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Stephen Hawking Presents Theory On Getting Information Out of a Black Hole

An anonymous reader writes: Physicist Stephen Hawking claims to have figured out a way for information to leave a black hole. He presented his theory today at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Scientists have struggled with the black hole information paradox for years, and Hawking thinks this new theory could be a solution. He said, "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon." Put in layman's terms, "this jumbled return of information was like burning an encyclopedia: You wouldn't technically lose any information if you kept all of the ashes in one place, but you'd have a hard time looking up the capital of Minnesota." Information can leave the black hole via Hawking radiation, though it will be functionally useless. Hawking worked with Cambridge's Malcolm Perry and Harvard's Andrew Stromberg on this theory.

172 comments

  1. so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    chuck norris doesn't escape from black holes.

    they escape from HIM.

    1. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The captain of one of our Confederate submarines once sighted Chuck Norris's yacht through his periscope. He immediately surfaced and joined the Union, presenting his sword and sidearm as a gift.

    2. Re:so? by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      The captain of one of our Confederate submarines once sighted Chuck Norris's yacht through his periscope. He immediately surfaced and joined the Union, presenting his sword and sidearm as a gift.

      You do know that Texas was a part of the Confederacy? Right?

    3. Re:so? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 0

      chuck norris doesn't escape from black holes.

      they escape from HIM.

      Everything "escapes" from Chuck Norris. The Big Bang was caused by one of his round-house kicks.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    4. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The captain of one of our Confederate submarines once sighted Chuck Norris's yacht through his periscope. He immediately surfaced and joined the Union, presenting his sword and sidearm as a gift.

      You do know that Texas was a part of the Confederacy? Right?

      Well, it WOULDN'T have been had Chuck Norris been alive at the time!

    5. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not everything.

      One day Chuck Norris walked down the street with an erection. There were no survivors.

    6. Re:so? by deviated_prevert · · Score: 1

      chuck norris doesn't escape from black holes.

      they escape from HIM.

      Everything "escapes" from Chuck Norris. The Big Bang was caused by one of his round-house kicks.

      Wrong they were created when Bruce Lee accidentally farted. And that is why Hawking radiation is hard to intercept and read. Which only happens in the distorted time space long before the event horizon forms around black holes and is only created at energy levels much closer to the energy levels required to create the time space distortion created by a Bruce Lee fart not just a cheezy Chuck Norris kick!

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
    7. Re:so? by meglon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know why there isn't a Bruce Lee meme like the Chuck Norris meme? Bruce Lee wasn't a joke.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    8. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They were actually about Vin Diesel at the start.

    9. Re:so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the entire Chuck Norris meme is really about Vladimir Putin, because everyone is just afraid to invoke his name.

    10. Re:so? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      That may explain why I've heard of Bruce Lee, but not heard of Chuck Norris. I don't think I've got any of their LPs though.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    11. Re:so? by Keybounce · · Score: 1

      "All the other stars with their puffed egos
      Better run, better run
      Out run Chuk Norris"

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  2. Leonard Susskind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Hawking's new idea is that the information doesn't make it inside the black hole at all. Instead, it's permanently encoded in a 2D hologram at the surface of the black hole's event horizon".

    Uh, isn't that basically Susskind's idea? The holographic principal and all.

    1. Re:Leonard Susskind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What high school is that?

    2. Re:Leonard Susskind. by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't know if that is Suskind's view. Some physicists certainly hold the view that you do not see inside the black hole and what an external observer thinks of as the interior is really the surface.

      That however is not the holographic principle. The holographic principle stats that there is an equivalence of certain 3 dimension gauges theories with four dimensional quantum gravity.

    3. Re: Leonard Susskind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was pretty sure this was the same explanation Susskind but I only know the plain English descriptions, not the theory. The principal, as described in layman's terms, is the same as far as I can tell.

    4. Re:Leonard Susskind. by Maritz · · Score: 2

      If you have a 3-dimension region that is so full of information that that information cannot be encoded on a 2-d boundary of that region, then you have a black hole.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    5. Re:Leonard Susskind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Hawking's new idea is that the information doesn't make it inside the black hole at all. Instead, it's permanently encoded in a 2D hologram at the surface of the black hole's event horizon".

      Uh, isn't that basically Susskind's idea? The holographic principal and all.

      No, it was his idea:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW-p8s_HCCo&feature=youtu.be&t=62

    6. Re:Leonard Susskind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems obvious, as things slow down to zero, the boundary provides more time to read each bit contained in the event, just like slowing down a recorded disc (under suitable magnification), lets us see each encoded bit, so the idea has been around, all right. No one has asked Hawking if he was forced to experiment with cannibally, did it on his own will, or was he fed it forcefully? I wonder who was the victim... (it was not JUNK CHARACTERS, it was illustration, but the slashdot filter is not so brilliant).

    7. Re:Leonard Susskind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What in the fuck are you people saying.

    8. Re:Leonard Susskind. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

      If you have a 3-dimension region that is so full of information that that information cannot be encoded on a 2-d boundary of that region, then you have a black hole

      Almost:

      If you have a three-dimensional region that is so full of information that it can entirely cover the surface when encoded at one bit per plank-length (diameter?) area, then the mass of the information is enough that its gravitation creates a black hole with exactly that much surface area to the event horizon.

      If you throw more information down the black hole, it expands exactly enough that you can STILL exactly encode all the info on the new surface. You can't have MORE information inside that boundary than you can encode on its surface.

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  3. Much rejoicing by MouseR · · Score: 5, Funny

    He doesn't look all too terribly excited about it.

    1. Re:Much rejoicing by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      He doesn't look all too terribly excited about it.

      Well, you try having ALS for five decades and be left paralyzed almost everywhere. You might not be smiling in every candid shot that's taken of you.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    2. Re:Much rejoicing by MouseR · · Score: 1

      Just laugh about it.

    3. Re:Much rejoicing by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      I have no inclination to laugh at a person's disabilities, thankyouverymuch.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    4. Re:Much rejoicing by MouseR · · Score: 2

      It appears he has a more open sense of humor you sport.

      He's been quite eager to participate in comedy when invited. Undoubtedly he's going through an excruciatingly debilitating ordeal, four decades longer than his doctor told him. So yes, he can
      Laugh.

      In the end the joke's on us because few understand what he's talking about. Entirely.

    5. Re:Much rejoicing by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Just because Stephen Hawking can laugh at his disabilities does not give you a license to do so.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    6. Re:Much rejoicing by MouseR · · Score: 2
    7. Re:Much rejoicing by Oligonicella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I missed the bulletin were you were appointed laughter arbiter.

    8. Re:Much rejoicing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about your own, you fucking mong

    9. Re:Much rejoicing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you understand humour. Saying he doesn't look terribly excited is not laughing at his disability. It's making a joke of one consequent of his disability. It's not necessarily what you would say to someone's face when you just met them - not before you understood their attitude to their own disability - but neither is it some kind of crime to make such a joke. You probably wouldn't make one to a guy in hospital who's never going to walk again after a car crash, because he's still coming to terms with it himself, but you seem to be supposing that people never come to terms with their disabilities.

      Put it this way - he got through decades of ALS and you're saying he needs "protecting" because he can't handle a joke? Isn't this like tacitly saying that he's mentally weaker than the average person because of his physical disability? Quite ironic, since we're talking about one of the best minds in the world, but you still feel an underlying superiority to him because you don't have a disability?

      Knights in shining armour are always sitting on a high horse.

    10. Re:Much rejoicing by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      How do I apply for a laughter license? Is it like the DMV, or do they just come from you personally? I'd love to get one from you, but I'll need a step ladder given the height of your horse.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    11. Re:Much rejoicing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you kidding? He's drooling over the possibilities!!

    12. Re:Much rejoicing by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      I missed the bulletin were you were appointed laughter arbiter.

      I missed the one that said I can't object to someone making fun of a disabled person's symptoms.

      "License" is a figure of speech. The point is that it's not cool to make light of a disabled person's condition, even if the disabled person does it him or herself. Yes, there may be some occasions where banter happens and the person in question is okay with it. But making sport of the fact that Stephen Hawking's ALS-challenged resting face looks morose is just crass and out-of-bounds.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    13. Re:Much rejoicing by Pubstar · · Score: 1

      You are the reason why we can't have nice things. Seriously, so salty over a passing joke on the internet. I bet you are just a blast to hang out with.

