Slashdot Mirror
Why the Black Hole Information Paradox Is Such a Problem
New submitter TheAlexKnapp writes: Here's a really nice explanation of the Black Hole Information Paradox for those who are unfamiliar with it. The article lays out the basic gist — that right now if you take two black holes, one made from the collapse of one type of star, and the second from the collapse of a different type, you can't tell which is which. Ethan Siegel points out that Hawking's big announcement was really just a small step heading towards a possible solution, and highlights that the paradox highlights the incompleteness of our understanding of some types of physics.
You do know. There's information on and within both phones that's a record of which owner they had.
Of course you are simplifying down to a ridiculous level, and I do understand that information is a pretty powerful concept in physics that carries a lot more weight than you would think, but still, I did not find anything useful in this article. The title of the Slashdot Summary was very promising: "why the black hole information paradox is such a problem", so I was hoping to finally see this question answered, but no, same old same old. Information gets conserved in all experiments we do outside black holes, so we kind of assume this must be some cosmic requirement (why?), and for some reason which is never properly explained we just can't accept that black holes would destroy information. Because... well, why exactly? Why is it such a problem that information would simply disappear in a black hole?
Why would it be such a problem if information did simply disappear? Oh my god, entropy might go down in an isolated system, it's the end of physics as we know it! No it's not. Entropy is just a trick that works because of the statistically enormously small probability of it going down in a large macroscopic system without spending energy on it, but isn't that really all it is? Why does it get treated like one of the most important truths in the universe?
Black holes are just a toy.
Suppose gravity wins out after all, and the universe ends in a Big Crunch. One or a few Planck second(s) before the singularity, all the information in the universe should still be there. How?
Suppose entropy wins and the universe ends in heat death. For bonus points assume all protons have decayed. All the information should still be preserved. How?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Obvious non-physicist here, but in absolute terms, information theory says that the original systems' (ice sculptures) information -- every particle's directions etc. was not destroyed, though it may be terribly difficult to ascertain by us at a later time.
I don't pretend to understand why, but the fundamental premise is that information is a conserved property.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
No, it is more subtle than that. Conservation of information is closely tied to time reversal symmetry and energy conservation as a result of Noether's theorem. But in general it is not tied to casaulity.
From Stephen Hawkings notes:
"And then I was reading slashdot and anonymous coward said all of this preservation of information stuff is a laughable concept, that's why I've switched professions from math/physics to web site dev. I'm working on a website for balancing checkbooks, should be really cool."