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Hawking cracks black hole paradox

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deadhorse32

Bad Art ™
Hawking cracks black hole paradox

19:00 14 July 04

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.


After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week.

The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox.

It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost.

But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics.

Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March)....

more @ http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996151
 

DarienA

The black man everyone at Activision can agree on
Hasn't Hawking ever watched Disney's Black Hole? We already know you can get through a black hole dammit! ;)
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
String theory, hmmmmmm.

JOHN TITOR!

Event Horizon taught me that black holes, hell, any kind of space holes should just be left alone really.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Oh, there was this really good special about string theory on PBS a few months ago. Very interesting stuff that special covered lots of Modern Physics in general. Modern Physics was too hard for me when I was in the damn class, 2 years of High School Physics and I remember maybe 5% of the stuff I "learned". Now something like this comes out and I can't even grasp on to it. :(
 
Grizzlyjin said:
Oh, there was this really good special about string theory on PBS a few months ago.

You're probably refering to The Elegant Universe. It was based on the book by the same name. If you're interested in the subject, I'd recommend reading that book.
 
I respect Hawkings an awful lot but this flies in the face of the time-tested wisdom that "once you go Black, you can never go back".

This sounds more like Hee Hawkings -- "Ya'll come back now, Ya Hear!"
 

Phoenix

Member
Once you accept string theory as being true - it becomes easier to both explain and accept black holes and their place in the universe as well as their emissions (since nothing including light should escape them).
 
6305222916.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg


To this day, I have trouble watching that movie. Freaks me out something fierce. :(
 

Phoenix

Member
Spike Spiegel said:
6305222916.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg


To this day, I have trouble watching that movie. Freaks me out something fierce. :(

Might be the fact that it was SHIT INCARNATE! This is like the worse movie ever....
 

Dilbert

Member
Buggy Loop said:
Event horizons = Worm holes, irrc.
Nope. To understand what an event horizon is, consider the problem of putting a satellite into orbit around the Earth. The satellite is put into orbit with a rocket which attains a certain peak velocity. The satellite settles into an orbit at an altitude where its rotational velocity is balanced by the gravitational attraction of the Earth, which decreases as you get farther away. There is a certain value for initial velocity -- called "escape velocity" -- which will cause the satellite to escape Earth's gravity entirely and fly off into space, rather than settling into an orbit.

You can think of a black hole as being like a planet...only IMMENSELY massive and dense. There is a distance from the black hole where a satellite would have to be going at the speed of light in order to maintain its orbital altitude. That distance -- more properly, the spherical shell around the black hole at that radius -- is called the "event horizon." Inside the event horizon, a hypothetical satellite would have to be going FASTER than the speed of light to maintain orbit...and since that is impossible, anything passing the event horizon will quickly fall into the black hole and be crushed.

However, in the case of the black hole, we are not launching a satellite UP from the surface of the black hole -- we are concerned about outside "stuff" falling INTO the black hole. Once it crosses the event horizon, an object is "lost" as far as the rest of the universe is concerned -- it cannot escape.
 
Phoenix said:
Might be the fact that it was SHIT INCARNATE! This is like the worse movie ever....
Put... the pipe... down.

Event Horizon's great! It's like a "haunted house" movie, only it's set in space so there's an added level of anxiety brought on by that feeling of isolation, and fear of the unknown that lurks beyond the stars.
 

Phoenix

Member
Spike Spiegel said:
Put... the pipe... down.

Event Horizon's great! It's like a "haunted house" movie, only it's set in space so there's an added level of anxiety brought on by that feeling of isolation, and fear of the unknown that lurks beyond the stars.

The fear that makes you pop out your eyes and kill everyone around you...
 
Fleming said:
Everytime i hear black hole i think about Event Horizont,and every time i think i think of Event Horizont,i shudder.

I have to ask why you added a "t" twice.

and this is very interesting. I remember reading his first book and kind of understanding it. I should read it again.
 

way more

Member
This article makes is sound like Hawking has conceded to string theory. I guess we will have to wait until his presentation
 

Buggy Loop

Gold Member
I wasnt talking about the definition of "event horizon" per say, just the method the ship travelled from point A to B, which are worm holes irrc. But thanks for the explanation of what an event horizon is.
 

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
Mermandala said:
I respect Hawkings an awful lot but this flies in the face of the time-tested wisdom that "once you go Black, you can never go back".
lol

JoshuaJSlone said:
The event horizon isn't really a thing. It's like the border past which even light can't escape.
The movieEvent Horizon deals with worm holes and warping of space time, not black holes, event horizons however do refer to the "point of no return" in black holes.
 

Minotauro

Finds Purchase on Dog Nutz
John motherfuckin' Titor!

I'm actually considering voting for Bush in hopes that his whole civil war prediction comes true.
 

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
'Event horizon' also refers to the point in space at which we can no longer see past; since we look further and further back into time the further we look out, the even horizon is where we see the beginning of time.
 

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
yeah, what the fuck did that have to do with black holes?
 

nitewulf

Member
string theory, i presume string theory to be the new physics of the upcoming decades. it'll create all new frontiers and solve many previously unsolved problems. just like quantum mechanics did in the last century.
we need another explosion of great mathematicians and physicists like einstein, bose, heisenberg, feinman, fermi etc.
 

Pimpwerx

Member
Quantum and astrophysics = science fiction.

