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Black Holes Don't Trap Information Forever
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu May 15, 2008 11:11 PM
from the duh-it-wants-to-be-free dept.
from the duh-it-wants-to-be-free dept.
sciencehabit writes "New calculations suggest that black holes are not a one-way street. Anything that falls into them may eventually come out. The findings lend important support to quantum gravity, but fly in the face of Einsteinian relativity. They also support Stephen Hawking's reluctant admission that information couldn't be destroyed by black holes. Penn State researcher Ahbay Ashtekar was quoted saying, 'Once we realized that the notion of space-time as a continuum is only an approximation of reality, it became clear to us that singularities are merely artifacts of our insistence that space-time should be described as a continuum.' Let the physics infighting begin."
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Steven Hawking Loses Bet On Black Holes? 477 comments
st1d writes "Looks like Steven Hawking might have to pay up on an old bet regarding black holes - seems his idea about them destroying information wasn't quite living up to his expectations: '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.' He's due to make a formal announcement July 21."
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Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
That was along my line of thought when seeing the title, except in reverse. I was thinking this was going to be a great way to store long-term backups.
Parent
pretty continua (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
wrong (Score:5, Funny)
But if you live in a 3-d world then having a bunch of 2-d simmulations is like have a ream of paper. 500 sheets of paper stack up nicely and consume very little of our 3-d world.
in 6-d our 3-d world is a trivial piece of it and computers can easily simmulate it.
No the problem is that there's not an algebraic solution to any polynomial greater than fifth order. Thus they wind up having to numerically approximate the mappings from 6D and this has round off errors from the finite bit floating point representation in Exel 6D.
Parent
Re:wrong (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Insightful)
That statement implies the existence of a second kind of time. If only x,y,z,t exist then you don't "do" anything in that four-dimensional space. You simply exist as a static four-dimensional object in a static four-dimensional universe.
Parent
Re:pretty continua (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, however, I think the more critical questions are:
Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?
Parent
Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
It's turtles all the way down :)
Parent
More diabolical than that (Score:5, Funny)
The quantum unit of information is a "ficton".
The rest of the jokes write themselves.
Parent
No (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the binary quantum unit of information is a bit. A ficton is several orders of magnitude "smaller" than that. A bit can be true or false. A light that's on or off. A ficton is a value that represents the smallest possible division of "possibly true". The universe is not binary at a very fine scale. Things fade in and out of frame with increasing and decreasing probability in the present moment. It's only when the arrow of entropy has passed and the frame is set that a thing was or was not, from our point of view.
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Re:More diabolical than that (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Insightful)
This too will be shown to just be an approximation which doesn't actually reflect how the universe works.
That's all physics is in the end.
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking a physicist if the universe is infinitely complex is like asking a salesman if his product is shoddy. They both have a vested interest in the answer.
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Interesting)
- Stephen Hawking making the same mistake much more recently
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
if two particles are quantum-entangled, and you separate them, they remain entangled and you can monitor the state of one using the other. (Although I never understood what happens when one particle is accelerated to near light speed: how do two particles on different time scales stay connected?)
So now drop one particle of the pair into a black hole.
If they remain entangled, then you clearly have a way to pass information out of the black hole (although time may be stretched so it's not instantaneous anymore). This breaks known physics.
If their entanglement is broken off, then it means the gravitation boundary of a black hole trumps quantum entanglement. But that breaks known physics.
I'll take questions from the audience now. Yes, Dr Kip Thorne?
Thorne: You bastard.
Parent
After 42, s/science/engineering/g (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting way of expressing this is with a coin toss. A finite probability of two possible results, heads or tails. However that coin toss can also be infinitely complex when you consider a far more complex reaction, like which calcium atoms would transfer from the surface of your thumb nail to the surface of the table during that same experiment, a result that would not only be governed by the orbital motions of the sub atomic particles making up the surface of the your nail, the coin and the table but also the larger motions of galaxy altering gravity, major electro magnetic fields and your only own personal reactions, a infinitely complex calculation far beyond our abilities to forecast.
The interesting point being that based upon significance, an 'in reality' infinitely complex reaction can be reduced to the simple finite result of heads or tails, hmm, the nature of our universe and, the importance of relativity and significance.
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
+0.99999997387120382 Insightful
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
according to the accuracy of measurement
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:pretty continua (Score:5, Interesting)
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No phase transitions (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost everything interesting in thermo has to do with a phase transitition popping up somewhere.
