Lasers May Solve the Black Hole Information Paradox

astroengine writes: "In an effort to help solve the black hole information paradox that has immersed theoretical physics in an ocean of soul searching for the past two years, two researchers have thrown their hats into the ring with a novel solution: Lasers. Technically, we're not talking about the little flashy devices you use to keep your cat entertained, we're talking about the underlying physics that produces laser light and applying it to information that falls into a black hole. According to the researchers, who published a paper earlier this month to the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity (abstract), the secret to sidestepping the black hole information paradox (and, by extension, the 'firewall' hypothesis that was recently argued against by Stephen Hawking) lies in stimulated emission of radiation (the underlying physics that generates laser light) at the event horizon that is distinct from Hawking radiation, but preserves information as matter falls into a black hole."

Backup your data now

[Cryacin]

Throw your storage devices into a black hole, and make sure that your data gets preserved for eternity.

Coming soon, the ability to retrieve the data from the event horizon should it be required again.

Re:Backup your data now

[Moblaster]

Why go through all that trouble? If your hard drive had anything important on it to begin with, it would equal 42.

Re:Backup your data now

[Charliemopps]

There are many Hard Scifi novels in which data storage is kept on the event horizon of a black-hole, or more commonly on a neutron star. This isn't a new idea. And before you say "A Neutron star isn't a black hole!" Do the math... it might as well be. Just because the energy required to leave it's gravitational field isn't infinite doesn't mean it's anywhere within the realm of possible to achieve.

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[Charliemopps]

Blackholes do not have infinite density. If they did, the idiots on CNN would have been right... they'd be sucking in the entire universe. Be careful when using the word "infinite". A blackhole has a finite mass and a finite radius. The singularity has no radius, but also has no mass. It's just the center of the gravity field of the entire object.

rm -r *

[mdsolar]

used to be the preferred method of data reduction.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing an argument and losing one simultaneously.

Re: rm -r *

[tysonedwards]

The theory itself states that information of what enters a black hole is itself retained, and due to the time dilation characteristics caused by the extreme gravity, said information would be present for eternity, even after the last hydrogen atom decays and the universe becomes a vast wasteland. While the matter is long gone, the energy remains and thermodynamics teaches us that the two are interchangeable. As such, the parent is making a facetious argument about how should a hard drive be thrown into a bl

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[mdsolar]

My point was that data reduction to the limit zero data used to be easy to do.

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[Hillgiant]

mv -f * /dev/null

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[FatdogHaiku]

Coming soon, the ability to retrieve the data from the event horizon should it be required again.

Oh sure, YOU can get your data from the event horizon... but YOU can not get back FROM the event horizon! So you need to pack a really strong USB cable...

Re: Backup your data now

[hAckz0r]

Your storage infinite device: 1) create a radio receiver that transcribes the incoming signal into a laser beam. 2) Drop it into a black hole. The data in the beam now becomes infinitely compressed as it tries to get to the event horizion. 3) Send it all your data. 4) pr0fet! Just make sure the EULA states that it is to be used only for perminant storage (as nothing ever comes back out of a black hole.)

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[tlhIngan]

Throw your storage devices into a black hole, and make sure that your data gets preserved for eternity.

  Coming soon, the ability to retrieve the data from the event horizon should it be required again.

Or, down on earth...

It's utterly trivial to write a backup program. Anyone can do it.

The hard part's writing the program to restore from that backup.

Re:

[sexconker]

how far is the nearest black hole? i mean, they would have to shoot the "laser"(read as dr Evil) and wait how long for the laser to reach the black hole? It should be some years. then, another years to receive the data from that black hole. is that correct?

Sssssh! You'll spoil their proposal for a research grant!

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[sconeu]

Depends on how fast the sharks travel.

Re:time lapse

[PPH]

I don't think they are proposing shooting a laser at a black hole (that might make it mad). The researchers are proposing a mechanism similar to what happens in a laser as a possible method for preserving information as it is simultaneously swallowed by the black hole. The problem remaining to be solved is one of figuring out if some of the radiation leaving the event horizon is produced by this process as opposed to a random process. In one case, information is preserved. In the other, not (no information was present to begin with).

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[mikael]

There was a theory that protons behave as subatomic black holes. Electrons can spin round them but can't enter. Just ionize some hydrogen gas, chill it down to near absolute zero to get an Einstein-Bose condensate and zap it with the lasers, then measure the returned signal.

http://www.energydigital.com/g... [energydigital.com]

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[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron

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[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get a straightforward Bose-Einstein condensate with protons, because they are fermions, while BECs form from bosons (which follow Bose statistics, the named after the same person BECs are named after too). You can form a ferimonic condensate, where the fermions pair off to form pairs that act like bosons, but those pairs are much larger physically than the constituent particles.