    14. Re:Much rejoicing by uninformedLuddite · · Score: 1

      Just because Stephen Hawking can laugh at his disabilities does not give you a license to do so.

      Who are you the comedy god?

      --
      The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
    15. Re:Much rejoicing by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      neither is it some kind of crime to make such a joke

      It's not a "crime" to make racist or sexist or homophobic jokes, it just makes you look like an ignorant bullying knobend.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    16. Re:Much rejoicing by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I'm afraid that the "insult" would like in _failing_ to laugh with him.

  4. Movie remake in 5..4..3.... by macraig · · Score: 1

    I look forward to the Lucas-style remake of Interstellar next year.

    1. Re:Movie remake in 5..4..3.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why does anyone think that typing a comment with a countdown header is remotely funny, useful, or interesting to anyone anymore?

    2. Re:Movie remake in 5..4..3.... by hummassa · · Score: 1

      Han will shoot first because in extreme gravity conditions you can assume simultaneity does not exist?

      --
      It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    3. Re:Movie remake in 5..4..3.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Countdowns are for cows! [Oh shit, 'scuse me...]

    4. Re:Movie remake in 5..4..3.... by spauldo · · Score: 1

      It's better than "hot grits" or naked and petrified Natalie Portman.

      (Which I never understood, BTW. I could understand wanting to be around a nude Natalie Portman. Not my type, but I wouldn't complain. But petrified? What would be the point?)

      --
      Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
    5. Re:Movie remake in 5..4..3.... by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      But petrified? What would be the point?

      It depends on whether you take it as literal or metaphorical petrification, i.e. just very scared or else turned into stone.

      Both are pretty pervy, but in different ways.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  5. More like by angelbar · · Score: 1

    Getting garbaje out of a black hole.

    --
    -no sig today-
    1. Re:More like by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Scientists baffled as observing shifting patterns of mass around the event horizon of a supermassive black hole yielded an information stream that decoded into a rasterized video marathon of "Joanie loves Chachi"

  6. So now we have a new paradox... by bobbied · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hawking in all his brilliance has produced a new paradox trying to solve another? How's that help anything? This is re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

    So now we have information that's "useless" because we won't be able to unscramble it, but no information is lost? It's like saying that the information on my degaussed and melted down backup disk drive is *still* there, if I just knew how to reassemble it properly. That backup disk is just a pile of slag, the information it contained is gone. I'm sorry, that sure looks like we lost information to me... The net effect is the same as the information being lost, so I don't see how this stroke of genius helps the problem beyond moving the paradox to having the information preserved but unrecoverable by any possible means.

    Try again sir... You didn't solve anything here.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    1. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by zlives · · Score: 2

      i use the blackhole encryption method on all my data... what do you mean "The net effect is the same as the information being lost"

    2. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think the point is that the information is there, but it would require a tremendous amount of energy to reassemble it, much more than, say, putting humpty-dumpty back together again. That's not a paradox.

      I'm not a physicist, but the holographic principle has been around for a long time; it's conjectures that a black hole is a 2-dimensional object--there's no space on the other side of the event horizon, the event horizon _is_ the blackhole. And others have suggested that information can leak via fluctuations at the boundary. Any physicists care to distinguish what's truly novel with this new theory?

    3. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >The net effect is the same as the information being lost

      The difference being that this solves the paradox. If information can just up and disappear, then we found a new way that current physics is wrong.

    4. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by bobbied · · Score: 1

      My point is that if the "information is there" but we cannot retrieve it, it's the *same* as information being destroyed. The paradox now becomes how you can have information existing in theory that you cannot obtain though any amount of effort. This makes this little thought experiment useless, as it cannot be proven by it's very definition. This kind of thing is not helpful scientific thinking.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    5. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by realmolo · · Score: 1

      He's not trying to "solve" anything, dumbass. He's trying to figure out how the universe works.

      If information isn't *actually* destroyed by a black hole, that's something new about the universe that we didn't know. It's a new discovery.

      Not all science is about "solving" things. In fact, almost none of it is.

    6. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by craigtollting · · Score: 1

      The summary said exactly the same thing you did, except much more succinctly. And people complain about Slashdot's editors??

    7. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My point is that if the "information is there" but we cannot retrieve it, it's the *same* as information being destroyed.

      No its not, because information in this context has a specific physics definition, and is analogous to entropy not disappearing. Burning some complex object to produce a pile of amorphous ash doesn't destroy physical information, even if it is useless to a person at that point.

    8. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No its not,

      Yeah, I know that is the wrong "its" and should be it's... sometimes it's just a typo.

    9. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      AKA, Picard's Theorem? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    10. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're getting hung up on the word information. It's a term of art in this context. The physics is relying on an an equivalency between information content and energy. In many cases it's easier to model blackholes from an information-theoretic context. That is, bits go in, bits come out. It's like the word entropy--the same word is used to describe seemingly different phenomena regarding both information and energy, but really it's the same phenomenon.

      Just replace "information" with "energy" and it will make more sense. By information coming out, they mean energy is coming out. And energy, of course, is that thing which allows us to perform useful work.

      Why does this matter? Well remember that the laws of thermodynamics say that entropy is always increasing in a closed system. If blackholes sucked entropy out of the universe, the implications are problematic, for reasons I don't really understand, and that aren't resolved by simply stating the obvious--blackholes are part of the universe.

      Rather than calling this the "entropy" paradox, though, it's called the "information paradox". It's just easier to reason about it when you think in terms of bits.

      Also, your original assertion is incorrect. Imagine that we burn a tiny piece of paper with some secret information on it. Theoretically with enough cameras, recorders, and other equipment we could reconstitute the secret by tracking every scrap of carbon and every other molecule. But it requires tremendous resources. The resources needed scale as a high-order geometric function of the size (or complexity) of the thing we burned. If we thoroughly burnt a book, there wouldn't be enough resources on earth, perhaps the solar system, to build the machines needed to track and reconstitute the information.

      Because the universe is finite, and the information released by a blackhole so "scrambled", there's not enough energy in the entire universe to unscramble it. As large as the universe is, it's no match for math. But we _know_ the information is there because the energy emitted can be used to perform work.

    11. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Bengie · · Score: 3, Informative

      Being able to reassemble it is not the point, it's that you can re-wind time and get the information back out. With the normal idea of a blackhole, even if you could rewind time, you couldn't get the information back out.

    12. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes, because theoretical physical information translates directly to magnetically encoded 1s and 0s.

      you're an idiot.

    13. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Ok, then he didn't "solve" anything, he just produced another theory which from the outside looks EXACTLY like other theories and always will if you apply his theory. He hasn't suggested anything novel or unique that advances the thought experiment in any appreciable way and has really just replaced one intractable problem for another. It's like he flipped the dime over and claimed it was a different coin because he could see a different design on it. Same coin, same problem, nothing has changed.

      I feel sorry for him because it seems to me that he knows that he's about to die from his illness and in his quest to find immortality by putting his mark on astrophysics has reached new heights. He's acting desperate and has put his stamp on two largely useless things in as many months. The reason why I feel for him is that he has already put an indelible mark on a number of scientific areas and this kind of non advancing theory will only serve to tarnish his accomplishments. Yet the mortal, seek immortality ever more desperately as the end draws ever closer.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    14. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the heck are you on about? YOU'RE the one who brought the word "solve" into this. This is a theory about how things work, not something providing us with more convenience.

    15. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ok, then he didn't "solve" anything, he just produced another theory which from the outside looks EXACTLY like other theories and always will if you apply his theory

      Uhh, maybe you see that because the whole point was that current theories can be made consistent handling things that way. The whole job of a theorist is to use theories to make predictions, looking for either potential inconsistencies with itself, other theories, or with known data. Finding out what was thought to be an inconsistency isn't is important.

      He hasn't suggested anything novel or unique that advances the thought experiment in any appreciable way and has really just replaced one intractable problem for another

      If you are unaware of and/or are struggling with the idea of physical information, how exactly are you able to determine the novelty and amount of advancement in his work?

      It's like he flipped the dime over and claimed it was a different coin because he could see a different design on it. Same coin, same problem, nothing has changed.

