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Hawking Gracefully, Formally Loses Black Hole Bet
Liora writes "Today at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Cambridge University professor Stephen Hawking said in his talk titled The Information Paradox for Black Holes that he was wrong about the formation of an event horizon in a black hole, and that matter is not destroyed in a way defying subatomic theory, as he had previously believed. According to the talk's short, "the way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon." A New York Times story and a Wired story are available, both apparently based on Reuters information." (This is the formal announcement promised last week.)
I once asked the Slashdot editors why they didn't replace reg-required NYT links with reg-free links. They pointed out that there is a chance that the NYT could get its panties in a wad, and do something stupid. Lawsuits, goatse redirects, the works. Lawsuits... that would just be wrong!
Anyway, here's the obligatory reg-free link:
Are you looking at ME?
(Courtesy of these fine folks)
Hawking Gracefully, Formally Loses Black Hole Bet
Does that have anything to do with the GNAA?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I can't believe that the editors have stooped to this level. We have come to an age where people can share information without being harassed about their physical mishaps, however the people who deliver this very information still find a way to make fun of others disablities.
Sig: I stole this sig.
You know you wanna bang it!
I've been hearing about this for like 4 days now... Is Slashdot turning into a News Black Hole?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
LOL @ Hawking
LOL @ 9/11
LOL @ WTC
LOL @ Jews
Jews did WTC!
It's great to see such an eminent scientist willingly admit that he was wrong, or at least only partially right. It seems that all too often the path that people and organizations choose is to deny, spin, and turn things on their heads to avoid embarassment. Hawking showed he is a good sport, proving not only does he have a brilliant mind, he is a classy person as well.
Cricket is superior? I guess that is an easy claim to make if you are a certified genius. I prefer watching sports I can actually understand, thank you very much.
Hank! White!
how do they actually know for certain what goes on in black holes?
aren't there just mere hyoptheses? gedanken?
maybe i should stop thinking about this and start thinking about work...
---- Design. Invent. Cheese.
Wasted the good part of his later life trying to disprove theories that are pretty much known to be true today.
Wired says: The best-selling author of "A Brief History of Time"
;-)
I didn't know hawking sold so well
Anyway, to be on topic - can someone give more technical information on this? Many of us probably have a fairly high understanding of maths and physics, and want more details...
I really don't understand why the bet sneaks into every headline about this story. Why are humans so obsessed with who was right and wrong? That we have the information is all that really matters...
...that was the best thing I had going for me. It's what got me through the day. What do I have to look forward to now? Nothing, that's what!
Is he still getting beaten up by his wife? Its always heartbreaking when a leading physicist is abused at the hands of a female loved one. Oddly enough, such things never happen to chemists or biologists. Go figure....
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
By the way, who's the honey giving him the hand jobs? She earns every penny. Ick.
"The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon."
That man is way too smart to be a human.
-matt
Or else they'll send someone to break his knee caps, or the wheels on his chair.
Userfriendly.org had a funny take on the payment of this bet.
Well, at least you've still got that alternate reality you live in. ;)
http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7193 474
Now who sent something into a black hole, and observed what happened? No one. One theory has been replaced by another theory, but neither has been tested, and neither can be tested. No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney!
How ya like dat?
So, does this mean that you cant go to hell, and back, bringing god knows what into our universe? What a rip off!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
In between beatings from his wife, he figured out he was wrong. I'll bet he lowers the seat now too (however it works for him).
I'm probably not alone in that my understanding (flawed as it is) of the Theory of Relativity, Quantum physics, and other Big Science Questions is based almost entirely on "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell". Well, that and "Cosmos" :-). But in those two books, he does an excellent job of explaining, well, *the universe* in a way that even I can understand. And that is no mean feat! So hats off to Hawking, may you lay down the phat beats for many more years to come!
The fact that eminent physicists had a long-standing bet on this subject is an indicator to the rest of us about the question's importance and difficulty.
Send someone in on a string. Give it a good hard tug.
If they come out ok - black holes are cool and can spit out matter.
If they come out mangled, or you're left with a frayed end on said string, black holes are not cool and best stayed away from...
Well... Obviously he's going to loose gracefully. Its not like he can get up and start yelling at the other guy. His chair probably doesn't even have an "Angry" voice
The movie The Black Hole was about hell too - and a cool robot ends up being the devil - this may mean that the devil will take take the shape of a cool robot either! Dang!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Remember it well. It will get you out of a jam every time.
... because there's just no way the whole disagreement--and its resolution--could possibly based on the mathematics of black holes, or anything, right?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
No in a black hole the matter (or in this case energy) gets transferred into "503 Service Unavailable" and stuck in a consistant loop until a new event horizon is formed.
Wow - a whole encyclopedia on a baseball ? It must be printed at subatomic scale.
Fry: Hey! Stephen Hawking! Aren't you that physicist who invented gravity?
Hawking: Sure. Why not?
