The Information Paradox, which results from black holes seemingly consuming and destroying information while quantum physics deems the destruction of information impossible, may have been solved by none other than Stephen Hawking. No word yet on whether he had help from TARS or Matthew McConaughey.
Hawking’s solution is a (relatively) simple one: quantum information from particles that get sucked into the black hole never actually make it inside. In a Hawking Radiation conference talk yesterday at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, Hawking said, “I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole, as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon.”
The information lives on in the form of “super translations,” or two-dimensional holograms on the event horizon. However, the information is largely useless and wouldn’t help anyone send any morse code messages to their loved ones. “The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form,” Hawking said. “For all practical purposes, the information is lost.”
But for particles that manage to get inside the black hole, there may be hope: it could just lead to an alternate universe. Hawking said,
The hole would need to be large, and if it was rotating, it might have a passage to another universe. But you couldn’t come back to our universe. So, although I’m keen on spaceflight, I’m not going to try that.
(via LiveScience)
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