      If you need a painful, ineffective analogy, then it is more like people unsure if the back of a dime actually looked like a dime, or if there was a problem because the front of the dime and back of the dime gave different denominations. Then someone comes along and figures out what the back of the dime looks like and it is consistent with expectations... of course it is the same coin, as that is the point, and what has changed is a previously unanswered concern is shown to have a potential answer.

      The reason why I feel for him is that he has already put an indelible mark on a number of scientific areas and this kind of non advancing theory will only serve to tarnish his accomplishments.

      Again, considering your other posts, you seem unaware of what even his accomplishments actually are and the science and theories he's previously contributed, making it rather hard to judge what will be tarnish or not.

    16. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's saying (as an analogy) that Blackholes are the shredders of the universe.

    17. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by deviated_prevert · · Score: 1

      No its not,

      Yeah, I know that is the wrong "its" and should be it's... sometimes it's just a typo.

      so its come down to that again. Its not that an important issue to many, however its a very touchy subject every time its on the event horizon here on slashdog!

      --
      This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
    18. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You misunderstand the meaning of the word "information" here. Quantum information is conserved. If objects falling into a black hole carry n q-bits, then n q-bits need to come out for the laws of physics (as we understand them) to be consistent.

    19. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have read through all your posts in this thread so far.

      The conclusion is that you are missing the point.

      You might want to consider getting an education in theoretical physics, after which you may have an easier time understanding why what Hawking (tentatively) has produced as part of this work actually does matter. You may even be able to contribute to the discussion.

      Right now, however, you are only digging the hole you're standing in deeper with every post you make.

      Sorry, but someone had to say it...

    20. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by twistnatz · · Score: 1

      This is what mathematicians would call a non-constructive proof, i.e. 'Im telling you this works but dont ask me how to get the result'

    21. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Bengie · · Score: 2

      My point is that if the "information is there" but we cannot retrieve it, it's the *same* as information being destroyed

      I can do just this with only 256bits of entropy. It's called AES encryption. A future observer not being able to unscramble entropy back into its data form even with all of the energy in the Universe without knowing what the entropy was. This is not an issue. The real issue is the past version of the information not being able to be unscrambled when you run time backwards.

      One of the big things about our Universe is causality, it is the single most important concept. One of its big points is given a set of parameters, a given outcome will occur and for a given outcome, there is a specific set of parameters. A traditional blackhole broke that. It was impossible to figure out the original parameters because all outcomes were the same, the mass of the blackhole increased and the information was lost.

    22. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      We already knew information wasn't destroyed, we just didn't have a mechanism for it not to. If information could be destroyed, then causality wouldn't work. What do you thin would happen in a universe where cause-and-effect didn't occur? No science, that's what.

    23. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the analogy goes more like you encrypted the data on your hard disc using a particularly secure form of encryption, and then lost the key to access it.

      The information is not lost - given enough monkeys and sufficient typewriters you may just about be able to reproduce the key - it's just hideously inaccessible and will consume more energy to retrieve than it would to reproduce it from scratch.

      Relevance? Well - I guess there is an important distinction between something no longer physically existing versus something existing but being irretrievable. For starters it raises the theoretical question as to whether that information can be retrieved again or not - if it no longer exists then you certainly cannot; if it exists but is just hideously inaccessible it raises the question of whether there might be a way to retrieve it after all (even theoretically if not practically).

    24. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might want to consider getting an education in theoretical physics,

      This doesn't require a formal education in theoretical physics to grasp the big picture. Spending the amount of time it took to write the posts within this thread instead reading freely available course notes would have covered a lot of ground already.

      It isn't necessary to spend years of study to learn enough to understand what a physics paper is try to do. Although years of study do help when it comes to understanding the details of the steps and all of the limits involved, how to make new steps, knowing what else has been tried before, etc. But having failed to read even a Wikipedia summary on the other hand is not going to cut it.

    25. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We already knew information wasn't destroyed,

      We have strong reasons to think this, but that doesn't preclude a universe where information conservation is ultimately wrong. Lack of time symmetry doesn't prevent cause and effect or science from existing...

    26. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Xyrus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You don't understand the concept and made ASSumptions based on a generalized analogy that isn't even wholly correct, then proclaim that he's an idiot.

      Are you running for office?

      Regardless, how about a different analogy that might might make this more clear.

      You have an egg. You drop it. The egg hits the floor. It vanishes. Do you still have an egg? Nope.

      You have an egg. You drop it. The egg splatters on the floor. Do you still have an egg? Yep.

      The former is how black holes were thought to work. The problem is that if black holes really worked that way it would cause some rather odd things to occur. We haven't observed these really odd things, which implies that black holes don't operate that way.

      The latter is how they operate according to the new work. The egg may not be in the same form, but it didn't "vanish". You didn't "lose" anything. It's just in a different form. Sure, it may not be anything more than a mess on your floor. It may not be useful for anything other than a Fido snack. But it doesn't change the fact that the egg is still there.

      --
      ~X~
    27. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      What do you thin would happen in a universe where cause-and-effect didn't occur?

      Donald Trump.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    28. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      Just a thought. If the idea makes more sense if named as "energy", then why the hell call her "information"? Physicists have freak out enough in their ideas, they do not need further worsen the situation by mixing disjointed terms.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    29. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      I find interesting how your analogy of the egg is much more useful to the subject than the stupid thing to call "information" not caring about the context (thus making everyone think that the information would be something like a text message or a signal TV). Who had this stupid idea to call it "information"?

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    30. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because although it shares some behavior and correlations with things like energy and entropy, it is distinct, and has to do with the complexity and literal amount of information it takes to describe states. If you don't like think about things in terms of sloppy analogies, then go read an actual introduction to the subject. But since a lot of slashdotters can't even be bothered to look something up on Google or Wikipedia, analogies get posted from time to time.

    31. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The connection between thermodynamics and information theory goes back to at least von Neumann, although the some of the parallel principles existed back to 19th century.

    32. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by H725_IT · · Score: 1

      Wow... maybe this doesn't matter to you, but you helped me understand. Thanks

    33. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You two: go get a room.

    34. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1

      Now he can name the effect after himself.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    35. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Excellent analogy! This makes WAY more sense now :)
       
      Whoever thought to call it "information" should be fired, it really confuses things for laymen such as myself.

    36. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Sadly, not everything in the universe can be explained by direct analogy with computer hardware or software.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    37. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Sadly, not everything in the universe can be explained by direct analogy with computer hardware or software.

      But burring encyclopedias is better? I haven't opened one of those for nearly 4 decades.

      I was just using a similar analogy to Hawking's, adjusted for Slashdot's audience and modern sensibilities... if it doesn't fully convey the theory, who's fault is that? Personally, I think mine is better, given that Hawking is ignoring that a fire does actually loose "information" in a physics sense, in that there is heat, smoke and a number of gasses that are produced when you burn a book...

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    38. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by azcoyote · · Score: 1

      Great explanation. Thanks! It's good to see that I'm not the only one who doesn't quite understand why the problems aren't solved by stating that black holes are part of the universe.

      --
      Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
    39. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      given that Hawking is ignoring that a fire does actually loose "information" in a physics sense

      Fire does not lose physical information, i.e. information in a physics sense.

    40. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Bengie · · Score: 1
      Other than breaking conservation of energy and cause and effect, yeah, all peachy. We may not know anything 100%, but all science ever has been based on these premises and we have no reason to think otherwise.

      Information is irretrievably lost
      Advantage: Seems to be a direct consequence of relatively non-controversial calculation based on semiclassical gravity.
      Disadvantage: Violates unitarity, as well as energy conservation or causality.

    41. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are several attempts at non-unitary models, and there is the possibility of quantum mechanics being flawed in a way that still causes non-conservation of information. None of that prevents causality. Trivial models can be constructed that allow multiple causes to produce the same effect, and it doesn't prevent science from functioning. Nor is even all of science based on such fundamental conservation laws, even if some parts are closely connected.

    42. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lets take this a step further. Lets go back to the Big Bang. Without "inflation" the big bang would never happen simply because the entire mass of the Universe would create a black hole larger than the point source of the bang. The Universe could never bang because it would always be inside the Schwarzschild radius. However if all the information is in the shell, that is a sphere with a Schwarzschild radius, then "inflation" can be done away with. What we see is indeed a hologram of what's occurring in the Universe. We live at the Schwarzschild radius of the Universe and it appears multidimensional. Ok, I've pushed my Sci-Fi brain to its limits. It's time for you math gnurds yo take over.