Fry: Let me ask you something. Has anyone ever discovered a hole in nothing with monsters in it? [Hawking's eyes widen in horror.] 'Cause if I'm the first, I want them to call it a "Fry Hole."
Later:
Fry: So what do you nerds want?
Nichols: It's about that rip in space-time that you saw.
Hawking: I call it a "Hawking Hole."
Fry: No fair! I saw it first!
Hawking: Who is The Journal Of Quantum Physics going to believe?
Interesting note: Apparently Stephen Hawking did provide his voice for that episode.
Hawking is a con artist who believes in time travel. There are neither black holes not wormholes. It's all a con game. None of the voodoo physics stuff that Hawking has been working on is of any consequence or value.
I've never really understood why people thought black holes were the gateways to parallel universes, it's a bit like saying "Look! There's a hole where you get crushed infinitely and light doesn't escape, it must be a way out!" which strikes me as rather odd...
Hopefully though, there'll be different kinds of holes in the universe - the kinds that are more like doors and let you come and go freely without the need to switch on the headlights and crack open the paracetamol...
So now all those aliens that got sucked into black holes in the seventies will be back in future Startrek etc episodes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The Bush Administration was actually the first to find a practical application for this model of a black hole, where information goes in and eventually comes out mangled and unrecognizable. It's obviously how they processed the CIA's intel on Iraq prior to the invasion.
(This is the formal announcement promised last week.)
Great! Now they are programming dupes one week in advance...
Oh damn, that means there's gonna be a sequel to Event Horizon... :o(
A bit pathetic, selling lies for 20 years, then flip-flopping with something even more fantastic (and even uncheckable).
The Bible is unshakable in its true creation story. Yes, I know - let the flames come.
But before you do, you are all logic-thinking guys (so am I), so you will admire facts that at the very least question if evolution theory is valid as a mere theory. Check this out before you flame and be bold enough to use your brains, not your emotions:
http://www.modomedia.com/quantum/index.html
God has made the earth, the heavens and everything on it. Even us, humans. That's humiliating eh?
2004-07-16 23:06:13 Steven Hawking changes tune on black holes (Science,Space) (rejected)
i'm sure no one wanted to read about this 5 days ago...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
The NYT one is more accurate.
"Don't forget the prunes." L. Francis Herreshoff
I was actually trying to point out some irony. This guy bashes people who are hard nosed, and Einstein was one of them. I'm willing to bet this guy wouldn't have put Einstein in that group of people that refuse to give up on their idea even in the face of evidence that points the other way.
For those grammatically declined I'll explain it to you with an analogy. It's like when you were in high school and used mirrors to peek around the corner into the girl's locker room. The naked chick in the mirror is the APPARANT horizon. The naked chick that kicks the testes back inside your body shortly after DOES NOT EXIST.
Also, just for laughs (ok...hopefully for mod points too, I admit) Hawking is also a freaking awesome DJ and serial killer on the side. All my Shootin's be driveby's
Wu's site has other cool stuff to see too. (not a plug, just want to give credit to where the song is downloaded from)
since my job has disappeared inside a black hole
and I still don't see any trace of it.
Your ego is Matrix!
He just "marketed" his theory before validating it. What happens when his paper comes out and people find a flaw in the calculations?
A great one knows when he is wrong.
Would anyone care to dumb down his point a bit?
How can this be possible? I thought the whole point of black holes being 'black' was because they had a spherical boundary the crossing thereof would result in an escape velocity greater than C.
How can something like that only be apparent?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Hawking, this is John Preskill. I want my 20 bucks you ignorant, gimped out, wheelchair bound, drip-drip-drip-drooling APE NOSED NIGGER.
You know where to send it.
MC Hawking could not be reached for comment.
/jk
Then comes the nonsense - he says, sum over both (a reasonable thing to do in a Euclidean gravity path integral) and that's unitary... huh??? You add unitary to non-unitary, and sorry, buddy, you get non-unitary...
The only way it would make sense is if you never sum over BH spacetimes, but that's not what he says, and anyway it would mean there are no BHs.
Anyway, if you want a coherent, and probably correct discussion, see http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0106112
Who the hell edited the hed? Get this straight: "gracefully" losing would involve Hawking doing pirouettes and somersaults in his electric wheelchair whilst wearing a pink tutu. I believe the word we're looking for is "graciously"!
I'm usually not a language-nazi but, sorry, in this case the conflation projects an unforgivably ridiculous image!
Welcome to good science.
They only said parallel universes there is actualy only one. Just think somewhere out there there is a parallel straponego wearing a cowboy hat.
From the Rueters article pubished by wired...
For over 200 years, scientists have puzzled over black holes, which form when stars burn all their fuel and collapse, creating a huge gravitational pull.
Now I'm no scientist, but 200 years of black holes seems like they're giving the issue more duration than history warrants. I thought the concept of a 'black hole' was a consequence of Einstein's relativity work (general, special I can never remember which is which... think it's general).
Am I wrong and just missed a whole bunch of science history?
Cheers!
