‘Quantum hair’ could resolve Hawking’s black hole paradox, say scientists

The fundamental laws of physics have been questioned by some scientists because of Stephen Hawking's black hole information paradoxes. Scientists say they may have solved the problem by showing that black holes have hair.

This would be a huge advancement in theoretical physics.

The leader of the work said that his team made a rapid advance last year that gave them confidence that they had finally cracked the problem.

Calmet said that it was assumed within the scientific community that resolving the paradoxes would require a huge paradigm shift in physics.

The rules of quantum physics state that information is conserved. Black holes pose a challenge to this law because once an object enters a black hole, it is essentially gone for good. For decades it has been difficult for scientists to understand the paradoxes.

There have been many proposed solutions, including a firewall theory in which information was assumed to burn up before entering a black hole. The laws of quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity are the two pillars of modern physics.

The quantum hair theorem claims to resolve the paradoxes by using a new mathematical formula.

Classical physics says black holes can be viewed as simple objects, defined only by their mass and speed of rotation. The no-hair theorem has been used for the prediction of black holes.

Calmet thinks the black hole is hairy. They suggest that as matter collapses into a black hole, it leaves a small mark in the field. The mechanism by which information is preserved during the collapse of a black hole is provided by this imprint. Two black holes with the same mass but different internal composition would have different gravitational fields.

Calmet said that their solution doesn't require any speculative idea, instead their research shows that the two theories can be used to make consistent calculations for black holes and explain how information is stored without the need for radical new physics.

It's not possible to test the theory through observations because the fluctuations are too small. The theory is likely to come under scrutiny.

Calmet said that when you have a big claim you have to back it up. It will take some time for people to fully accept this. There are a lot of famous people who have been working on this for a long time.

The work is in a journal.