    43. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by hr+raattgift · · Score: 1

      No, it still vanishes, however an imprint of the egg persists on the floor (but in the short run invisible even in principle to anything not actually in or under the floor) such that it interferes with the thermal radiation the floor produces on a cold cold cold day in the far future. Careful examination of that thermal radiation will show the mass-energy-momentum of the egg reached the floor at some point in the past, but is insufficient to reconstruct the egg.

      (Additionally, there's the interesting point that the dropped egg is in free-fall until it hits the floor at which point it experiences a dramatic acceleration. The "no drama" conjecture holds that the dropped egg would pass through the event horizon without experiencing an acceleration, and it in turn is based on the (strong) Einstein Equivalence Principle. One of the reasons Hawking is even interested in this is the question about whether the EEP is preserved in a resolution of the AMPS (Polchinski et al) paradox, and his and his collaborators' solutions rely upon the BMS symmetry (and in particular supertranslations). Their argument suggests that the whole spacetime outside the black hole biases the Hawking radiation when the black hole evaporates, but this raises a number of so-far-unanswered questions (presumably this will form part of a future paper).

      The biased Hawking radiation means that the entanglement energy of the swallowed half of entangled pairs ultimately escapes to infinity (they claim that this is background-independent, but that's something else which will have to be demonstrated in a forthcoming paper), and so there will be no firewall at the (inner) event horizon (of a Kerr black hole).

      So there's no splattered egg. It may be (sort-of) splattered under the floor. (Both GR and semiclassical gravity predict this, but also that the splattering will be unseen above the floor, and also that the precise behaviour of the microscopic components of the egg depends on the behaviour of strongly curved spacetime and quantum fields, and theories describing those presently tend to make inconsistent or even incompatible predictions).)

    44. Re:So now we have a new paradox... by mschwanke97402 · · Score: 1

      It's like saying that the information on my degaussed and melted down backup disk drive is *still* there, if I just knew how to reassemble it properly. That backup disk is just a pile of slag, the information it contained is gone. I'm sorry, that sure looks like we lost information to me...

      Physicists define information differently than normal people or computer types. They will tell you that if they know all details at the quantum level they can walk it all back and recover the original quantum state, AKA the information.

  7. Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    A particle falling into a black hole never perceives itself as having moved past an event horizon, as an apparent event horizon recedes before it. The horizon keeps receding in the direction of the "singularity" until it's torn apart on the way in.

    An external observer never perceives a particle falling past the so-called "true" horizon; it perceives the falling object's time as slowing down to a virtual stop at the event horizon.

    Both of these views are logically consistent under a simple constraint: nothing ever passes an event horizon, and there's no such thing as a "true" horizon, only apparent horizons. The outside observer's view of "truth" should be given no more precedence as being reality than the infalling observer's perception.

    The same nothing-moves-past-the-event-horizon rule must apply to particles falling into the black hole as it's forming: they never get to reach a "singularity" either. Meaning nothing is ever in a singularity state, even that which formed the black hole itself.

    As a black hole evaporates, its mass drops and its event horizon moves inward. Hence, an outside observer will perceive more of an infalling particle's progress inward, as if time is slowly being released. The infalling particle perceives no wait, just a continuous fall. Since the outside observer is seeing the infalling particle's time as moving many, many orders of magnitude slower, then for the two reference frames to be logically consistent, the amount of black hole power output perceived by the outside observer must be perceived by the infalling particle to be many, many orders of magnitude more intense. Hence it's far from black to the infalling particle, rather an intense source of radiation, growing ever more violent as the particle falls further in.

    In short, all of this implies that black holes, to an outside observer, are basically a spot where time slows to a near stop, slowly leaking it out as they radiate away. To an infalling observer, he's just falling into a collapsing star that grows ever more radiatively intense as it collapses. The infalling particle, like everything else that falls into the black hole in the collapse, is blown apart by the intense radiation. But no special rules occur, no loss of information - and no singularity.

    Or whatever, what do I know ;)

    --
    Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
    1. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by MouseR · · Score: 1

      So assuming was currently are falling towards an EH, looking out from out ever-slowing time, would we perceive the universe as inflating?

    2. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      There is nothing past the event horizon. For every bit of information (energy, matter) that falls into a blackhole, the event horizon expands as-if the blackhole were a two-dimensional structure. In other words, the event horizon expands more than if there were three-dimensional space between the event horizon and the singularity.

      Image a balloon that you fill with water. For every drop of water you add, the surface of the balloon expands as if all the water droplets were compacted on the surface--nothing in the middle. The expansion factor per droplet is much higher than if the balloon were three dimensional. This is how blackholes behave according to contemporary theory. And I think (though feel free to correct me) that recent observations also corroborate the theoretical models.

      Some theories take this as evidence that the universe itself is fundamentally two-dimensional. "The holographic principle states that the entropy of ordinary mass (not just black holes) is also proportional to surface area and not volume; that volume itself is illusory and the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information 'inscribed' on the surface of its boundary." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle)

    3. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by ememisya · · Score: 1

      But no special rules occur, no loss of information - and no singularity.

      That's such a one dimensional point of view :) We don't quite know do we? It's funny how event horizon seems to be flat. If you subscribe to Mr. Mandelbrot however, nothing is truly flat in this Universe, it seems likely that black holes aren't either. The whole idea of, "information is lost" when it's clearly radiating information out in the world of the very small and apparently random, "feels" impossible (hence the paradox). I certainly hope Mr. Hawking can prove what feels right :)

    4. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by The+Raven · · Score: 1

      I like this theory. It's clear, consistent with previous observations, and provides a clear explanation. But I don't understand one thing.... what happens when the Black hole expands?

      This great explanation you gave only works after the black hole is created, and is now slowly losing mass via Hawking radiation. What happens to an observer when they fall in and the radius of the event horizon increases to a point beyond where they got 'stuck' in the stopped time of the horizon?

      --
      "I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
    5. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thats not true! the effect you are mentioning is from an outside [far away] observers PoV. the object falling into BH just falls into BH [after speghettification of course]. if thats not true then there is no way a BH can 'grow' by eating other objects.

      of course from outsiders pov the signal from falling object goes through a red-shift sweep all the way to lowest wavelength then stops moving but the clocks of the falling object continue to work as before.

    6. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Informative

      A particle falling into a black hole never perceives itself as having moved past an event horizon, as an apparent event horizon recedes before it. The horizon keeps receding in the direction of the "singularity" until it's torn apart on the way in.

      This isn't true. Particles do in fact pass the event horizon in finite time (as judged in their own time frame). In fact, for very large black holes (tens of thousands of solar masses), it would easily be possible to pass the event horizon without experiencing tidal forces strong enough to rip you apart... in finite time.

      An external observer never perceives a particle falling past the so-called "true" horizon; it perceives the falling object's time as slowing down to a virtual stop at the event horizon.

      While this is sort of true, the idea of an external observing viewing an astronaut "frozen in time" just above the event horizon is just not true in any practical sense.

      What you'd actually observe if you watched someone fall into a black hole is the light from that person exponentially getting dimmer and fading out basically completely in finite time (i.e., probably within a fraction of a second for reasonable sized black holes). Yes, theoretically you can get a photon emitted and taking years or centuries to reach an external observer, but the amount of emitted light decays exponentially fairly quickly -- so as an external observer you'd actually see someone basically "disappear" at the event horizon in finite time (and fairly quickly actually). (For some details and a sample calculation with explanation, see here.)

      Both of these views are logically consistent under a simple constraint: nothing ever passes an event horizon, and there's no such thing as a "true" horizon, only apparent horizons. The outside observer's view of "truth" should be given no more precedence as being reality than the infalling observer's perception.

      Well, since both of your "views" are sort of wrong (or, well, at least misleading), I'm not sure the rest of your explanation should be taken as true.

      Also, the problem is notions of simultaneity and where time and space is in black holes is quite complex when you try to compare observers in general relativity -- basically, you really can't come up with objective metrics that will satisfy notions of simultaneity for observers except in a local sense. So talking about whether a black hole "has formed" or where the event horizon "is" at a particular moment of time becomes quite complicated when you start to involve "external" observers. (For some details, see here for a bit of an explanation.)