SCB
Technically, the article said Hawking said that black holes do not lead to another universe. So if you want to think that there are other universes, you just have to look elsewhere.. String theory posits high dimensionality and "universes next door"; I'll remain parallel universe agnostic for the moment, but Hawking's point seems to have been that black holes do not eat information, and so they return the matter to the universe, and so he says, black holes are not an exit. If Hawking said definitively that our universe was the only existence, I would listen but I think unless we actually poke a hole into another universe with funky clues like, only 2 spatial dimensions (we could just be making a tesseract) or something, parallel universes will remain mostly philosophical.
Summary: Parallel universes aren't ruled out (at least by this article) so keep dreaming big! We'll need those other universes when entropy runs out in this one. Even better, ask someone who knows string theory whether the idea of multiple universes would be ruled out IF Hawking is right. Remember, he just lost a bet. He may be sure this time, but who's to say some bright kid 200 years from now won't have a different perspective... blah blah hypothetical
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Unuseless over all.
Umm, "gracefully" can refer to non-physical actions. Haven't you ever heard of grace under fire?
Apparently,Heisenberg was once asked by a journalist that was it true that only two people in the world understood the quantum theory.And Heisenberg asked who is the other person.
Wanted : A Signature.
We've known for a long time that whether you observe something to fall into a black hole or not depends on your reference frame. That is, if you are riding along with the object falling in, you will pass the event horizon with it and be crushed at the singularity in a finite amount of your time (proper time). However, if you observe something falling into the black hole from a safe distance beyond the event horizon, you will never see it fall in - although you also won't see anything after a short while, since the light from the infalling object becomes redshifted exponentially in time... (indeed black holes used to be called frozen stars for this reason). I am assuming that Hawking has shown working in a reference frame outside the black hole, that the faint radiation (the average wavelength is about the size of the black hole itself, and a solar mass black hole has a radius of about a kilometer) emerging from the black hole is affected by the wavefunction of the particles that have fallen in. I've also heard some people have doubts about using Euclidean path integral method (need to have time t go to i*t so that -t^2 -> t^2, i.e. time becomes another space like coordinate), and I'm looking forward to reading the paper. There are other papers out on this stuff - here's one by Stephens, 't Hooft and Whiting.
All Abstract Structures of Objects and their Relationships exist.
I seem to recall that one involved singularities as well..
Twenties Retirement
I always wondered if the people in the movie survived, but Hawking's theory left me with no hope.
I'm so relieved to know there's a chance they survived!
Some people who deal with him say he is difficult and arrogant.
He has been debating the issue for 30 years, and only now has he changed his mind. It took a lot of other evidence for him to change his theory, and it was a hot debate all the way. Hey, he made a bet of honor and stood by his opinion until others proved (to his own satisfaction) he was wrong.
That is what dealing with people in his realm of intelligence can be like. It may not always be pleasant and it may take a long time to get them to admit they are wrong.
But he is probably a nicer person than Newton.
...so I imagine that once the event horizon in my clothes dryer collapses I will get back all of my missing socks? ;)
You can still believe in paralell worlds via the "Many Worlds" interpetation of Quantum Physics. This just says that Black Holes probably don't lead to them.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
The man is reputed to have sold more books about physics than Maddona has about sex.
A fairly impressive achivement really.
I don't pretend to understand things I don't... "He now believes that black holes may allow information to get out." What does information mean in that context?
Dr. Hawking is perhaps the most briliant living physicist. From all accounts he has many sterling qualities, and I admire him. However, his various disabilities prevent him from being "graceful" by most meanings of the word. In his chosen environment, we can ignore his physical impairments and evaluate him objectively. In this environment, at this time, he was "gracious", not "graceful."
Trailer is right here Site: www.mchawking.com
Sig: I stole this sig.
What Hawking seems to be saying to me is that since the matter never enters the hole from the perspective of an observer outside the hole, the information is never lost. Does this make sense?
Steven N. Severinghaus
This stuff is just awesome to think about. Here's some rambling. If anything makes sense I'd appreciate some feedback.
I hold that quantum theory is entirely a guess based on possibilities because we currently cannot (and perhaps never can) get true facts on the matter so that real analysis cannot be done. I don't know if anyone has any objections to this but I'm not sure if people realize it.
Take any level of physics, and only allow yourself to view it from a level above. You can come up with some good guesses as to how things will work which might have a very high degree of accuracy even 100%, but you are really just guessing. A simple example is that modern theory states that any two solid objects can pass through each other without interfering with each other at all-- it's just extremely improbable.
As a parallel: If you look at any scene in a 2 dimensional perspective you'll see objects passing through each other all the time (behind and in front although to 2d it's the same space). Now if the universe was 2d we could say that everything exists on the same 2d plane and any objects passing through each other is known to be impossible, but we know there's a 3rd dimension so to us it's entirely possible, even though everything in that universe is on the same plane. Well everything in this universe is in the same space, that is, they are all on the same 4th, 5th, 6th etc dimensional coordinates-- but that can just as easily change.
A 1 dimensional basic has 2 points connected by one line.
