Stephen Hawking Believes He’s Solved A Huge Mystery About Black Holes - WaPo

[WillyT]

Stephen Hawking believes he’s solved a huge mystery about black holes
Rachel Feltman - WaPo
August 25 at 5:58 AM

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On Tuesday, famed physicist Stephen Hawking presented new theories on black holes to a crowd of esteemed scientists and members of the media at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Hawking focused on something called the information paradox, which continues to puzzle scientists who study black holes. In a nutshell, the paradox involves the fact that information about the star that formed a black hole seems to be lost inside it, presumably disappearing when the black hole inevitably disappears. These things cannot be lost, according to the way we think the universe works, and physicists generally believe that they aren't really lost. But where does the information go when the black hole that's absorbed it goes kaput?

It's brainy stuff, but without an explanation for the apparent paradox, some of the most basic laws we think exist in the universe are at stake. At a public lecture in Stockholm on Monday, Hawking implied that our concept of time itself could fall apart if black holes proved to be exempt from such laws.

On Tuesday, he explained his new theory: "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon," Hawking said. The event horizon is the sort of shell around a black hole, past which all matter will be drawn into the dense object's powerful embrace.

According to Hawking's idea, the particles that enter a black hole leave traces of their information on the event horizon. When particles come back out — in a phenomenon called Hawking Radiation — they carry some of that information back out, preserving it. Technically, anyway.

"The information is stored in a super translation of the horizon that the ingoing particles [from the source star] cause," he explained, for those of you who like a little more physics lingo. "The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form. For all practical purposes the info is lost."

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More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/25/stephen-hawking-believes-hes-solved-a-huge-mystery-about-black-holes/

[Silent3]

1. I'd still trust a black hole to work nicely as a document shredder. n/t

[BlueJazz]

2. That thieving bastard ! I was on the phone with him a couple of weeks ago explaining MY new idea..

...and he stabs me in the back. Glory hound.

[bananas]

3. What's new about that idea?

That idea has been around a long time.

[Hoppy]

4. I'm still trying to figure how to get messages off my answering machine.

[FlatBaroque]

5. My VCR has been blinking 12:00 for 34 years