      Anyhow, there's lots of debate going on with Hawking about what exactly goes on with black holes (and information), but my point is that trying to apply simple intuition to general relativistic effects around black holes is pretty much destined to fail, or at least lead to a lot of misunderstandings.

    7. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by Rei · · Score: 2

      This isn't true. Particles do in fact pass the event horizon in finite time (as judged in their own time frame). In fact, for very large black holes (tens of thousands of solar masses), it would easily be possible to pass the event horizon without experiencing tidal forces strong enough to rip you apart... in finite time.

      Particles pass the so-called "true" horizon, as perceived by an outside observer, in their time. But they don't perceive it to be an event horizon. They instead perceive an "apparent horizon" receding away from them.

      What they're experiencing - moving past what they outside observer perceives as the event horizon - is quite real. But the outside observer doesn't observe that event while it's simultaneously perceiving the "true" horizon to be at that location; they perceive that after the black hole has evaporated to the point that the observed horizon has receded.

      BTW, I'm hardly the only one suggesting that there's no "true" event horizon, only apparent horizons - Hawking himself suggests that. Any argument you make declaring the "true" horizon to be absolute truth and the apparent horizon to just be an illusion isn't just going against me, it's going against Hawking.

      While this is sort of true, the idea of an external observing viewing an astronaut "frozen in time" just above the event horizon is just not true in any practical sense. What you'd actually observe if you watched someone fall into a black hole is the light from that person exponentially getting dimmer and fading out basically completely in finite time

      I don't know how to respond other than "duh". If you have a light bulb emitting X watts that you perceive to be experiencing time at 50% of the speed that you do, then you perceive it as emitting X*50% watts. If you perceive it to be experiencing time at 1% than you do, then you perceive it to be emitting X*1% watts. And so forth.

      We're not talking about "practical" observations here, as if a person fell who fell into a black hole would be observed by an observer on Earth as merely a motionless body in orbit but otherwise unchanged. Of course there are massive practical constraints that quickly limit a person's ability to actually observe an infalling observer (not just in terms of radiative intensity but distortion too). But we're not talking about practical constraints, only the raw issue of how time is perceived by the different observers. From the perspective of an outside observer, if the energy of an infalling particle could keep being perceived (however weak and distorted), it would never seem to move past the event horizon - until the black hole evaporates and the event horizon recedes.

      Well, since both of your "views" are sort of wrong (or, well, at least misleading)

      Your "wrongs" are 1) Hawking is wrong, and 2) "I'm going to complain about practicalities rather than actualities".

      Also, the problem is notions of simultaneity and where time and space is in black holes is quite complex when you try to compare observers in general relativity -- basically, you really can't come up with objective metrics that will satisfy notions of simultaneity for observers except in a local sense.

      We're not talking about simultaneity, rather causality. Time can flow differently from the perspective of different observers, but the events observed, when they occur, must match and follow in order. If an outside observer perceives a black hole as slowly radiating, then an infalling observer whose time is perceived by the same observer as running at 1000000 times slower must perceive the object as radiating 1000000 times more intensely. Otherwise reality itself is different from different perspectives, not just the flow of time.

      So talking about whether a black hole "has formed" or where the event horizon "is" at a particular mom

      --
      Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
    8. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      BTW, I'm hardly the only one suggesting that there's no "true" event horizon, only apparent horizons - Hawking himself suggests that. Any argument you make declaring the "true" horizon to be absolute truth and the apparent horizon to just be an illusion isn't just going against me, it's going against Hawking.

      First, Hawking's idea here is far from widely accepted. Second, his use of "apparent horizons" is mostly to resolve the so-called "firewall" paradox. (You're probably aware of that, but it's hard to tell based on your posts.) It is NOT suggesting that event horizons "don't exist" or that someone falling into a black hole could never pass one -- it's more like they're "fuzzy" in a quantum mechanical way. Third, I'm really not sure what you're talking about as the "true" event horizon as observed by someone falling into a black hole and its recession. As you point out later in your post, an event horizon is mostly a concept relevant to external observers, not someone falling into a black hole.

      From the perspective of an outside observer, if the energy of an infalling particle could keep being perceived (however weak and distorted), it would never seem to move past the event horizon - until the black hole evaporates and the event horizon recedes.

      Except that's a somewhat misleading interpretation of what Hawking is claiming. And in any case, It really depends on how you interpret what goes on with Hawking radiation and the firewall paradox.

      Your "wrongs" are 1) Hawking is wrong, and 2) "I'm going to complain about practicalities rather than actualities".

      Well, (1) Hawking very well could be wrong (certainly many physicists have doubts), and (2) your entire first post was an attempt to put a very practical intuitive spin on general relativistic phenomena.

      Time can flow differently from the perspective of different observers, but the events observed, when they occur, must match and follow in order. If an outside observer perceives a black hole as slowly radiating, then an infalling observer whose time is perceived by the same observer as running at 1000000 times slower must perceive the object as radiating 1000000 times more intensely. Otherwise reality itself is different from different perspectives, not just the flow of time.

      I'm not sure what "reality" is, other than how we perceive the universe from a particular vantage point. And "reality" will be vastly different or distorted from different perspectives. You say that I'm making inappropriate claims about "true" event horizons, etc. (which I did not mean at all), but you're doing similar things in your attempt to apply practical intuition to this situation where you have a confluence of general relativistic and quantum effects going on.

      You're the one confusing these concepts, invoking an infalling observer crossing the so-called "real" event horizon when the "real" event horizon is a concept perceived only by an external observer. Keep your reference frames consistent.

      Huh? You're the one who started your first post talking about how the infalling observer perceived the "apparent" event horizon, or at least that somehow there was an "apparent" event horizon "receding before it." How could the infalling observer know that the event horizon was receding unless the observer had some way of evaluating where that event horizon ("apparent" or not) was? And if you're now saying that the infalling observer doesn't have an exact perception of where the event horizon ("apparent" or not) might be -- which I basically agree with -- then your first paragraph of your first post was just sort of gobbledygook, since it doesn't have any meaning or relevance to your argument.

      This whole thing is getting muddled, so I'll just stop trying to respond now. Bottom line (for me) is that Hawking's interpretations about what happens at event horizons have received a lot of popu

    9. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      I could be wrong, but they would never perceive such a state. There is no one horizon, but many different horizons depending on the observer.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    10. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Particles pass the so-called "true" horizon, as perceived by an outside observer, in their time. But they don't perceive it to be an event horizon. They instead perceive an "apparent horizon" receding away from them.

      The "true" event horizon corresponds with the region of space where the particle's future light cone ends at the black hole's singularity. From the particle's pov, this point of no return is a real thing, not just "apparent." What is true, is that, in a sense, it's "event horizons all the way down," meaning, not only can't the particle escape the black hole proper, but it can't even escape its current location; every point along the path is "down" in finite time.

    11. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by hr+raattgift · · Score: 2

      The experience of a classical infaller (or an observer of a classical infaller) is not really relevant in this story (but please see my final paragraph). Hawking is trying to deal with the AMPS (Polchinksi et al) firewall paradox, wherein an entangled (quantum) pair has one pair partner fly off towards infinity with the other remaining gravitationally bound to the compact dense object that has a horizon.

      AMPS strongly suggests that at least one of the following must be false: semiclassical gravity as a valid EFT right to the horizon, gauge/gravity correspondence (in particular AdS/CFT as a useful tool in probing energies higher than the EFT limit), unitarity, and the "no drama" result from General Relativity (which is pretty solidly rooted in the EEP).

      Hawking is attempting to preserve all of the above by arguing that the non-escaping pair member ultimately escapes to infinity. In an expanding universe where the non-gravitational field content dilutes away (and consequently cools) leads to a relatively warm horizon temperature for most observers at a distance from the dense compact object. All horizons are observer-dependent (a standard result from General Relativity); all horizons emit a very nearly thermal spectrum (an accepted result from semiclassical gravity, and Hawking did a lot of work in that area, leading to the term Hawking radiation); that spectrum lifts energy away from the dense compact object (an accepted conjecture -- that's black hole evaporation); and when that spectrum is warmer on average than the temperature of the local non-gravitational field content, that evaporation is relevant.