A 2 dimensional basic has 3 points, connected by three lines, encompassing one face.
A 3 dimensional basic has 4 points, connected by six lines, encompassing four faces, containing one space.
Guesses? A 4 dimensional basic has (5?) points, connected by (10?) lines, encompassing (5?) faces, containing (3?) spaces, bounding 1 thingy?
I know I'm not the only person who has tried to mentally vision higher order shapes!
The worst pun I have ever read on /.
For the many lexically challenged compatriots among us:
"Hawking"
noun: selling goods for a living.
verb: to peddle goods aggressively, especially by calling out.
As a long time science fiction fan, i can say that I find that part about black holes not forming links betweek universes fascinating. But what I really want to know is; what does his new math say about the blackholes first cousin, the wormhole? Does the wormhole still exist but the new math taking away the wild, wild possibility of time travel? Or maybe make wormholes easier to traverse/contruct? I'm actually willing to give up time travel stories, if faster than light travel via wormholes becomes more feasible.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
"turingintoo" that's the new linux distro runs on a 1953 NCR adding machine. "Rock solid" as the saying goes.
.... the US "louisville slugger" baseball bat in cricket-dom? Might need that bit of trivia in another post someday..or on Jeopardy...or something
thankee kindly
One person wants "handicap". Another person would demand "disability" or, rarely, "crippled". Some PC folks go for crap like "special needs", "challenged", "differently abled", and so on. Then these people assume that they don't get along so well because of the injury/birthdefect/disease/whatever, never considering their own attitude about it.
You have a good attitude. It'll take you far and serve you well.
We all know about your handicap - as a matter of fact you probably already receive a few emails every day telling you how you can enl arg3 You rpen is.
Not even going to pretend to understand Hawking's latest result, but the black hole information paradox that the bet was originally about is pretty straightforward to explain:
The original GR picture of a black hole is one in which nothing within the event horizon has any causal connection with anything outside. Once something falls in, it's lost to the rest of the universe forever, there's no way it can send you any information. So basically lots of information would end up inside a black hole and not be able to get out. This was not in itself a problem.
However Hawking came up with Hawking radiation - the idea that black holes actually radiate, losing their energy (hence their mass), eventually evaporating completely. As I (don't really) understand it, Hawking radiation is a solution that arises from modelling quantum field theory in the region of the event horizon (there's a hand-wavy version which talks about particle-antiparticle pairs, but it's pretty unsatisfying IMHO). It hasn't been witnessed and isn't likely to be any time soon (Hawking radiation would be swamped in the radiation due to matter heating up as it spirals into a black hole), but the theory seems quite widely regarded as sound.
So it seems the energy that falls into the black hole eventually leaves again via Hawking radiation. The problem though is that this radiation is purely blackbody - it's just a thermal spectrum that gives you no information about the properties of what fell into the hole. Throw in a dictionary or a rock of the same mass - the Hawking radiation which eventually comes out looks the same. It looks like the information is lost forever
This is in direct conflict with quantum mechanics which states that the evolution of physical systems is unitary - information about previous states is never lost (however hard it may be in practice to retrieve it). The conflict itself is not necessarily a big shock - people already knew that GR and QM weren't fundamentally compatible as they stood. But the question remained as to whether the information was really lost or not. This is what the bet was about (incidentally John Preskill whom it was with started out as a particle theorist, became very interested in the information paradox question, and through that moved into primarily researching quantum information theory - quantum computers and the like) and what Hawking claims to now have answered.
Hope you enJoy our Hawking comic... A Brief History of the Internet. :)
:-)
and be sure and do the JoyPoll, we've added a bonus Al Gore cameo.
See if I'm understanding this right.... A blackhole is the cosmic equivalent of a blender and pressure cooker, and the contents are way overcooked? The composition has to be the same, but the form is completely changed? Or is he saying we may eventually be able to determine the original form as well?
mass and energy. though science fiction based on Hawking's new theory probably won't be as entertaining as the previous theory (wormholes vs matter and light remain matter and light), it's good to see a physical constant proven to be true.
"There are many things that are known and things that are unknown; in between is exploration."
FWIW I'm a graduate in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and also studied Philosophy of Science (to a basic level) at Uni ... but call me a troll if you like. Hey call me anything it's late and I can't hear you!!
... oops, moving on]. Why not? It's a reasonable theory, is it falsifiable, I guess it is. But, you say, the Earth moves round the Sun and so the Earth can't be the centre of anything ... here's where Occam comes in and falls on his face. Yeah, the maths is hard if you consider the Earth to be static, but just because the maths is more beautiful in one formation does that make it more true??
:0)>
A theory is just a 'guess'. A very educated guess that has yet to be proved wrong. For it to be scientific I believe it must be provably falsifiable.
This kind of stems from my general belief that current theories work well and are mutually consistent (in the standard models and moreso) but are not necessarily "the truth".
