Black Holes Don't Trap Information Forever

sciencehabit writes "New calculations suggest that black holes are not a one-way street. Anything that falls into them may eventually come out. The findings lend important support to quantum gravity, but fly in the face of Einsteinian relativity. They also support Stephen Hawking's reluctant admission that information couldn't be destroyed by black holes. Penn State researcher Ahbay Ashtekar was quoted saying, 'Once we realized that the notion of space-time as a continuum is only an approximation of reality, it became clear to us that singularities are merely artifacts of our insistence that space-time should be described as a continuum.' Let the physics infighting begin."

Comments

pretty continua

[Anonymous Coward]

Continua are so much prettier mathematically though. Couldn't quantisation just be an artifact of a closed universe i.e. standing wave modes in a finitely sized continuum ? Quantum theory is so damn *ugly* compared to GR and its extensions (Kaluza-Klein, Einstein-Cartan). Sigh.

Re:pretty continua

[rtb61]

That has always been the problem when you make the universe infinite, the only effective way of doing so is to define infinity as a dimensions and reality is just the expression of finite probabilities, even when any fraction of infinity is infinite in itself.

An interesting way of expressing this is with a coin toss. A finite probability of two possible results, heads or tails. However that coin toss can also be infinitely complex when you consider a far more complex reaction, like which calcium atoms would transfer from the surface of your thumb nail to the surface of the table during that same experiment, a result that would not only be governed by the orbital motions of the sub atomic particles making up the surface of the your nail, the coin and the table but also the larger motions of galaxy altering gravity, major electro magnetic fields and your only own personal reactions, a infinitely complex calculation far beyond our abilities to forecast.

The interesting point being that based upon significance, an 'in reality' infinitely complex reaction can be reduced to the simple finite result of heads or tails, hmm, the nature of our universe and, the importance of relativity and significance.

Come out again?!

[ink_13]

I was under the impression that due to the relativistic effects, stuff (photons, matter, information, whatever) wasn't so much destroyed by a black hole as indefinitely delayed, owing to the massive bending of space-time by the singularity. Or do they mean by "eventually" what I mean: it might eventually come out, but the time it takes approaches infinity.