      Even in an expanding universe there are local configurations of field content in which dense compact objects persist forever, by exchanging evaporation energy with each other, directly and indirectly; the evaporation energy heats up local diffuse field content, which is then ingested by the black hole, which decreases its horizon temperature (black hole horizon temperature being inversely proportional to mass). An eternal configuration of "dark grey holes" is a possible result, and thus Hawking's proposal is incomplete, since it only resolves the 4-way conflict in particular configurations of an expanding universe. That such configurations are physically reasonable (or even more probable) does not really matter.

      Your post correctly captures several aspects of the problem. You expect no drama as you reach an event horizon (specifically the point at which all available timelike geodesics lead inside the horizon), because horizons depend on the details of the configuration of events (including those of the infaller and things that can interact (say, electromagnetically or gravitationally) with the infaller). That is, while the definition of an event horizon is sharp, its coordinate location is observer dependent. As you say, a (classical) infaller crossing the real horizon may not even notice it. However, what about an entangled pair-partner?

      Breaking an entanglement transfers mass-energy-momentum (in flat spacetime one would say it releases energy) and in a local theory, that must be sourced by one or both pair partners. If we have lots of such breaking pairs, we have a large amount of energy just inside the horizon -- a firewall.

      Hawking tries to step around that by saying that there is no place in the universe where all timelike geodesics point inside a small region of spacetime. That is, all black holes ultimately fully evaporate. And, even if half of a pair is local to a compact dense object for a lonnnnnnng time (many trillions of years), there is no breakage of entanglement, and so no release of entanglement energy. Thus there is no conflict with "no drama", there is no breakdown of semiclassical gravity in the low energy limit (because you don't get probably-unphysical superpositions of the metric sourced by each half of the pairs), gauge/gravity remains useful (because you can still focus on the black hole surface area), and quantum fields evolve

    12. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by hr+raattgift · · Score: 1

      The black hole per se is not an emitter. Unruh radiation depends on the observer-dependent aspects of the horizon (any horizon; it's also true for the cosmological horizon) and is very dim and very similar to a very cold blackbody; while some observers will see it brighter and warmer than others, this is not true for any observer free-falling towards (and through) a horizon, because the Unruh radiation is also in free-fall You can reverse the picture and ask why a free-falling infaller does not get ionized by the light of distant stars as she approaches the horizon, and arrive at the same answer: the starlight is also in free-fall.

      The picture is a little different for non-freefalling infallers: one that sees a big dipole redshift for distant starlight (ignoring the big Einstein lens in front) will see a shift for the horizon radiation as well.

      A "true" horizon is not observer-independent -- if a boundary exists at which all available null (and by extension timelike) geodesics only lead inside that boundary, it's a true event horizon. Hawking has argued that they do not exist in any background (that's contentious) and instead says that only apparent horizons exists. The geodesics that exist at an apparent horizon are awfully messy, and the topic for him and his collaborators for the next couple of days will be explaining them for all backgrounds. As of now, I think nobody but them can do anything but guess about their explanation.

      (Recovering information from a black hole that only has a (possibly long lived) apparent horizon and no real event horizon involves supertranslations which form part of the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs symmetry group, of which the Poincaré group (the symmetry group of Minkowski spacetime) is a subgroup; there's lots of headscratching about *how* one does this exactly, but certainly the BMS symmetry group provides lots of (even infinite) extra degrees of freedom into which one can move information about a particle in curved spacetime. (But doing so classically is both hard and maybe not complete because you can set up pretty realistic toy models in which you cannot actually extract the metric sourced from quantum particles)).

    13. Re:Of course it never gets past the event horizon. by hr+raattgift · · Score: 1

      As you point out later in your post, an event horizon is mostly a concept relevant to external observers, not someone falling into a black hole

      To reiterate what AC says, no, an event horizon is *especially* relevant to an infaller, because it's the boundary formed by the set of points surrounding a region of spacetime at which all null geodesics lead inside that boundary and ONLY inside that boundary (or outside it in the case of a cosmological event horizon).

      Hawking's argument about apparent black holes effectively says that [a] no such point exists if the black hole can evaporate and [b] that enough quantized properties of infallen matter can be recovered from the configuration of all the fields local to the black hole (including the gravitational field) that conserved quantities stay conserved. (That's especially relevant for entangled pairs, and much less relevant for things like baryon number, in the Wilson sense of relevant).

      It's kinda interesting to think of the picture for a cosmological event horizon for a universe that transitions from expansion to contraction -- the galaxies that are being carried across our Earth-centric cosmological event horizon could, with a suitable evolution of dark energy (e.g., if the metric expansion can accelerate, why can't it decelerate and reverse?) -- wind up being carried back in. They would still look like ordinary galaxies when they popped back into view, just like they did when they faded out, because conditions just outside the observable universe are almost certainly very similar to those just inside (and that's also true for Schwarzschild black holes, for a very careful definition of the spacetime region "just inside" the horizon, assuming that the "no drama" conjecture is correct, but that definition doesn't practically save an infaller that is self-gravitating (like a star freefalling through a supermassive black hole horizon) or bound together electromagnetically (like a person freefalling through a stellar black hole horizon)).

      So our cosmological event horizon is probably real (since the metric expansion is unlikely to reverse) -- maybe black hole event horizons are too (possibly for the same reason: background dependence, e.g. \rho_{crit} in the standard model of cosmology).

  8. Mixup by Tablizer · · Score: 0

    He was talking about Comcast.

  9. Get rekt m8 ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll make you gargle your last breath !

  10. I know this one! by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Saint Paul

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  11. Also known as ... by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... optimizing queries for Oracle.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Also known as ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now that's funny!!

  12. MInnesota? by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

    What's Minnesota fgo to do with this?

    1. Re:MInnesota? by osu-neko · · Score: 1

      It's just an example of some place you're unlikely to know the capital of. Common sense would have it in Minneapolis, so of course it's in some dinky nearby town instead...

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
    2. Re:MInnesota? by holmstar · · Score: 1

      Saint Paul is the second largest city in Minnesota, so not really dinky. Anyway, it's one continuous metro area, so it doesn't really matter.

    3. Re:MInnesota? by lazy+genes · · Score: 0

      The people of MN have always known that nothing in this universe can destroy information. The fact that he said " Information was lost" upset me. Then he keeps fking up his fkup. I live in a world where science can only advance when there are funarals. I believe that we are in the very early stages of evolution. geeez

    4. Re:MInnesota? by osu-neko · · Score: 1

      Anyway, it's one continuous metro area, so it doesn't really matter.

      That's what the people from St. Paul (and the other suburbs of Minneapolis) say... :p

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
    5. Re:MInnesota? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      In the US, the capital and the largest city tend to be different, unlike in Europe. Knowing only that Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota, your best guess would be "not Minneapolis".

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  13. Ask to speak to a Supervisor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    n/t

  14. Why does he waste his time? by Pro923 · · Score: 1

    Who cares if information is preserved in a black hole? What purpose does it serve? What can it teach us about the universe? I'd actually like to know the answers to these questions.

    But... Hawking is undoubtedly a brilliant mind. Why has he been wasting his time for years trying to decide whether or not "information is preserved in a black hole"?

    I'm admitting my ignorance here... Someone please explain to me what the relevance of this is...

    1. Re:Why does he waste his time? by BradleyUffner · · Score: 2

      Who cares if information is preserved in a black hole? What purpose does it serve? What can it teach us about the universe? I'd actually like to know the answers to these questions.

      But... Hawking is undoubtedly a brilliant mind. Why has he been wasting his time for years trying to decide whether or not "information is preserved in a black hole"?

      I'm admitting my ignorance here... Someone please explain to me what the relevance of this is...

      The problem is that we don't know what we don't know yet. This discovery will act as a stepping stone for other discoveries that we can't predict; some directly useful in every day life, others not so much. Scientific advancement is all build on the shoulders of those who came before; this discovery lifts us a little bit higher, ready to catch whatever comes next.

    2. Re:Why does he waste his time? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1
      " Someone please explain to me what the relevance of this is..."

      That would take about 3 months and an understanding of what entropy is

    3. Re:Why does he waste his time? by jheath314 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Will this be useful for solving real-world problems here and now? Probably not.

      Does it help us better understand the universe? Absolutely.

      The black hole information paradox is important in physics because a pretty fundamental idea of quantum mechanics is that it shouldn't be possible to destroy information. Burn a book? The complete information about all the molecules in the book are still encoded in the wave function of the system. Annihilate it with anti-matter? The information is now carried by the resulting gamma ray photons. You can make it difficult or impossible to recover the information, but the theory says you can't actually destroy the information itself.

