How the Black Hole Firewall Paradox Was Resolved

Stephen Hawking's recent comments about the nature of black holes have bred uncertainty about physics concepts that were relatively well understood. This article from astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains that yes, black holes still exist, and how a group of three academic papers answered the black hole 'firewall' paradox. Quoting: "... And so what these three papers, in tandem, have done, is demonstrate that there is no firewall and that the resolution to the firewall paradox is that the first assumption, that Hawking radiation is in a pure state, is the one that's flawed. You won't read about this in the popular write-ups because it doesn't have a catchy headline, it's complex, and it's not work by someone that's already very famous for other work. But it's right. Hawking radiation is not in a pure state, and without that pure state, there's no firewall, and no paradox. There is still an incredible amount to learn and understand about black holes, event horizons, and the behavior of quantum systems in strongly curved spacetime, to be sure, and there's lots of very interesting research ahead. These findings arguably raise more questions than they answer, although at least we know that black holes won't fry you when you fall in; it will still be death by spaghettification, not by incineration!"

Comments

is it time yet?

[Gravis Zero]

at some point we are going to have rework some protocols to deal with stupid shit like this.

If you get Hawkings to shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of his false premises, that he later disproves never come up.

Jesus Christ. May as well state...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that black holes are there because GOD put them there, and if he had meant for us to understand them, he would have made us capable of it.