That said, the structure of protons are probed on vary small scales quite regularly, as that is essentially what is don

Re:

[davester666]

why even bother shooting it in a black hole. just shoot it NOT towards anything. then, when you need the data, just travel ahead of the beam and then read the data as it hits your sensor. of course, this is a read-once method for data retrieval.

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[Jeremy Erwin]

I saw on CNN that a black hole may have swallowed up flight 370 --about 2 minutes in. [cc.com] So the physicists may be luck.

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[michelcolman]

No, in that same video, an expert explained, "a small black hole would have swallowed up our entire universe, so we know it's not that". Thank god we have experts to clarify issues like that.

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[Jeremy Erwin]

Forget small black holes. There's a supermassive black hole right in our galaxy.

Re:

[Jeremy Erwin]

The Wire asks astronomers about it. [thewire.com]

Re:First post

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Time dilation is strong with this one...

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[rmdingler]

Well done.

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[rmdingler]

What's the friken' shark feel like when he falls into the black hole?

I mean, he's scared at first...who wouldn't be? But as long as you sling some tuna in behind him, it's turtles all the way down.

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[michelcolman]

What's the friken' shark feel like when he falls into the black hole?

Probably a lot like a whale or a pot of petunias would in the same situation.

Lasers, is there anything they can't do?

[newcastlejon]

It's probably nothing to do with black holes, but one of the pioneers of solid-state lasers was on The Life Scientific [bbc.co.uk] this morning. If it's available in your area it's well worth a listen.

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[Redmancometh]

Aaaand this is the most internet thing that has ever been said.

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[gstoddart]

What we all want is spaghettified laser sharks. Amiright!?

No no no, for a dish like that, you would use linguine with a cream+wine sauce, not spaghetti.

Now, if you want a red sauce, you'd make something more like a cioppino [wikipedia.org].

Do you people now know anything? ;-)

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[gstoddart]

Do you people now know anything? ;-)

Doh. "s/ now/ not/g"

Punchline fail. :-P

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[michelcolman]

And why exactly is it so impossible for matter to become an indistinguishable state? Why can't entropy go down in such extreme conditions? Sure, all our experiments in relatively low gravity seemed to conserve "information", but what gives us the right to extrapolate that to black holes?

It's not like the second law of thermodynamics is really a law anyway. It just says that normally, entropy is so unlikely to decrease spontaneously that, for all intents and purposes, we may safely assume it never does. As l

Lasers, storage, black holes

[woboyle]

"Throw your storage devices into a black hole and preserve your information forever." No backups necessary? So, how do you retrieve that file you lost that says you are the inheritor of a serious fortune? :-)

Re:

[michelcolman]

You just get it from the Hawking radiation. There's a bit of math involved and we aren't quite capable of actually doing it yet right now, but if you just wait in the vicinity of the black hole, mankind will figure it out for you in no time at all.

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[gstoddart]

but if you just wait in the vicinity of the black hole, mankind will figure it out for you in no time at all.

Sounds like a good place to send the 'B Ark'. ;-)

A common mistake

[Vincie]

The information absorbed from the matter that falls into the black hole must correspond to something existent, and given that nothing can be created or destroyed, even if something passes the event horizon, the corresponding information must remain. There must be an infinity of information dwelling in the nothingness of the cosmos! How else would we be able to be philodoxers? Since philodoxy cannot conceive of nothing, it necessarily follows that, in virtue of the mass doxaston, that there is an infinity of

Re:

[Pikoro]

Not the 1920s but that was a short story by Azimov called "Old Fashioned" published in 1976 I believe.

paradox?

[Black Parrot]

Is there any empirical evidence that information can't be destroyed?

If not, what would be the consequences of just ditching the law(?) that creates the paradox?

how do I know this and they dont?

[slashmydots]

Any particle that contains mass and energy (so basically all of them) that passes into a black hole does so at a slight angle. That changes the rotation just slightly on one direction. That alone may preserve information about what fell in. That theory is 10+ years old and still the most correct and provable. People just don't like how there's a 2 dimensional arc of possible entry vectors for any given particle so its "information" can't be reversed flawlessly to one single answer.

The holy grail of data storage

[JeremyWH]

Sharks with hard drives riding laser beams into black holes

Re:

[LeadSongDog]

Yeah, but the formula used to compress pi down to one bit sucks at compressing e.

Stimulated emission of particle/anti-particle pair

[mdsolar]

From the paper: "Note that as 2m anti-particles are stimulated behind the horizon in region II, particle number is conserved. We should also point out that because the incident particle carries energy and momentum, the black hole does not have to donate mass in order to allow the emission of stimulated pairs, as it does for virtual pairs." While stimulated emission of photons plays a big role in this, it is not really the physics of lasers.