[climbs on hobby-horse]
Consider the oft-repeated tale of people in the middle-ages believing that Jerusalem is the centre of the Universe. [Apart from that being a bit of a historical urban myth based on our assumptions having seen maps with Jerusalem at the centre! - prove me wrong reference a work that states "we believe jerusalem to be the physical centre of the universe"
[/off hobby horse]
Anyway Bob, the theories have been tested. Great. They are sound. But are they true? Are photon energies genuinely quantised, perhaps as science develops this "theory" will be a historical side-note like the greeks atom (meaning indivisable)? How can we say that quarks are primal matter at one stage and be "right" yet at a later date we decide that we have superstrings, then later m-branes. Are all these theories "right" by you? [Sorry can't think of alternates for GR, my mind is not that inventive].
PS: Your theory on Asian children is false. My friend Aleem can't do maths very well
...he could do a full spread for Playgirl mag. With such a famous person they ought to sell a ton of mags and I bet that would pay handsomely.
You say that you are a Christian but you are not. That makes you a liar. Is it perhaps that you do want to claim salvation, but apart from that you hate God? Jesus says that he who does not believe the Word does not know Him. And that person has never believed. You are deceiving yourself dude. Be honest - you are just a non-believer who - for whatever reason - tries to associate himself with Christ. But that does not mean Christ knows you.
Christ does not know you.
What's doody is not the equations of GR or SR, but the model of reality that is extrapolated from such math. Similar to Newtonian physics (which is still used to put stuff in orbit around Saturn), the space time described by GR may not be reality. Ptolemy's equations did a great job of describing orbits, but was it real? I don't argue with the accuracy of GR but the model used to describe it is probably wrong. It is an awesome approximation, but one that has problems (such as singularities, and other infinite results). Can all points in space-time exist if you take into account all possible moving observers in the universe(Einstein's math says yes)? If so are you willing to give up free will (not that I believe there is free will, just arguing here)? Anyway, when people say Einstein = poopy, they are not complaining about the math, they are complaining that the picture of the universe painted by Einstein may not be entirely correct.
If the explanation is accurate then I must say it's the only one that I understood and that intuitively makes sense to (as much as anythingthat touches GR ever does). If you haven't read it yet or just scrolled past it I suggest you give it a read.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
While your basic point about physics and math seems right, I would just add that ease of use is still a consideration in math. We're lucky not to have to use Newton's notation for calculus (with its "fluxions") or Schwinger's for QED.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I wonder if this latest pronouncement is related to my long held belief that the idea of Hawking radiation seems to contradict the notion of a black hole. If a BH can radiate energy and loose mass, how can one form. The rate at which a BH sheds mass is inversly related to the radius of the event horizon. For a black hole to form it would have start with an infitessimal radius which could support huge emmisions and mass losses, that would shed the mass that is needed to create the event horizon. It seems that there could be a region where mass densities are only able to reach the verge of creating event horizons.
(i'm agnostic or something, definitely not xtian though)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The poster is pointing out the fact that the "theory" IS RIGHT to more than enough precision in the things we've looked at so far.
When you finally find the areas where it diverges from reality, the previously tested correct results WILL NOT CHANGE.
Just because Newtonian mechanics is discovered to be "wrong" dosen't mean that all the bridges we built will come crashing down. Its still perfectly fine for use on everyday problems like figuring out how a car will move. Its even good enough for calculating orbital paths for our interplanetary probes.
Sure, its not absolutely right... but its not very wrong!
Absolute Truth in a theory is not required and is probably not possible.
So matter (dense energy) is converted to information and sprayed out of the black hole. Does the newly accurate mathematical model offer any insight into an equivalence formula for Energy and Information, along the lines of E = mc^2? How many bits to the joule?
--
make install -not war
Dr. Hawking has solved a rather famous problem in astrophysics. That he lost a bet in the process is hardly a slight. As far as I can tell he is quite a gentleman, but even a complete egomaniac would make an announcement like this, since it's much more of a victory than a defeat.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
... by someone who doesn't know physics.
t ml)
The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.
The Euclidean path integral is the latest trick in quantum gravity.
The original problem with quantum gravity was that as you "quantitized" space into discrete units, explaining gravity in terms of particles like 'gravitons' and trying to do the math was possible for simplistic interactions like tree diagrams where time generally flowed one way - but extremely hairy and full of infinities if you started looking at loop diagrams where time can flow both ways.
So people like Roger Penrose came at it from a different direction, starting off with definining space-time in a quantitized manner (spin networks, quantum foam, whatever you want to call it) which had the side effect that complex examples of spin networks acted a lot like 3-dimensional Euclidean space.
Once people started talking about space-time like this, math started showing up that helped describe events and the progression of events in this space-time, including the Euclidean path integral which attempts to measure the end result of an interaction of particles in this type of space-time.
(Good link talking about path integrals and how they were a problem with quantum definition of gravity: http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_qc.h
Anyways, it sounds like he's saying: All this new math is great and if the world were a simple place, yeah, black holes would probably have an event horizon and the math to prove it is simple.
