into nothingness, robbing the universe of precious information. It doesn't destroy anything, at least, not the core of anything.
It might destroy a planet, but not the matter. Matter, light, etc, merely gets trapped, forever as it may be - but the laws of the universe really don't care. What the pieces of everything we know, look like at any one point in time, really don't care what they look like.
 
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