Go ahead. Spark up your favorite drugs and press play up there.
Actually don’t. Not now. Because no amount of freebased ketamine will help you understand what Stephen Hawking now thinks about information loss in black holes.
Now, I am neither a quantum astrophysicist, nor have I smoked pot since Saturday, so I am not the best person to be explaining this. But I will try.
Basically, you know how nothing can escape a black hole? Well, that theory creates a problem between quantum physics and general laws of relativity.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that the physical information about material gobbled up by a black hole is destroyed, but the laws of quantum mechanics stipulate that information is eternal. Therein lies the paradox.
The question is, what happens to all the things that are in a black hole when the black hole disappears? According to all our best science, it has to be somewhere. But no one knows.
Stephen Hawking thinks he’s figured it out, and gave his answer at a presentation at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm: “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.”
The turd twat does that mean?
Basically, when matter enters a black hole, the information carried with it doesn’t go into it as well, but rather remains on the fringe.
Kay…
“[Then, when a black hole collapses and matter scatters] the information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form. For all practical purposes, the information is lost.”
So lost, but not gone, is how Hawking bridges the gap between the two.
Follow? No? Are you not stoned enough? Probably not. Let’s go get stoned tonight and think about it some more.
[Via CBS]