But the world is more complex than you think and doing the math for "the real world" shows that the closer you get to the end result, the less and less predictable the end result will be, even though overall it looks like it has a defined end result (i.e. it looks like it _should_ have an event horizon). In reality it's constantly shifting around - and likely this amount of shifting around is representative of the original information/particle system that went into its formation but you won't be able to trace it backwards and extract what the original information was.
This will probably tie into time dialation which will make it be: We never get to the end result event horizon that 'should' be there and in the process of never getting there, the black hole will have a nice jiggly event horizon as a result of all that information - but so jiggly we can't tell what went in to it, all we can do is measure the jiggliness.
What he hasn't explained is how he knows this and the math behind it.
Crap I'm bored.
Leeching? How is posting a link to an article leeching?
If anything, Slashdot is helping the NYT by sending them more visitors.
"If anything, Slashdot is helping the NYT by sending them more visitors." ...and making money through ad-revenue. NYT does the work, Slashdot benefits from it, and everybody bitches about following NYT's terms.
"Derp de derp."
and STILL nobody has disproven time cube despite the hefty $10,000.00 reward.
that shoulf be 'stupud -fuckinh= shti" yuo dkickwaf
...that I have to burn all his previous books?
Hawkings writes it better, but isn't that just about what I wrote? Three WEEKS AGO... The universe is a closed, regenerating loop... www.newpath4.com/anwar_ drillitfast drillitgood forgetaboutthneighborhood_ anwar.htm#BlackHoleRevelation ; What do I have to do, get in a WHEELCHAIR TO SCORE?! Hey, anybody watch Fox Cavuto yesterday? He pulled Jack Kemp from a mothball closet to tell us all that Social Security is a wonderful program. If it's so wonder full why did he spend his life making sure he wasn't depending on it? hehehehe www.newpath4.com/SS_FIX.htm (Well, at least I'm 50% ON TOPIC TODAY eh? Do I get any /. points for that?) ON TOPIC THEN (75%):
www.newpath4.com/theuniversalwall_doesitexist.htm . You guys really are hard to please.
This quote evolved from a NYT interview with Einstein in 1919. The NYT sent its golf correspondent who made stuff up in his story, and these exaggerations made it in the headline of the article itself. I quote Bill Bryson in "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (who in turn is quoting David Bodanis in "E=mc squared" (both of which I recommend...)
"Almost at once his theories of relativity developed a reputation for being impossible for an ordinary person to grasp. Matters were not helped... when the New York Times decided to do a story, and -- for reasons that can never fail to excite wonder -- sent the paper's golfing correspondent, one Henry Crouch, to conduct the interview.
Crouch was hopelessly out of his depth, and got nearly everything wrong. Among the more lasting errors in his report was the assertion that Einstein had found a publisher daring enough to publish a book that only twelve men 'in all the world could comprehend'. There was no such book, no such publisher, no such circle of learned men, but the notion stuck anyway. Soon the number of people who could grasp relativity had been reduced even further in the popular imagination -- and the scientific establishment, in must be said, did little to disturb the myth." [He then mentions Eddington's "I'm trying to think of the third person" quote.]
Here's the link to the original 1919 NYT article. (yes, you have to pay, but you can see the headline for free...)
Also, here's
I was there. The speech was awesome but someone haxored Hawkings speechbox with an ebonics mod:
"So dis black hoe, she look likes' a motherf**ker around it but get dis... AINT NO MOTHERF**KER!"
Way over my head, anyway.
It would be nice if the propanents of the human causes of global warming were so open to critisism. Cheers for Hawking for keeping what science was ment to be...honest and open for discussion. If only the editors of Scientific america were this nice to Lomburge and other skeptics.
stendec@gmail.com
But you never see the matter actually hit the event horizon!
I've been saying that line before on slashdot - but that does not cover it all, anotherWhat happens during black hole formation - you basically have some sun, which collapses, and suddenly some part of it will find itself actually inside the event horizon. However, I think Hawkings math suggests that the black hole/its event horizon isn't a perfect sphere - it preserves information by moving and jiggling a bit, like lots of overlapping bubbles.
You could still have a parallel universe inside the black hole, which maybe would be temporary and evaporate, but it would be connected to ours. Actually thats a good thing, since what would you have parallel universes for if they didnt connect to ours ?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It seems that JOHN TITOR got this one 'prediction' right...
Darby (of anomalies.net) won't be happy, I'm sure.
John Titor claimed to be a time-traveller from the future.
From the johntitor.com website's news page:
JOHN TITOR SAID STEVEN HAWKING WAS WRONG ABOUT BLACK HOLES - NOW HAWKING AGREES!!!
When John Titor visited our worldline in 2000 - 2001, he gave certain physical details about the physics and engineering behind his time machine. He stated the machine operated through the use of two mini black holes that produced a gravity field that allowed passage from one worldline to another. In march of 2001, John got into a discussion about his machine with his arch nemesis, Darby. For those unfamiliar with Darby, he is currently the moderator at the Time Travel forum at http://www.anomalies.net.