THe funny thing is this. There are no phase transitions in the real world. THey only occur on paper continuuum models. However there are a lot of things that look awfully like phase transitions so they are useful to think about.
What am I babbling about. Well phase transitions happen at places where infinite derivatives occur in mappings. And that's all fine on paper where you have an infinite number of states. If you think of states as being something like basis vectors then it' like saying you can write a fourier transform of a square edge with a continuum of frequencies.
But since there's only a finite number of states available to any system, you dont have enough basis vectors to describe a discountinuty.
So phase transitions dont' exist technically speaking. There's always some transition zone around the edge of the transition.
I think this is what they are talking about here.
Parent
Known for years (Score:5, Funny)
Come out again?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Come out again?! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Come out again?! (Score:5, Funny)
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just can't wait (Score:5, Funny)
Black holes - not hairy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Black holes - not hairy (Score:5, Insightful)
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CHUCK NORRIS (Score:5, Funny)
and the event horizon of Chuck Norris is infinity.
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But does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
And lo, the LORD appeared unto Moses and the LORD said thus: "Moses, I command you to look at this picture I found." And Moses looked at the picture and it was of a naked man doing unusual things to his behind. And a great unease came over Moses and he said: "My LORD, I beg you for a spoon to carve my eyes out with." And the LORD was greatly amused.
Parent
LHC (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another approximation of reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Will the real reality please reveal itself!
At last! Someone seeks my work! (Score:5, Funny)
Maxwell then went on to explain Ether as a medium through which light traveled in 1878, later being disproved in 1881 by Michelson, and laying the groundwork for the discovery of quantum monkeys though the discovery of constant velocity light.
This was established as mathematically sound in Einstein's theory of special relativity in 1905. General relativity, which explained gravitational effects on light and particles/waves moving fractionally close to the speed of light, was finally established in 1915 by Hilbert and Einstein, surprisingly without mention of quantum monkeys, despite all indications.
Because of this work, as well as the basics of quantum mechanics established by Einstein, various scientists were able to find the six quarks: Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Charmed and Strange, the last (top) only having been confirmed in a laboratory in 1995. Strangely, however, none of the various experiments which identified quarks also identified quantum monkeys, which would have been readily observable through their quantum-picking-fleas-off-other-quantum-monkey gatherings.
The first of these discoveries, in the early 1960s made possible a formalization of a unified model in 1970-73 of four fundamental forces, three of which can be unified mathematically under one theory and with particles that are at least indirectly observable (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear), and a fourth which doesn't quite fit (gravity). Despite these obvious problems, no one started looking at the quantum banana-eating by quantum monkeys as a possible unifying factor.
To establish a unified theory including gravity, scientists are currently using strings, rather than monkeys, as a unifying element. However, the majority of these theories are neither testable nor useful for the advancement of mankind. None of them so much as mention quantum poo, or postulate that quantum monkeys could have thrown it.
To this day, the world waits for scientists start to seek out the quantum monkeys that have so long waited for proper credit to be given to them for unifying quantum forces. So we wait still, a working unified theory still out of our grasp.
Parent
Re:Yet another approximation of reality (Score:5, Funny)
Here ya go [nasa.gov]
Parent
thermo (Score:4, Funny)
Information can not be destroyed.
Re:thermo (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, in the language of the non-scientific, "God sees all, God knows everything, God is all powerful".
Perhaps instead of condemning Christians for being unscientific, modern scientists, like Newton, should put more effort into understanding religious language!
Parent
Go back? (Score:5, Funny)
Einstein's Letter (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like God is a little grumpy about Einstein's letter coming out.
So it IS possible... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
How the hell would you know if it did?
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Re:ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
...eciton dluow enoyna
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Re:ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Or better analogy, time runs like a movie, but instead of 24 frames per second of an actual movie, real time runs about
18550000000000000000000000000000000000000000 frames per second (1/Planck Time).
And same goes for space. A HD movie on a nice TV might have 2000 pixels per meter. The space has something like 62500000000000000000000000000000000 "pixels" per meter (1/Planck Length).
(Note to viewers: Things may appear distorted if viewed from great distance or if viewed from a very fast moving car. This is due to the effects of general relativity, and does not reflect the real quality of our production. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope you will enjoy the show, no matter where you are watching this.)
Parent
Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)
No, its worthless because you signed the patent application "Anonymous Coward".
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