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Famous Hawking Black Hole Bet Resolved?
Mick Ohrberg writes "In 1997 the three cosmologists Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne and John Preskill made a famous bet as to whether information that enters a black hole ceases to exist -- that is, whether the interior of a black hole is changed at all by the characteristics of particles that enter it. It now looks like Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne may owe John Preskill a set of encyclopedias of his choice, since physicists at Ohio State University 'have derived an extensive set of equations that strongly suggest that the information continues to exist -- bound up in a giant tangle of strings that fills a black hole from its core to its surface.'"
Steven had posited in the 70's that the black holes leak (Hawking radiation), but the paradox is that they radiate a 'black-body' spectrum (entirely thermal radiation) in inverse proportion to their mass (so as they get smaller, the radiation increases). The problem here is that all the information went in, but it's very difficult to infer information from a black-body radiated spectrum (!). Steven therefore thinks that information is lost forever.
:-). I don't think the fact that the string-theory radius matches the black-hole radius is sufficient to prove the case, though it's an interesting pointer, a curious coincidence if indeed it is such ...
:-)
The article though is a bit hand-wavy over why the information is preserved in this new theory... (I guess Nth dimensional maths doesn't appeal to the reporter
Effectively this is a conjecture - if the strings continue to exist, then they'd have the same size as the black hole appears to have. The throwaway statement " That means a black hole can be traced back to its original conditions, and information survives." seems a bit of a stretch though
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
and he looks really pissed about it too.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
"Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne may owe John Preskill a set of encyclopedias of his choice"
Do they take Wiki?
Is there any hard evidence that string theory is correct?
I'd be holding onto my bet a little longer I think=)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Yikes! Sounds like all information that enters a black hole turns into spaghetti code!!! The horror! The horror!
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
This all works on the assumption that you accept string theory in the first place. While string theory may be the darling of astro physicists at the moment, it remains far from proven. If I were Haking, I'd defer payment for a while.
Maybe the real workings of the universe can't be explained with everyday experiences. After all, quantum stuff and relativity has little bering on hunting, communicating and making little ones, and that's what our brains were designed to do.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
That means a black hole can be traced back to its original conditions, and information survives.
But, if the information about the origins is contained in the strings inside the black hole, that information is inside the event horizon, and can not be observed by anything outside the event horizon. Maybe the information survives, but there's no way to get at it... Unless I'm missing something here? Cosmologists?
-T
I say we send someone to find out for sure... Darl, you interested?
Now, I forgot what it was that I thought I knew.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
the information in the black hole, we'll finally find Amelia Earhart. And Jimmy Hoffa. And hundreds of millions of socks. And Duke Nukem Forever.
Sounds like the back of my desk!
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Maybe the real workings of the universe can't be explained with everyday experiences. After all, quantum stuff and relativity has little bering on hunting, communicating and making little ones, and that's what our brains were designed to do. :)
To me, it makes more sense that the real workings of the universe would be incredibly simple rather than complex. Not sure why, it just seems to make sense
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
I am a layman when it comes to physics, but let me put in my layman's two cents in...
Science normally deals with things that we observe, and scientists try to find out the whys and the hows. Once in a while, though there are things that are sometimes theoretically identified before, and it may be a while before such things are actually observed.
S
I found that in physics, going with 'common' sense or your gut was a good way to look stupid while making it obvious that you didn't review the lecture material the night before.
On the flip side, the math always did a hell of a job predicting the outcome of experiments.
FAT32 is a pretty good data singularity, goes in but won't come back out
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Jimbo Wales (founder / benevolent dictator of Wikipedia) was recently approached by a major publishing company about the possibility of a printed version of Wikipedia.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Why not consult Official String Theory Web site :)
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
*raises hand*
I don't understand this at all. Our everyday experiences are simply products of the "real workings" of the universe. You may think Newtonian physics suffices for what you need, but your "little ones" wouldn't be able to dream of being an astronaut, science professor, astronomer, or a myriad of other things without these other new-fangled theories.
When we achieve enough proficiency in our understanding to make accurate predictions, and validate them with observations, then publish them, have them scrutinized publicly and repeated, we're making vast improvements to the knowledge humanity holds. The fact that we're in so esoteric topics for new things at the moment just goes to show how valid this system is; we've built a cohesive worldview in physics down to the quantum level. There, mysteries abound, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be there.
