Black Hole Paradox

Heyo

I recently read this article about the black hole paradox. Soo now I’m gonna talk about it ‘cause I think it’s pretty interesting.

If you’re not interested in this topic, I suggest you stop reading now.

Firstly…What’s A Paradox?

Many of you may or may not know what a paradox is, so here’s a brief explanation.

A paradox is a supposedly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition. When investigated/explained it may prove to be well founded or true.

People, scientists and experts included, have found thousands of paradoxes…some solved and others still confusing people.

The Black Hole Information Paradox

This paradox threatens to entangle the fields of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

So what do I mean by ‘information’?

Usually the information we talk about is visible to the naked eye. Let’s take this cabbage for example.

From what we can see, this cabbage is, well, green, kinda round, with a white stem. Although physicists are more concerned about its quantum information.

Quantum information is the quantum properties of all the particles that make up (for example) the cabbage; such as its position, velocity, and spin.

What does this have to do with black holes?

Hypothetically, if the cabbage were to enter the black hole, it seems as though it has left the universe and all its quantum information is irretrievably lost.

This doesn’t immediately break the laws of physics. The information might be out of sight but there is a chance that it may still exist within the black hole.

On the other hand, some think that the information never makes it into the black hole.

When seen from outside, it’s as if the cabbage’s quantum information gets encoded on the surface layer of the black hole, otherwise known as the event horizon.

When the black hole’s mass increases, the surface of the event horizon increases with it. Soo, it’s probable that when a black hole swallows an object, it also grows large enough to conserve the object’s quantum information.

Although, the laws of physics remain instant even if the information is conserved inside or on the surface of the black hole.

Until you consider…

Hawking Radiation

Discovered by Stephen Hawking in 1974, this phenomenon show that black holes are steadily evaporating. Over time, black holes lose mass as they shed particles from their event horizons.

At first, it seems as though the evaporating particles are unrelated to the information a black hole can encode…

…but that can suggest that a black hole and all the information it contains could be lost.

A question that often arises is “Does that quantum information truly disappear? If not, where does it go?”

And although the evaporation process occurs over a long period of time, the questions that it raises for physics are by far more urgent.

If information can be destroyed, then we would be forced to rewrite some of our most fundamental scientific paradigms.

What Are The Different Theories/Solutions?

The paradox is just a misunderstanding of how general relativity and quantum mechanics interact

A solution to this paradox (and others) will come with a “unified theory of everything”

Holographic Principle – (firstly the event horizon is 2D), it suggests that the boundary of the observable universe is 2D, and it’s encoded with information about real, 3D objects. If this principle is true, then it’s possible that reality as we know it is just a holographic projection of that information.

So…did you know about this paradox before? If not, do you find it interesting?

What about the theories? Which ones do you think is most likely to be true? Do you have a theory?

Fun fact: not all black holes are black. If you want to know why that is, click the link below

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/news-articles/shedding-light-on-black-holes

One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect.
Perfection simply doesn’t exist…
Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.
– Stephen Hawking