      This is why black holes are so interesting... having stuff disappear behind a one-way event horizon is basically the same as information destruction. It was a pretty fundamental paradox.

      Now, whether you care about advances in theoretical physics is up to you, but to answer your question "who cares?"... I do. Nerds do. Join us... the universe is a wondrous and beautiful place.

      --
      Procrastination Man strikes again!
    4. Re:Why does he waste his time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By that logic, what's the point in gambling? Or drinking? Or waxing idiotic on Slashdot? Not everything must be useful, but it can provide insights or entertainment that helps lead us to more useful ends.

    5. Re:Why does he waste his time? by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      I really do care a lot about science... I just don't fully understand why information that is caught in a gravity well is relevant in any way - whether or not it retains it's order. Your explanation helps though, thanks for that.

    6. Re:Why does he waste his time? by perryizgr8 · · Score: 1

      Modern physics has evolved into a discipline in which we can treat the universe as an information processor. Everything depends on information. In fact, the speed of light is considered to be more of a speed limit on the propagation of information, not just light. According to our present understanding, there exist several places in the universe that seem to trap information, and it seems that information is lost. Loss of information like this raises many other questions of importance that I am totally unfit to describe.

      --
      Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
    7. Re:Why does he waste his time? by lazy+genes · · Score: 0

      It boils down to what is fundamental. The movement of information through the fabric of space-time could be the most fundamental. If even one tiny bit of it was lost this universe could not have existed in the first place. He is just trying to find a way out of his blunder.

    8. Re:Why does he waste his time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because it is trying to understand fundamental problems that inventions and discoveries are made. The CERN looks at fundamental physics, and is where the web was invented, as well as several other technologies, e.g. medical, solar panels, ...

    9. Re:Why does he waste his time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I get frustrated by how much time is being devoted towards solving a problem that quite frankly does not exist. All of the issues with "destroying information" are created by the flawed logic of the status quo in physics. The simple fact of the matter is that when matter or energy get absorbed into the black hole, they merge and become part of the core, known as the singularity. There never has been an issue of "destroyed information", the information is merely transformed into a different state of matter or energy than can exist outside the event horizon. Because even the most basic of us can understand that we cannot go beyond the event horizon and come back, we will never be able to prove anything beyond theoretical physics. The only reason this "destroyed information" paradox even exists is because of the false notion of "hawking radiation" anyway. Black holes do not evaporate over time. People who believe this idiotic falsehood only do so out of fear. Long story short, Hawking is a famous idiot who will be forgotten in the next generation as all of his theories are proven false.

    10. Re:Why does he waste his time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There never has been an issue of "destroyed information", the information is merely transformed into a different state of matter or energy than can exist outside the event horizon.

      Issues in physics are not solved by a single vague sentence with no actual formal, specific, quantitative ideas behind it... It is easy to just wave your hands, but it doesn't accomplish anything useful and amounts to pretending an issue isn't there.

      The only reason this "destroyed information" paradox even exists is because of the false notion of "hawking radiation" anyway,

      The problem exists even without Hawking radiation, and is a potential fundamental problem with the basic concept of an event horizon, which you seem to agree with the idea nothing can come back from it, and quantum mechanics.

      Long story short, Hawking is a famous idiot who will be forgotten in the next generation as all of his theories are proven false.

      Yeah, and random posters on the internet are never wrong when they predict the down fail of science theories...

    11. Re:Why does he waste his time? by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      Why are you on this website?

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    12. Re:Why does he waste his time? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      I'm probably being naive here, but are not putting complexity where it does not exist? If you have a book and dismantle it so far as to undo it in their atoms, I do not see how you would be able to preserve how the atoms were linked to form the book (you will have just a bunch of atoms from many elements). And why the atoms that make up the book would cease to exist if the book were swallowed by a black hole? The "book" (your atoms) would still be inside the black hole, rather than "cease to exist" he was now simply inaccessible to us.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    13. Re:Why does he waste his time? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Here's my try:

      Theories of physics that seem to be mostly true predict that information (defined in a physically rigorously way, of course) can't actually be destroyed. Black holes appear to destroy information (in the older theories, the only characteristics of black holes were mass, spin, and charge). Something has to give there; either the theories are wrong or black holes don't destroy information. Hawking's proposing a hypothesis that says black holes don't destroy information, which would remove a discrepancy inside physics.

      Therefore, this is not so much about information preservation as about knowing where current theory is weak, and therefore where to hammer on it to find out new things. That's worthy for the mind of a brilliant physicist.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    14. Re:Why does he waste his time? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      the universe is a wondrous and beautiful place

      With the exception of Donald Trump's wig, which is merely wondrous..

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    15. Re:Why does he waste his time? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Why are you on this website?

      For the chicks.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    16. Re:Why does he waste his time? by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      Same reason I joined Grindr.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  15. not much different than things he already said by eyenot · · Score: 2

    I remember when Hawking said that basically black holes must radiate "information" somehow.

    Before that idea, the thinking was that if you could somehow reverse the direction of time, plenty of things in the universe would go in reverse but one thing that you would never see is something that went into a black hole coming back out again.

    Hawking felt that this was counterintuitive, or something, and came up with this idea: something goes into a black hole, and information about that thing comes out. Somehow.

    He never really described how that's supposed to happen. So, fast forward to today.

    So, basically he tacked one additional sentence onto an already pretty short statement -- IMHO.

    It's not all that exciting unless you're a really excitable theoretical physicist.

    --
    "Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
    1. Re:not much different than things he already said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So the gravitational pull of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape, how can information radiate out unless it is far faster than the speed of light? Any such thing? I'm not buying it.

    2. Re:not much different than things he already said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Information has no mass.

    3. Re:not much different than things he already said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the gravitational pull of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape, how can information radiate out unless it is far faster than the speed of light? Any such thing? I'm not buying it.

      Black holes are more complicated than you have been led to believe. The phenomenon in question is Hawking Radiation.

    4. Re:not much different than things he already said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not that the information from inside the black hole escapes, it's just an exact copy of the information that escapes. antiparticle pairs that spontaneously With Hawking radiation, there are particle-split apart then shortly thereafter join back together.

      When this happens around the even horizon, sometimes, either the particle or the anti-particle part of the pair will get caught in the black hole and the other half will escape. When the particle that enters the black hole is an anti-particle, it will join with another particle and annihilate it instead. The net result is a particle inside the black hole getting annihilated, and a copy of that particle escaping from the black hole.

  16. There are no such things as "black holes" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    at least not in the common concept of a super massive star being crushed to a zero dimensional point.

    As the mass compresses the gravity filed, and the time distortion caused by it, become so strong that the star has not yet finished imploding.

    just as anything approaching the event horizon has time slow to the point that it never crosses the event horizon.

    Eventually, after unknown trillions of years the cores of these stars, which have been collapsing all the time, will reach a state where they will rebound and begin expanding again.

    All the matter/energy/information that the "black hole" contains, along with everything that had fallen into it during its lifetime, will be released back into the Universe in what will appear to an observer as a massive explosion, a "Big Bang" if you like.

    Inflation will kick in and a new Universe will rise from the ashes of our current Cosmos. And some of what we are will be preserved and passed on.

    -

  17. keep takin the tablets stephen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This guy appears to be full of crap at times.
    I swear he just makes this shit up because he can and an entire multitude of sheep are willing to spout noise similar to the original noise this idiot has spoken.

    He has no proof so his theory on blackholes is no more or less valid than the original earth is flat hypothesis. That was proven to be wrong. We cant easily do that with this guy.

    The point is - what is the point ?

    Talking about hypothetical self-referencial crap that remains in the realms of fantasy.

    He may be good at maths - but thats about it.

  18. OK, can he get the truth out of Hillary Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So what if he can pull information out of a black hole.

    I'll be impressed when he gets the truth - about ANYTHING - from Hillary Clinton.

  19. It it still information if it is useless? by linatux · · Score: 1

    Doesn't sound very informative to me

  20. I have a theory by wbr1 · · Score: 0
    Can I be crass?

    Oh yeah, this is slashdot....

    My theory for getting information out of a black hole....