Slashdot, where information goes to die.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have to change careers. These physicists (sp?) have just created the biggest manefestation of a quantom physics illustration ever (namely scrondiggers (sp?) cat). The black hole is the box, the information entering the event horizon is the cat. Anything at the singularity is not observable and is therefore in a permanent state of flux between states (not really, but our ignorance of what's going on creates that condition). When we make observation our predispositions on the data influence the observation and change the reality. In other words YOU CAN'T BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!
Is there some way I can get this gig?
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
Hawking has made several bets. You are thinking of his naked singularities bet (A naked singularity is a black-hole without event horizons) Hawking bet Roger Penrose(?) a subscription to Penthouse (I think) that they could not exist. He lost.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
A very tiny dimension all curled up on itself as opposed to extending to infinity (like we're typically familiar with). If a foam in a bubble bath is the whole universe, a bubble in the foam might be analogous to a string. Space is soap, we're not allowed to see it directly, but we can see its effect.
String theory has modest successes with some things, and monsterous problems with others. It's essentially built to explain why gravity is so weak. At distances smaller than strings gravity is as strong as all the other forces. But it doesn't overwhelm everything at large scales because gravity is the only force which can see the strings, and so it leaks off into these other dimensions untimately becoming very dilute.
The hope of theoreticall physicists is to unite gravity with the other forces, understanding everything about it's divergance, hopefully uniting quantum electro/chromodynamics with general relativity creating one theory to explain them all, and, in mathmatics, bind them.
I had a conversation about this very topic this afternoon. I even uttered the phrase, "Thank God black holes have no hair!" I'm glad I didn't bet on it.
On a side note, what would be a good bet for physics today? "I'll bet you the Google cache..."
And remember, not only am I president of the hair club for black holes, I'm also a client.
Here is an actual reproduction of the bet document you are thinking of:
Hawking/Thorne bet
Ain' the web grand?
Yeah, Stephen lost that one. Word has it that Kip's wife was a bit miffed about the payoff.
KFG
It is often... though not often enough... pointed out that the singular of "data" is not "anecdote".
.
Similarly, "fact" is not merely an emphatic form of "theory".
I might as well theorize that black holes don't exist at all; who owes what now? Oh, right, nothing changes, because theories aren't facts
Mick Ohrberg, why don't you grow out of Physics Fanboydom and take some time to learn some real stuff? For starters, why don't you being with Science 101 and learn the definition of "theory", and "equation", and other such basic terms?
The pictures prove it.
I love you, Stephen Hawking.
I can buy that the information survives and continues to exist inside the Schwarzchild radius.
... they're going to have to explain a bit harder just how it is we're supposed to be able to extract that information back out through the event horizon. Whether it continues to vibrate on linked strings or vanishes in a puff of nonreality makes no never mind if you can't get it back out.
But when they say:
"The strings from any subsequent material that enters the black hole would remain traceable as well. That means a black hole can be traced back to its original conditions, and information survives."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Maybe it exists on the other side of the event horizon, but I thought string theory tells us that things like event horizons shield the universe from singularities and other discontinuities. The information cannot be retreived, therefore, from the point of view of the universe, it has ceased to exist.
What's the difference, really, between destroyed information and irretrievable information?
--- Ban humanity.
Actually that was a different bet between Thorne and Hawking which Hawking conceded to Thorne years ago. It was a bet on whether Cygnus X1 was in fact a black whole. Hawking bet it wasn't and Thorne bet it was. Hawking said he really did think it was a black hole but he wanted to win something if he was wrong so as to be less depressed about it.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
"It will be a big piece of fun" (talking about deriving equations)
"thats a rather large force" (after mentioning that the force to pull two pieces of a capacitor apart could lift the city of columbus)
If you get a chance to meet him, don't pass it up. He's a great guy
Perhaps the information survives in the black hole interior. Physics infers a black hole by an event horizon, but that does not necessarily imply a singularity. On the other hand, if the interior is considered as a "universe" with its own set of physical laws and structure, this conjecture could be quite relevant.
For a somewhat handwaving explanation of what I'm talking about, take a look at this hypothesis.
Peace and love, y'all
Decompression support expected in next WinZip release.
Canthros
However, there is no proof that any of the information survives, after being caught up in red tape. Indeed, all evidence so far suggests that it does not.
(Beurocracy particles are a subclass of Strange Quarks that have beeen influenced by a politic Ion)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You are missing something.
Noone doubted the energy continued to exist.
The bet concerned the patten of information held by the matter/energy. The questions was if you encoded something in a patten of laser light and sent that into the black hole would the encoded information continue to exist? ( given that no record of the data sent exists except that encoded in the light. )
Google for holographic universe, it's interesting stuff.
