Stephen Hawking: black holes do not have - Gazeta Wyborcza

This shocking statement in the mouth of the British physicist who studied lifelong black holes. But a few days ago published online job which warrants that there are no gravitational wells, of which nothing – not even light – can not escape.

This is an unexpected twist in the discussion about black holes – mysterious objects that are to be for the matter and radiation trap of no return.

Black holes aroused controversy from the start, as soon as it was realized that that may exist. The real dispute started, however, when 40 years ago, Stephen Hawking showed that these objects are not eternal, because “evaporate”, that emit thermal radiation, and sometimes do not stay after them. “Pairing” black holes eventually destroyed the peace of physicists, I broke one of the most basic principles of physics that information can not disappear without a trace.

It should be clarified that physicists do not worry about the fact that the black hole collapses and massacring what her fall. Bothers them is that if the black hole evaporates, it would disappear along with it without a trace any information about what fell to her earlier. In the normal world after things always is a distinctive and unique footprint – fragments, debris, ashes, atoms, which can be (at least in theory) to uniquely identify the original destroyed.

After evaporating black hole – there is nothing to identification. Thermal radiation carries only information about the temperature of the black hole and nothing more. It disappears so information about what was in it. Severed is continuity between the past and the future, which is guaranteed by the fundamental principle of physics (technically it is said that violate the unitarity of theory).

As has been shown, among others, Nobel Prize winner Gerard ‘t Hooft, breaking this rule violates the whole edifice of modern theories – eg leads to the disappearance of the information, and energy that can decrease. – Admission to the disappearance of information in black holes would be highly contagious – said John Preskill of Caltech in Pasadena. – You would have to admit that it may also die and arise out of nothing energy. And it is not only far away in space, but also in our laboratories.

For many years, physicists are trying to solve this – as it is called – “information paradox”, but so far without success.

radical step Hawking

Now, Stephen Hawking, who himself years ago helped to create this problem, proposing a radical step in to address it. He says that around a black hole is not formed an absolute horizon, and so they never formed a closed area, outside of which nothing can escape. “No event horizon means that there are no black holes – in the sense that light can not escape from them” – writes Hawking. In short, in his opinion, there are no such black holes, which itself so far imagined – objects that anything they release from the inside.

no event horizon means that there are no black holes – in the sense that light can not escape from them – Hawking writes

There are only a limited time horizon “apparent”, which – and this is the most important conclusion from the new hypothesis Hawking – to get out of the depths of the black hole information for its victims. You can imagine how Earth’s horizon, ie the border, where the sky descends to Earth – apparently it seems that you can walk to it, but it really does not exist.

So there is no paradox – the information is not lost no news comes out before the black hole has time to evaporate completely. But this is a Pyrrhic victory over nothingness, because – as further justifies Hawking – a black hole releases the victim from the inside in a position so distorted that they are virtually unrecognizable and play. This process is in fact inherently chaotic equation as the atmosphere. And just as you can not arrange forecasts for more than several days in advance, just as the radiation leaving the black hole, in practice, we can not conclude that fell to her (because of that Hawking’s work bears the title perverse “behavior information and weather forecasts for black holes. “Interestingly, among the nine works, which helped him reach that conclusion and cites in his paper Hawking, there is also an article by Polish physicists Peter and Andrew Bizon Rostworowski from the Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University).

Theoretically information leaves the black hole, but in practice is not to decipher, as what the weather will be for the month. It seems that the same Hawking in a Solomonic wants to reconcile the two factions of physicists that have wrangled about the “information paradox”.

Hawking’s opponents are not happy with this solution. They emphasize that the work not yet passed the sieve review. So you can be sure that the debate about black holes only gain momentum.

Let it briefly step by step.

What black holes are and where they even come from?

In 1939, two American physicists – Robert Oppenheimer (the same who later led the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb in the U.S. ) and Hartland Snyder – the first time a mathematically describe the process of gravitational collapse of a star under its own weight. It implied that if the star is sufficiently massive, it will shrink … up to a mathematical point. So the result of Einstein’s equations.

This point – in which the density and temperature are rising to infinity – called a singularity. At a certain distance from the singularity will be the horizon, beyond which nothing is able to escape, not even light, as it will be too great gravity.

