Solution To The Black Hole Information Paradox
The final paper of world’s most renowned cosmologist
Stephen Hawking is considered to be one of the most celebrated geniuses of all time. Best known for his works on black holes, and his best-selling books A Brief History Of Time, The Theory Of Everything, and numerous others, the renowned cosmologist published several monumental research papers throughout his career. The man has been an inspiration for all generations of physicists and for everyone in general for despite having a motor-neuron illness, he didn’t give up on himself and his works, and followed his passion till the end of his life.
There are many contributions that the physicist has made through his scientific career but arguably the most significant one is the black hole information problem, and Hawking radiation.
What are black holes?
If you are reading this article, you must have sound ground knowledge about black holes. Black holes are the densest objects in space with intense gravitational pull, so much so that even light cannot escape from them. But in 1974, Stephen Hawking published a groundbreaking discovery in his paper. He suggested that throughout long periods, black holes evaporate shedding their particles away into space. The radiation thus evaporated from black holes is called Hawking radiation.
The renowned professor also suggested that the evaporated radiation from a black hole is not necessarily associated with the information that it engulfs. Then does it mean that the information inside the black hole is erased over time? Let’s talk about this!
What is the Blackhole Information Paradox?
Paradoxes, though mentally irritating, are important in science. Profound discoveries have been made and many unanswerable questions have been answered due to paradoxes, and one such mind-numbingly beautiful paradox that we have in modern cosmology is the black hole information paradox. But what is information in this regard? How do we define it? By information, it means quantum information. Every matter in the universe is composed of smaller atomic and sub-atomic particles. Different particles have different quantum properties like spin, angular momentum, or velocity. These intrinsic properties are the quantum information of that matter.
When anything falls into a black hole, it cannot escape out as per the mathematics and observations, hence the black hole sort of absorbs all the quantum information of that matter. As per the law of conservation of quantum information, the overall quantum information of the universe must be conserved, just like energy- which means that even if you destroy something, its quantum information remains intact. But in the case of black holes, things aren’t as straightforward as they might seem for the rest of the objects in the universe.
If black holes evaporate over time in the form of Hawking radiation and those radiations do not contain or comprise quantum information then where does the information go? This raises a paradox called the black hole information paradox. Different theoretical cosmologists and physicists have provided different theories regarding this paradox but we do not have any definite explanation.
Hawking’s Final Paper
Hawking’s final research paper titled ‘Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair’ was published a couple of years back shortly after the demise of the great physicist in March 2018. The paper was co-authored by his collaborators Sasha Haco, Malcolm Perry, and Andrew Strominger. In his paper, he has tried to answer some of the intriguing questions about the universe, especially about black holes.
The paper suggests that the quantum information that the black hole engulfs doesn’t get destroyed and erased but gets stored at the edge of a black hole called the event horizon in the form is low energy photonic particles. The phrase soft hair in his paper is used to denote the low energy photons that can be found on the event horizon of a black hole and hence the theory of soft hair and black hole entropy does provide a consistent explanation to solve the black hole information paradox. The distinctive characteristics of matter that fall into a black hole, therefore, are lost out of nowhere in the universe but are preserved in the form of photonic particles. The paper, of course, has tons of mathematics and the theory sounds consistent. But so far, since we cannot do any experiments with the black holes with the technologies we have today, it is difficult to say that this theory is right. Even if it answers and tries to solve the information paradox, it raises many other questions about the infamous entity.
The final paper of Stephen Hawking and his collaborator can be read online for free:
Thank you so much for reading. If you like my work and want to support me then you can become a medium member by using this link or buy me a coffee ☕️. Keep following for more such stories.