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Steven Hawking Loses Bet On Black Holes?
st1d writes "Looks like Steven Hawking might have to pay up on an old bet regarding black holes - seems his idea about them destroying information wasn't quite living up to his expectations: 'The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics.' He's due to make a formal announcement July 21."
It shows the character of the man - not only is he prepared to admit he was wrong, but will present detailed scientific proof of why he was wrong.
For a scientist of his stature to admint he was wrong is a credit to the man and the profession. Especially since he went and did the additional leg work (no pun) to validate the theory himself.
We are a long way from "proving" anything about black holes. All we are doing is producing theories that don't conflict too badly with the observed evidence. We're in the same position as 'scientists' in the middle ages describing planetary motion. They had a theory that accurately predicted the motion of the planets but that didn't mean that they understood the underlying process (ie. that the sun was the center of the solar system).
I think there are a few people of this stature in any field, just most of them are not as much in the public eye as Hawking.
I can think of any number of scientists in fields I'm vaguely familiar with that would be granted time to speak at a conference at short notice without much proof of what they are going to say.
However, *what* they say will still be up to intense scrutiny. There's nothing like proving an eminent scientist wrong or disproving an accepted theory to advance ones career in science...
Anyway, it's the same anywhere in society. If you have a good reputation, people will at least listen to you. They won't necessary agree, but they will be willing to listen...
This is not a dupe! The story from March was a group of scientists at Ohio State University which disputed Hawking's position. This story is about Hawking himself giving a paper at a conference in Ireland, where he will presumably give his latest views on the topic.
I'm a little surprised that the parent poster got moderated up for this. It's not "informative" (IMO of course) to just call something a dupe without checking.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
He already lost a bet related to the existance of black holes. Now this. No surprise.
He may be a genius, but I wouldn't want to be with him at a casino.
Does more water vapor in the air produce thin clouds or tall thick ones? There is a lot we don't know.
What are you on about? His reputation, in this case, is allowing him to speak at conferences without prior peer review. Speak. That's it.
It's not like it's going to be accepted as the 'currently known correct view' without peer review. It's just a talk.
And does he have any relation to Stephen Hawking?
How horribly wrong. To say we know 'nothing' about the universe is just false. We know TONS about it, especially the most important parts that directly affect us, such as Newtonian Physics. We know enough to escape orbit from our planet. The rest we can learn along the way.
I really hate it when people, standing on the shoulders of giants, have the nerve to say we know nothing. please speak for yourself.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
What ever happened to science? We truly live in an age where science fiction has become accepted as reality. Beam me up, Scotty!!
The thing about time travel is that if it is *ever* going to be possible then it has already happened in the future.
And if so then there would be time travellers all over the place right now.
Which of course always makes me think about Repo Man...
I've considered that line of logic that if time travel is possible it is *always* possible. It follows that since time and space are interwoven then time travel would require the ability to also travel *everywhere*. In other words, to have the ability to travel anywhere in time is the ability to travel everywhere in space.
Now, using that as a premise, shouldn't the earth resemble the seedy spaceport bar in Mos Eisley, Tattoine?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Maximal entropy = maximum number of corresponding microstates. The universe is in just one of those microstates, not any of the others, so in selecting that microstate the Hawking radiation does actually represent an real flow of information.
If this is enough to guarantee that the Second Law of thermodynamics is obeyed, as the previous poster suggested, ie that
then there's no really fundamental reason why the whole thing shouldn't be compatible with a more fine-detailed, deterministic quantum description for the whole process.Can anyone here confirm that second-law inequality ?
For a given amount of energy radiated, a black body spectrum represents the great possible entropy. I'm not sure whether you have confused yourself, or one of us has confused the other and we actually are in agreement. (I'm reasonably certain I have not confused myself!)
Except for that unitarity problem (and the superfluous word "rate" and the fact that it's greater than or equal, because the incoming energy may also be black-body), this is correct. And assigning to the black hole an entropy equal to 1/4 its surface area (times enough c's, G's, k's and h-bar's to make the units work out) makes the formula correct.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
Black holes cannot break apart; that's the upshot of the "area theorem" that Hawking proved. Anything colliding with a black hole just makes a bigger black hole. The only way a black hole can shrink is via Hawking radiation, but that can't cause the event horizon to split into two horizons.
The black hole does form in finite time, but you're right that you'll never observe it to form in finite time, because light from the formation of the event horizon never reaches you, by definition. You'll see the collapse proceeding slower and slower, but it will never look as if it finishes (although it really does). At least classically; quantum mechanically, there is a (rather short) finite time after which no more light will reach you, because only a finite number of photons can be emitted.
Not true. An observer who falls into the hole never sees the end of the universe (assuming the universe ends). See this FAQ (which also addresses your previous question).
In short, yes, black holes really form; it's just that you can't tell whether one has fully formed yet. (You could theoretically infer whether it has -- depending on your choice of surfaces of simultaneity, of course -- but that's not a direct experimental measurement.)