    Eat the barbacoa with spicy sauce at chipotle.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  21. In related news... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

    Put in layman's terms, "this jumbled return of information was like burning an encyclopedia ...

    Millennials ask, "how would you burn Wikipedia?"

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:In related news... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1, Funny

      You'd start with Jimmy Wale's house...

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    2. Re:In related news... by bsolar · · Score: 4, Funny

      In a flamewar.

  22. Practical Applications? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or just good ol fashioned geek fun?

  23. Strominger? by mustermark · · Score: 1

    Do they mean Andrew Strominger at Harvard? I've never heard of Andrew Stromberg.

  24. I'm a nerd and I don't care. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't care. No really, I don't. I care about the latest breakthroughs in semiconductor design, superconductivity, biology, but cosmology is f'ing stupid. It's talking about stuff that will never ever matter. It's just a bunch of fun for sci-fi nerds, like 12 year olds talking about Ferraris except they'll never own them in their wildest dreams.

    1. Re:I'm a nerd and I don't care. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't cosmology... just vanilla astrophysics with implications for the self-consistency of GR and quantum mechanics...

  25. It's easy by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    Stephen Hawking Presents Theory On Getting Information Out of a Black Hole

    You rough it up a little, shine a bright light in its face and ask it where it stashed the loot. You could also play good astrophysicist/bad astrophysicist.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  26. Re: Of course it never gets past the event horizon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perception in this case is quite everything. We as humans see but a speck of the cosmos's wondrous beauty, and that being in very very slow motion. In essence, we cannot see the forest for the trees. Therefore, if even for one instance we could stop time long enough to stand on the precipice of a "black hole", I (as Hawking is too) am quite sure massive amounts of information could be revealed. Unfortunately this will be of little use as our current state/s of awareness is not capable of that capacity just yet. Does anyone not recall him stating recently (2 light yrs ago?) that energy could be destroyed? Hawking is but a child compared to einstein imo.

  27. Re: so be it dragons? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Chuck norris doesn't escape from black holes. They escape from HIM.

    Even Chuck Norris was defeated ... once ... by Bruce Lee

  28. Re:Leonard Susskind fails jpop test. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Hawking's new idea is that the information doesn't make it inside the black hole at all. Instead, it's permanently encoded in a 2D hologram at the surface of the black hole's event horizon.

    So we throw Hatsune Miku into a black hole and the result is still Hatsune Miku? She's even more invariable than e^x derived!

  29. His head has passed the event horizon of his ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Doesn't everyone know that you need to pass a black hole by another to pull stuff back out of a black hole?

    Just what we need, more useless theoretical non-science that can never be verified and put to good use.

  30. No, you miss the point by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 1

    Being able to reassemble it is not the point, it's that you can re-wind time and get the information back out. With the normal idea of a blackhole, even if you could rewind time, you couldn't get the information back out.

    No, you miss the point. He said basically "Having the information 'available' isn't really helpful because we have no way to get it." You simply proposed a theoretical way to get it that can't be done either at this time, possibly ever, so his assertion that we can't get it is still right. Unless you are a Q, telling us to "rewind time" as about as helpful as suggesting we simply change the gravitational constant of the universe.

    1. Re:No, you miss the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're completely missing the point if you think this involves humans being able to retrieve the information in any way. And yes, being able to rewind time is an important point and way of thinking about it, as this has to do with the fundamental properties of quantum mechanics like time symmetry. It is not about what people can and can't do to access that information, only that it is still accessible to quantum mechanics in a way that doesn't break existing theories.

    2. Re:No, you miss the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, that WAS the simplest solution.

    3. Re:No, you miss the point by Bengie · · Score: 1

      He said basically "Having the information 'available' isn't really helpful because we have no way to get it."

      This happens all the time, it's a normal part of the real world. You can't build a computer powerful enough to simulate the Universe, within the Universe. The information may be lost to observers within the Universe, but never lost to the Universe itself. "Us" being able to retrieve the information has no bearing on the subject. Simple example. Tell me exactly what happened 13.8bil years ago, I want to know the exact position of every bit of information in the Universe down to its plank. You may not be able to answer that, but the Universe can.

      You simply proposed a theoretical way to get it that can't be done either at this time, possibly ever

      I didn't say "rewinding time" as a solution. If you can't rewind time and get the information back out, you've broken causality.

  31. Well figures by CxDoo · · Score: 0

    This guy is stuck in black hole related stuff and just can't move out of it.

    --
    "Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
    1. Re:Well figures by CxDoo · · Score: 2

      I don't know who's the moron downmoderating my posts days after being posted but I want to acknowledge their work. Keep it up!

      --
      "Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
  32. Jim Stone reports Hawking died years ago by Thing+1 · · Score: 1

    Jim Stone, freelance journalist, points out that Stephen Hawking died years ago, "on schedule" (e.g., from the disease that he had). http://82.221.129.208/ac7index... (search for "Hawking").

    Which raises the question, why are they perpetuating him? His voice has been used in many mainstream media projects in the past few years -- a Pink Floyd song, a Big Bang episode, some other song more recently, The Simpsons, etc. MSM is being used to perpetuate the lie, just as they're being used to perpetuate the lie that the Earth is a globe (well, now it's a pear, Neil DeGrass Tyson says, because we've figured out that there's more land in the south, which makes sense if you look at the UN flag, which is a map of the flat Earth -- so they keep changing what "science" says to fit their narrative, but how the heck did NASA get pictures of a round Earth!??! Especially one with "SEX" in the clouds, the recent photoshop disaster).

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    1. Re:Jim Stone reports Hawking died years ago by Prune · · Score: 1

      This is one of the rare cases where I wish there was a "+1 Troll" moderation option. Skilled in the art, indeed — you're one of a dying breed. As a form of sincere flattery I plagiarized your post to /sci/ on a well-known imageboard.

      --
      "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
    2. Re:Jim Stone reports Hawking died years ago by Thing+1 · · Score: 1

      "Skilled in the art" -- thank you sir! I don't think that myself, I just receive inputs from disparate sources and attempt to put them together into something coherent and usable. Nobody has survived as long as Hawking has, with the disease that he has. So, as they say, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." From wikipedia and wikipedia:

      The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, in 1963. At the time, doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years.[38][39]

      The average survival from onset to death is three to four years.[8] About 10% survive longer than 10 years.[4]

      The evidence that Hawking is still alive is lacking, just as the evidence that the earth is a globe is lacking. And, apparently, intentionally ridiculous (the "SEX" in the clouds in the newest photo from a month ago; the perm sported on the space station (how did she spray, without everyone else coughing it up?); the bubbles seen rising in the Chinese "space walk" video; the "thunk" that can be heard as an Apollo astronaut tosses something and it hits the (completely turned off) lander, so the sound was picked up through the suit's microphone ... in vacuum ...; and many more instances of their intentionally showing us the fakery, not to mention The Shining).

      While I used to find your signature amusing, I now understand that they (politicians) only act as imbeciles, while they rape the country and its resources. Look at Hillary's behavior, selling 18,000 documents to foreign powers, a true Bolshevik communist, and now all the media distractions keeping that story from the surface (the fake shooting in VA, "Cecil the lion", etc).

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    3. Re:Jim Stone reports Hawking died years ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He gives multiple public talks in person every year if you wanted to go see him in person...

  33. OK, we'll do it in the body then. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . stop acting like a fucking crybaby.

    Cheers.

  34. I thought black holes don't actually exist? by nichogenius · · Score: 1

    A while back, a similar claim was made that matter never crosses the event horizon because the black hole never collapses far enough to become a bona fide black hole. If the matter and information simply get stuck in a sphere surrounding the event horizon (assuming an event horizon ever forms) then the theories are essentially the same.

    1. Re:I thought black holes don't actually exist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless you use a reply paid self addressed envelope; then you'll have a 50/50 chance of getting the information back.

  35. Slashdot User Not Really Fun At Parties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It’s not really much of a headline, but it’s slightly more compelling than “Serious Man is Serious.”

  36. Re: Of course it never gets past the event horizon by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    Does anyone not recall him stating recently (2 light yrs ago?) that energy could be destroyed?

    At least Hawking wouldn't have confused a measure of time with a measure of distance.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  37. Re: Of course it never gets past the event horizon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unless he's using theorists' units where c=1... but then the point is to be lazy about writing extra c's and one wouldn't write light years, but just years.