Part of the problem is the language used to describe these things.. the general approximations they make only really make sense if you understand a lot more background..
On the surface this might all seem like philosophical banter... but that's just what the news prints. What is behind this is tons of chalkboards and computers full of equations that fit modern theory.
Remember, we don't HAVE a theory of everything yet... i'ts not like everything is perfect, and scientists are trying to make things up to look smart.. there is a point where our current equations don't add up, don't make sense.. and that's where these guys are working now.
superstrings, quantum gravity, etc.. these aren't whimsical sci-fi dreams.. they are where science is currently trying to figure things out.
"What's the most expensive encyclopedia you've ever seen?"
I actually recently responded to a similar accusation against physicsists, and you can read my reply here . That response has more examples listed of 'kludges' in physics, but I'll talk about a few in more depth in this post.
What you've just described is known as phenomenology. In other words, trying to come up with some sort of basic theory to match the given data. Examples include Planck's original quantizing of radiation into discrete quanta, which turned out to be right. Another example is the Landau theory of 2nd-order phase transitions, where one builds a power-series expansion of the free energy in powers of something called the 'order parameter'. This is a total hack, but in many cases can adequately describe phase transitions (including superconductivity).
In fact, there are many kinds of physics theories, some termed 'macroscopic' in which case they're phenomonoligical, and describe what's going on, but don't adequately describe the 'physics' of the system. Then there's the microscopic theories that talk specifically about particle interactions, and follow directly from quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, E&M, etc. The goal is to make these two approaches mesh.
For example, superconductivity could be described fairly well using the Ginzberg-Landau expansion, where the order parameter described above is complex, instead of real. Many things can be described this way, including Josephson Junctions and fluxoid quantization of superconducting loops. (Ginzberg just won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003. Landau, if he were still alive, would have probably won it too, and it would have been his 2nd physics nobel prize). This approach worked fairly well, but physicists weren't sure why that was.
But then in 1957 Bardeen/Cooper/Schrieffer came up with the BCS theory of superconductivity, which explicitly describes how the electrons can pair up into Cooper pairs. Electrons want to repel, but in the right crystal lattice an electron-phonon-electron interaction (ie, a local distortion of the lattice) can produce an attractive interaction. BCS describe how this attraction comes about, how the energy gap forms, and how the electron pairs can carry a resistanceless supercurrent. BCS won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972.
This was microscopic vs macroscopic development of superconductivity. Two years later, physicist Gor'kov was able to show that the Ginzberg-Landau theory comes as a limiting case of the BCS theory. Hence, microscopic meets macroscopic, and everybody's happy.
So yes, physicists do look for something to fit the problem, but they don't just stop there. They also try to make those hacks or kludges match up directly from physical laws of the universe. That's what physics is about.
make world, not war
> As far as accuracy - that will come with time.
My faith in that is starting to slip. I recently ventured out into some pages I hadn't previously been watching, and found several pages whose history shows that they have a k00k "squatter" who watches the page and insists on sticking his idiocy back in no matter how many people come along and correct it, whingeing all the while that everyone else is pursuing some dishonest agenda.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Second: I can't see how you can possibly test any of this.
If you can't test it, then it's just a likely story. It might be a more likely story than saying little green elves did it all, but in essence, it;s not that different.
Tangles of strings - Suuuure.
As I said, it probably is true, and string theory is a lot cleaner, but damn - what are you going to do? Crack open a black hole to find out?
We. don't. think. so.
It strikes me as what Horgan calls "Ironic Science".
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This is where your mistake lies. The very foundation of the black hole is in it's mind boggling mass density. The absolute mass is important only in formation, because with too little mass gravitational forces are not able to compress matter enough to create the black hole.
You could get a black hole (complete with event horizon and Hawking radiation) by compressing earth into a radius less than about 9mm. Indeed, the less mass a black hole has, the smaller it is, and the larger the space curvature is on it's event horizon. Therefore all effects coming from space curvature are stronger for them, which also includes Hawking radiation. This especially means that finally black holes "explode": the more it radiates, the faster it gets smaller, and therefore it radiates even more in even shorter time scales, until it radiated it's complete mass away.
Of course, as soon as the black hole gets down to a size near the planck length (a mindboggling small length where quantum gravity effects are huge), we already know that all semiclassical reasoning must fail, therefore we cannot really say anything about what will happen at the last moment of a black hole, until we have a successfull theory of quantum gravity (or have watched black holes exploding, of course).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.