Famous Hawking Black Hole Bet Resolved? 500
Mick Ohrberg writes "In 1997 the three cosmologists Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne and John Preskill made a famous bet as to whether information that enters a black hole ceases to exist -- that is, whether the interior of a black hole is changed at all by the characteristics of particles that enter it. It now looks like Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne may owe John Preskill a set of encyclopedias of his choice, since physicists at Ohio State University 'have derived an extensive set of equations that strongly suggest that the information continues to exist -- bound up in a giant tangle of strings that fills a black hole from its core to its surface.'"
status of string theory (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be holding onto my bet a little longer I think=)
You're more right than you think (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost - wrong bet though (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hawking radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
The way theorists get around this is through virtual particles. Assume that virtual particle pairs are blinking in and out of existance all the time, but are never noticed because before they become 'real' particles they destroy each other (think particle/anti particle). The fun part comes when the particles appear on opposite sides of an event horizon. One gets sucked into the black hole, and the other becomes a full-fledged particle with a small chance of escapeing. Because the escapeing particle was never in the event horizon to begin with, it can contain no information from within the black hole.
Now, how the black hole doesn't gain mass from the anti-particle I'm not quite sure... I'll leave that up to all the
Re:Simple question maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
String theory has modest successes with some things, and monsterous problems with others. It's essentially built to explain why gravity is so weak. At distances smaller than strings gravity is as strong as all the other forces. But it doesn't overwhelm everything at large scales because gravity is the only force which can see the strings, and so it leaks off into these other dimensions untimately becoming very dilute.
The hope of theoreticall physicists is to unite gravity with the other forces, understanding everything about it's divergance, hopefully uniting quantum electro/chromodynamics with general relativity creating one theory to explain them all, and, in mathmatics, bind them.
Oh really, come on, get a clue! (Score:5, Interesting)
Similarly, "fact" is not merely an emphatic form of "theory".
I might as well theorize that black holes don't exist at all [space.com]; who owes what now? Oh, right, nothing changes, because theories aren't facts
Mick Ohrberg, why don't you grow out of Physics Fanboydom and take some time to learn some real stuff? For starters, why don't you being with Science 101 and learn the definition of "theory", and "equation", and other such basic terms?
Re:status of string theory (Score:1, Interesting)
That depends on what you mean by "could be tested". It certainly makes a lot of predictions in principle about string-scale physics. Whether any of those predictions can be tested in practice anytime soon is another matter.
What it doesn't say. (Score:5, Interesting)
But when they say:
"The strings from any subsequent material that enters the black hole would remain traceable as well. That means a black hole can be traced back to its original conditions, and information survives."
Re:Too bad for Kip Thorne (Score:4, Interesting)
Mathur's tests (Score:5, Interesting)
"It will be a big piece of fun" (talking about deriving equations)
"thats a rather large force" (after mentioning that the force to pull two pieces of a capacitor apart could lift the city of columbus)
If you get a chance to meet him, don't pass it up. He's a great guy
Black Hole Interior (Score:5, Interesting)
For a somewhat handwaving explanation of what I'm talking about, take a look at this [3dresearch.com] hypothesis.
Re:Hawking radiation (Score:3, Interesting)
Peer review might help, but normally people attempt to recreate the experiment. That's how science weeds out "luck".
Re:Isn't this simple physics? (Score:4, Interesting)
Noone doubted the energy continued to exist.
The bet concerned the patten of information held by the matter/energy. The questions was if you encoded something in a patten of laser light and sent that into the black hole would the encoded information continue to exist? ( given that no record of the data sent exists except that encoded in the light. )
Google for holographic universe, it's interesting stuff.
Re:Hawking radiation (Score:4, Interesting)
So we have these virtual particles blinking in and out of existence. One particle, one anti-particle. I understand that when an anti-particle falls into the black hole and the normal particle escapes, the black hole loses mass. Makes perfect sense.
I want to know, why don't an equal number of particles fall into the blackhole while the antiparticle escapes?
Seems you would get a 50/50 distribution leading to no mass change..
I'm sure I'm missing something. Can someone tell me what it is?
Re:Blackt holes shown to compress losslessly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hawking radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tracing origins... (Score:3, Interesting)
the entropy of a black hole is directly proportional to the surface area of the event horizon so that as it swallows up matter and energy the net entropy of the hole and its environment increases. And even if the event horizon shrinks due to Hawking radiation, this entropy isn't lost, it's simply radiated out into the universe in the form of the randomized escaped virtual particles. So even if information could survive inside the event horizon, it still can't come out again. You could build a reading room there maybe, but not a lending library.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does the human understanding of the universe need to move forward or are we done yet
Some questions from a non-physicist (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Accumulation of mass/energy. What exactly prevents a black hole from exploding, after accumulating enough mass - what makes them so stable? Is it possible that the Big-Bang was an explosion of a huge black hole ?
3. If a half of a quantum-entagled (EPR) pair enters the event horizon, can it somehow be used as a "probe" ?
Re:Hawking radiation (Score:2, Interesting)
Being an anti-particle, shouldn't it be repelled by gravity, and not attracted?
Then, the only way would be for the 'real' particle to fall in, and the anti-particle to be repelled. Then, the black hole gains E/2, while the anti-particle will (eventually) collide with some real particle outside, and remove E/2 energy from outside the black hole.
Thus the hole will actually be sucking up energy (=mass) from the outside!
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Almost - wrong bet though (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard the story about Fermi's offer to bet from a few different sources during my research career. I'm convinced that it's true, tho how he expected to collect is beyond me. Apparently his thought was that the bomb might ignite the atmosphere...
Ironic Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Second: I can't see how you can possibly test any of this.
If you can't test it, then it's just a likely story. It might be a more likely story than saying little green elves did it all, but in essence, it;s not that different.
Tangles of strings - Suuuure.
As I said, it probably is true, and string theory is a lot cleaner, but damn - what are you going to do? Crack open a black hole to find out?
We. don't. think. so.
It strikes me as what Horgan calls "Ironic Science".
RS