Hawking discovers that black holes are not eternal

In the early 70s for the study of black holes and singularities took a young graduate student from Cambridge – Stephen Hawking. With astonishment discovered that if you take into account quantum physics, black holes can send thermal radiation. They are not so completely black, as is apparent from the classical theory of Einstein. From his calculations showed that the smaller the black hole, the more violently “radiates”. Small black holes do not deserve to call them black – should be white-hot and can even explode! “Black holes explode?” – Hawking asked in the title of his work in 1974.

information paradox divides physicists

When Hawking discovered that black holes are not eternal and disappear along with all the information which fell to them, physicists is divided. Some of the reconciled (and for Hawking liked to say that “God not only plays dice, but sometimes it gets lost without a trace in a black hole”). Others claimed that it was impossible that somewhere there is an error.

Retractable fantastic hypothesis – that a black hole creates a new, child of the universe, and is separated from ours, so the information goes into a different world. Or that the black hole does not evaporate completely. It remains the “core”, so called. infanton, which is a kind of hologram located all memory of the black hole.

ring of fire

Before Two years ago, there was another breakthrough in the discussion about black holes. Joseph Polchinski and his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara have calculated that even if black holes “evaporate” the information in the form of Hawking radiation, a side effect of this “leak” must be “ring of fire” around the black hole horizon. Daredevil, who wanted to cross the horizon of a black hole, would be immediately incinerated by unimaginable heat.

It is only deepened the mystery. Einstein’s theory does not provide for any wall of fire around the black hole. Crossing the horizon, we should not notice anything suspicious. Only when the pit pulls us deeper, gravity will stretch our limbs as pie to spaghetti. Cells, molecules, atoms, quarks, each smallest component of matter, from which we are made, will be converted into noodles of infinite length, because according to the theory of relativity, a black hole is a bottomless pit. But on the threshold of the well there should be no ring of fire.

In this way, Joseph Polchinski transformed the riddle of loss of information in black holes in the more spectacular the question: what is the fate of daredevil who jumps into a black hole? Is the place burn to ashes or die as a result of rupture of members, as the victim MADEJOWEGO bed

If the information comes out of the black hole, the daredevil burn, but at the same time you have to say goodbye to Einstein’s theory and come up with new. If the information is lost, this daredevil does not burn to ashes, but then also are at odds with the current principles of physics (because it violated the principle of unitarity).

The current hypothesis Hawking also solves that problem – if there is no event horizon, it will not be also this strange fire wall around the black hole. The question remains whether the famous physicist who ended Jan. 8 72 years, has the right (the brilliant physicist was wrong many times).

Many of the scientists that he jumped into the black hole to see for himself what is True, but the closest candidate for a black hole is located at a distance of 1,600 years of light.

What is “information paradox” black holes, that is what physicists argue

Top gives it anecdotal history of fierce rivalry Zrz?dy professors and stews, told years ago by physicist Leonard Susskind.

dispute these fictional scientists crossed the boundaries of common sense. Driven by jealousy Stew blew up the time machine prof. Zrz?dy, in which the carrying mathematical model of direct inestimable value. The pattern so just evaporate – turned into a cloud of electrons, nucleons and photons.

Later in court Grumpy Bandit complained about him: – That’s what this fool did was irreversible crime! The design was forever lost.

– Nonsense – defended the stew. – Information can never be destroyed. You’re just lazy. Just find every little piece remaining from the explosion and reverse its motion. The laws of nature are symmetric with respect to time, ie reversible, so you play back the document with his idiotic design.

Called to the witness physicists confirmed his words and Stew won.

But Grumpy Bandit cruelly avenged. He stole a computer opponent, which saved were his favorite recipes, i .. threw him into a black hole.

Stew In court he could not get over the loss. – There is no way to retrieve the recipe for my favorite steak. It’s gone forever in a black hole, where already there is no return …

– Objection, Your Honor! – Stood up for it Grumpy Bandit. – Stephen Hawking in the 70s proved that black holes evaporate, ie emit thermal radiation. As a consequence disappear over many billions of years, but the stew will be able to take radiation that remain after them, and he played all the lost once in the bowels of the black hole.

– Nonsense! – Said Stephen Hawking called as a witness (and supported him too many other physicists). – Actually, I discovered that black holes evaporate in this way, but their thermal radiation – in addition to information on the temperature of the black hole – does not reveal absolutely nothing more. Information about what falls into the interior of these creations, dies forever.

– That’s not true! – Countered another witness, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Prize winner from Utrecht (and supported by many other physicists). – Information can never perish without a trace.

Court has not yet ruled on the matter.