This is 60 seconds of science. I'm a woman.
Do you know anything about the black hole information paradoxes? Clara Moskowitz is our space and physics editor and she just edited an issue for Scientific American on black holes. Clara, I'd like to speak with you.
Thank you for having me.
Clara, what are we talking about?
The black hole information paradoxes has been a problem in physics for a long time. Black holes seem to violate the rules of physics. We have to use different theories to describe them. The two theories don't agree.
On the other hand, we have quantum mechanics, which describes the world of small particles. Most things in the world don't require either theory, and general relativity describes things that are very big, very massive, very large. Black holes are the most dense things in the universe.
They don't take up a lot of space but they have a lot of mass. Both theories are needed. Things go crazy when you combine quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Two rules of physics can't be applied.
Clara Moskowitz said that each one works well in its own way. We almost never have to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity in a single example, because quantum mechanics describes everything that's small and general relativity describes everything that's large. Black holes have a lot of mass and take up a lot of space. They don't work together when you combine them.
They don't work together.
When you combine the equations, they give infinities, so you don't get answers or calculations that you can use.
It is a sign that something isn't there. We don't know what we're talking about. We don't comprehend gravity. quantum mechanics works well with every other theory and force of nature electromagnetism can be described by quantum mechanics, but it can't describe gravity.
You have a tiny black hole and the gravity is strong. We don't have a theory to explain how a black hole works, and we don't know what's happening inside them.
How long ago did we know about the paradoxes?
The story begins with Steven Hawking in 1974. Black holes are leaking. Radiation was let out by them. Eventually they disappear because they get smaller and smaller. It sounds weird, but it's ok. Black holes can disappear and so can all the information about what happened.
The laws of physics are broken when that happens. Information can never be destroyed. When you shred an invoice or burn a book, you might think it's all over. If you knew the book ahead of time, you could follow the atoms and Molecules through the burning process to see where they all ended up.
Black holes are different from this one. There is no way to access the information that was once held if a black hole is destroyed. That is a contradiction.
Oh wow, Tulika Bose. There is new information and research. I want to know about it.
Clara Moskowitz is right Scientists have been trying to figure out what's going on and whether there's a way to save the information that's inside black holes for 50 years.
They have had a big breakthrough in the last few years. Several very mind bending concepts are involved in the breakthrough. One of them is a bridge that is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 These are things that can be done in space time. The rules of quantum mechanics are related to that.
Everything can happen. Is it possible that does happen? A particle does not just travel along a straight line from point A to point B.
When you apply this concept to black holes, you have to think about all of the possible arrangements of space and time. There are all of them. There is a chance that space time could be arranged in a way that1-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556
It is possible that the inside of a black hole is connected to the inside of another black hole through a wormhole. You have to accept this chance. Physicists have figured out this chance. A description of the amount of disorder gave a completely different answer to the equations that they used to describe black holes.
This is an island. This is the strangest thing we've discussed so far. There is a special region called an island in black holes. This region is both inside and outside of the black hole. Information within the island can escape the black hole's destruction, even if the black hole disappears. The paradoxes seemed to be resolved by this.
There are many unanswered questions. Physicists don't agree that this is the solution.
It shows how information can escape from black holes and points us towards a future where we can describe black holes with a physical theory.
In the September issue of Scientific American, we have a bunch of articles describing in detail all of the new ideas that we've been talking about, along with a really cool video that draws it out for you.
Thank you for listening to 60-second science. I'm a woman.
This is a transcript of the show.
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