For the last four years, Darby has been hell-bent on driving people away from the idea of time travel and John Titor specifically. In their last few conversations before John left, Darby and John went back and forth on many subjects where Darby took great pride in trying to out-maneuver John over his physics statements. As time went on, John has proven to be correct on many of the bizarre statements he had made. It appears he was right about another.
Darby attacked John on a routine basis (and still does) based on Steven Hawking's theories on black holes. When John was here, Steven Hawking believed that mini-black holes were impossible to contain because they would evaporate and disappear in something called "Hawking Radiation." Here is a short question and answer between Darby and John:
"MARCH 14, 2001
DARBY: It's Hawking Radiation you can't overcome.
JOHN: Yes, that is true. If you firmly believe that Hawking radiation cannot be controlled or goes on even without the presence of virtual particles forever until the singularity explodes than you are correct. "
As it turns out, Hawking has now re-thought his views on this subject and he now agrees with John.
I believe he had a bet with Kip Thorne over whether Cygnus X1 was a black hole or not. Hawking said it wasn't and Thorne said it was. Hawking conceded the bet a while ago. It was for a subscription to playboy. Hawking said that he really thought that it was a black hole but wanted a consolation prize if it wasn't.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Does the loser of a bet about an event horizon have to sew his eyes shut?
We're complaining about the requirement to register to read the article. I don't read the NYT unless I'm following a link. I don't want to have to 'register' just to read an article. Either slashdot needs to enter an agreement with the NYT to remove the registration requirement for referrals from /. or /. needs to find articles from non-registration required sites. CNN/Foxnews/Wired/BBC/AP/MSN/... There are plenty of sites that don't require registration.
I don't read AC A human right
Not Really, and Definitely Not.
1: Hawking is the one who formalized the Chronology Protection Conjecture, which states that even if time travel is theoretically possible at a quantum level, macro-scale physics will always prevent it from being used. Note: the conjecture is void if parallel universes exist and can be accessed, but this new black hole theory makes that case less likely.
2: most of the currently plausible theories about the nature of space-time have nontrivial real solutions that imply time travel. Studying these cases is an excellent way to test whether the theories are valid or not.
Conclusion: will someone please mod down Louis Savain for flamebait?According to this site http://www.xdr.com/dash/blackholes.html there is a different explanation entirely.
The neat thing about path integrals is that the solution is the same regarldess of what path is followed, provided that the endpoints are the same and the equation is consistent over all points crossed by the function. Both of these things are usually true in finite space....
So it seems to me that he is implying that the event horizon doesnt "exist", it merely "tends to exist" at a particular location.
Or am I imagining things?
SS
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
It looks like for whatever reason, Mr. Hawking has decided to conform to 'popular wisdom' in the Einstein centric academic community. After all, he DOES have a chair to protect.
If one stays in a field long enough, one will acquire a 'gut feeling' about it. Mathmatics is no different! By saying now that matter 'leaks out slowly in a mangled form' but leaving out the way it was mangled, my math gut is telling me that this mangling may be the result of light's assymtotic approach to zero resolved velocity as it approaches the event horizon of the black hole. This is approaching the limit of infinite slowness through negative values. Now if some of the photons actually fall back to the singularity, some could say that inasmuch as the gravitational acceleration must needs meet or exceed 'c' for this to happen, then the velocity of the falling photons could well exceed 'c' at the point of arrival at the singularity; but this is beside the point.
When any wave like this is 'slowed down' the percieved frequency is lowered as the information flow is retarded by the deceleration. This could account for the percieved 'mangling'. It would be like a time dilation literally set and made permanent. This is where the so called universal matter and energy 'speed limit' break down. Larger and larger 'black holes' should by the certainty of mathmatics have larger and larger gravitational acceleration values. If 'c' can be approached or even equalled for small black holes, what then for large ones, not to mention galactic or even larger ones. It is my 'gut feeling' that somewhere along the line Herr Einstein divided by zero whether he realized it or not. That is how he must have arrived at the so called inviolability of 'c' in the first place. Later scientists have mistakenly treated this as some kind of gospel. Astronomers routinely find evidence of superliminal velocities during the conduct of their jobs. They just as routinely and unthinkingly apply 'corrections' to their observations and report the results as 'facts'.
Mr. Hawking never once considered that conservation of matter and energy might trancend universes to other universes as well? True conservation laws might later have to consider a larger definition of the overused word: "universe". The idea of a multiverse has already entered the lexicon many times and has been presented in many major contemporary periodicals. Ultimately it may be that Albert Einstein will be later remembered for the one statement that will finally prove true: "The universe is stranger than we can even imagine!".
By now altering his view of 'black holes', he has let in the possibility of a math error my Mr. Einstein. Maybe someone in the near future will step up to the plate and find this error. It will likely be very hard to find; it may well be buried in one of the trigonometric substitutions that calculus and differential equations users are so fond of. Find it we will, and once again we will have to ask ourselves questions that once were comfortably avoided by the so called scholars among us that used that old wooley haired eccentric as a shield against thinking.
What you are discribing is what the observer sees.
Simply put, light gets slows by black hole -> light gets slowed more -> light slowed to a halt. Since the light isnt moving, this is as far as you'll ever see. As we can not see light travelling away from us.*
To put in it's simplist terms what Hawking is say:
Old - What goes in, can't come out.
New - What goes in, has to come out, just looking different.
*Ignoring red shift
A significant number of folks tend to gravitate towards Hawking's disfiguring life depleting disease (as he by rights he should have died from complications at least a decade ago.) Yet he can mentally run circles around the majority of us. And while we are unable to measure it, I would be willing to bet that he has the spare mental capacity to abate some of the effects of his disease. Now look around, at a society of persons striving to be normal. Millions of kids "diagnosed" with ADHD/ADD and other similar disorders and parents more than willing to cram pills down their throat. Yet look at our environment, we are rarely required to concentrate on things for more than a bit at a time yet every job description on the planet says that we need the ability to "multitask". Likely not the best argument. But, we have slowed our own growth and evolution as a species due to classifying everything as an ailment and something that needs corrected if it is out of the "norm" and by other practices. Perhaps if we reevaluate this, more extraordinary persons will emerge and humanity will be all the better for it.
Does this mean a factually correct remake is forthcoming?
It's hard to be a complete asshole when your wife can steal your wheelchair batteries and leave you in the back yard.
Only half-kidding.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
scientific postmodernity ... is that self-contradictory?
... just like (11+2) mod 10=3 might be derived by noting that 11 is 3 in base 2. It's completely wrong, but it works in this scenario.
It is "absolutely right" in the sense of getting the correct result
I suppose if you only care about what works and not what the truth is that's fine.
Thanks for the website compliment - I try :)
In Zimbabwe, yes, there is a dismal failure. I wouldn't put it down to race relations all that much though, although they do play a part. Bob Mugabe (the president) is severely abusing his own people, most of whom are black, as is the majority of the political opposition. Personally I think he's simply grown power hungry and arrogant. My own country's relationship and attitude toward him I find shocking and disgusting, treating him like there's nothing wrong, but I have no reason to believe that what has transpired in Zimbabwe will repeat themselves in South Africa - we don't have a Mugabe.
In South Africa I don't see overwhelming trouble in the near future. Economically we are growing, but too slowly. This can only worsen when Aids starts hitting our labour force (this sounds heartless, but it is the bigger picture. Obviously I feel for the human element as well). This will hurt our economy, certainly. However, I don't think the country will descend into civil anarchy or anything like that - if anything I think the overall situation will improve despite all these problems.
The government appears to be beginning to get a handle on many issues which have plagued the country since democracy in '94. It is widely predicted that the ruling ANC, which currently has 70% of the vote and accordingly the 2/3's majority they need to pass any bill in parliament, will not see a majority anywhere near that big again. Accordingly politics will become more representative in the near future (say after two voting periods - 10 years), where the ANC will be in charge most likely but the other parties will wield considerable parliamentary influence as well. This can only be a healthy and good thing for a democracy.
Let me put it this way: I'm a white male Masters student at a South African university, and I have no intention of leaving the country when I graduate. I feel positive about the country's prospects. A good intro to the country can be found at this site, while this is the official internet gateway to the country.
Onto the cricket...
Yes, a Test cricket match, one of the two major international varieties, is scheduled to take 5 days. The other version takes about 6 hours, while a newer, shorter version recently introduced takes about 3 hours. The basic rules are explained here much better than I am capable of doing so. I personally think it is the most awesome of sports, which may of course be slighly tempered by the fact that South Africa is quite good at it...
An excellent cricketing link if you have a further interest is here.
Hope this is concise enough. Always a pleasure to spread some info about my home or my favourite sport!
Daar is nie 'n lepel nie
this may mean that the devil will take take the shape of a cool robot
You mean like this?
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
I thought the whole point of black holes being 'black'
The other point of a black hole is it being a 'hole'
(Must not make goatse joke here)
From my naive understanding of the physics involved in this, mass has a tendency to cause a dip in space and time, like a marble or basebal on a blanket, but thats only in 2 dimentions instead of 4 or 5 or however many there really are. The more mass the object has, the more significant the dip. Gravity isn't the idea that matter attracts other matter, it is the dip in the blanket. And if you put a big err heavy enough object, it will rip a whole in the blanket.
So, as an SF geek I got to ask, what happens when you go through that whole?
Is it a portal into another universe? Does the black hole itself create a new universe? Or is it just a really really dense object that is getting more and more massive?
In the end will there be nothing left in the universe but a bunch of black holes? Will the black holes attract each other to form one really big black hole? If that happened would that result in a big crunch that would then turn into a big bang?
Or are these ideas just a joke?
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
MC Hawking could not be reached for comment.
Is there an actual CD or is this just a joke?
Are their mp3s on KaZaA or anything?
I'd like to listen before I buy.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.