Sorry, the engineer in me cannot accept these theories. I took one semester's worth of quantum physics, and it was one semester too much. Besides being confused as hell by relativity, I just couldn't wrap my head around the difference in mechanics at a subatomic level. It's one thing to be able to observe experiments before your eyes. You can directly see cause and effect. But with these two fields, you can't. Much of it is grounded in theory. Now I know they produce results in line with the theories in particle accelerators, but...I don't know. Suffice to say, I fully expect there to be a new model of the atom in another 20 years, which will throw off lots of data we're accumulating now. *shrug* Show me the money. LOL!

I look at quantum physicists and astrophysicists as the philosophers of the science world. They sit around and bullshit most of the day and produce lots of inconclusive, yet intriguing bits of data. And nothing is ever accomplished. ;)

Oh yeah, props to the PBS people who also saw the Elegant Universe special. I had it on tape for a while before it got destroyed. I watched that thing a few times and multiple dimensions still sound like sci-fi fluff to me. PEACE.
 
Phoenix said:
The fear that makes you pop out your eyes and kill everyone around you...

Man... Event Horizon is the one and only movie to genuinely scare the willies out of me in the last 15 years. I thought I'd blocked out all the eye-popping imagery and now, thanks to you, it's back. My day is just totally screwed up now :)
 

nitewulf

Member
Pimpwerx said:
Quantum and astrophysics = science fiction.

Sorry, the engineer in me cannot accept these theories. I took one semester's worth of quantum physics, and it was one semester too much. Besides being confused as hell by relativity, I just couldn't wrap my head around the difference in mechanics at a subatomic level. It's one thing to be able to observe experiments before your eyes. You can directly see cause and effect. But with these two fields, you can't. Much of it is grounded in theory. Now I know they produce results in line with the theories in particle accelerators, but...I don't know. Suffice to say, I fully expect there to be a new model of the atom in another 20 years, which will throw off lots of data we're accumulating now. *shrug* Show me the money. LOL!

I look at quantum physicists and astrophysicists as the philosophers of the science world. They sit around and bullshit most of the day and produce lots of inconclusive, yet intriguing bits of data. And nothing is ever accomplished. ;)

Oh yeah, props to the PBS people who also saw the Elegant Universe special. I had it on tape for a while before it got destroyed. I watched that thing a few times and multiple dimensions still sound like sci-fi fluff to me. PEACE.

quantum mechanics isnt necessarily just theoretical. i studied it as well, and im an engineer as well. in fact one of my biggest accomplishments in my quantum mechanics course was to show that its possible for an electron to go through a barrier, in stark contrast to classical mechanics.
and it was all done by mathematics. there are many facets of quantum mechanics proven by experimental data, so...
 

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
Quantam mechanics is directly responsible for the ability of Black Holes to leak radiation, it is very much more than just theory.
 
Pimpwerx said:
Quantum and astrophysics = science fiction.


Uh...WTF?

Quantum has been proven time and time again not unlike Relativity. Concepts such as quantum entanglement have been observed and repeated in laboratories. This isn't just some idea out of a sci-fi book.
 

Pimpwerx

Member
Don't get me wrong, they've written countless books on all of this. But haven't we already corrected the atomic model a few times last century? And aren't we always readjusting the physics models when some new theory comes around? Yes, experimental/observational data has corroborated a lot of it, but wasn't the atom once able to produce experimental results in line with predictions using the Thomson and Rutherford models too?

What I'm getting at is that the accuracy of these models and theories seems flakey to me when we have some serious limitations when it comes to observing these happenings. Random streaks and trails from a collision may prove one thing, but not another. I mean, isn't this the whole reason why we don't have a unified theory yet? Different models for different scales makes it seem very strange to me. But like I said, I don't like things I can't observe for myself. What calculus will prove over and over again may not be what's actually happening. ;)

Sorry, I'm trying to play devil's advocate, and not doing such a good job. LOL! Did I mention I didn't do so well in that class? ;) Got a "C" in it, and only just. But I'll always support people who research this stuff, and I'll always read it. and hopefully, in my lifetime, a bombproof unified model can be created, and I can be satisfied once and for all that my Physics prof wasn't just yanking my chain the whole time. :D PEACE.
 

Dilbert

Member
Pimpwerx said:
What I'm getting at is that the accuracy of these models and theories seems flakey to me when we have some serious limitations when it comes to observing these happenings. Random streaks and trails from a collision may prove one thing, but not another. I mean, isn't this the whole reason why we don't have a unified theory yet? Different models for different scales makes it seem very strange to me. But like I said, I don't like things I can't observe for myself.
This is a VERY strange argument against science...especially for someone who studied engineering. Are you saying that you don't believe in ANYTHING which you can't experience through direct sensory perception?

Science, by its very NATURE, will change over time. The scientific method is to put forth a hypothesis which explains the known set of data...but also allowing for the possibility that the hypothesis (or data) can be wrong. If it can't be proven to be wrong...then it isn't science.
 

El Papa

Member
-jinx- said:
This is a VERY strange argument against science...especially for someone who studied engineering. Are you saying that you don't believe in ANYTHING which you can't experience through direct sensory perception?
People give the same reason for not believing in God or a higher power.
 

Limedust

Member
Hawking still married to that violent wife of his, or have they finally parted ways?
Sad to think he made a scientific breakthrough, then went home and got his ass kicked.
 

Pimpwerx

Member
jinx: I'm just playing devil's advocate. I understand quantum, or at least particle physics, have played a key role a number of areas. Nuke-u-ler science for one. ;)

But the point I was trying to make there was the observational limitations. For astrophysics, it's all guesstimation based on celestial bodies on the order of thousands of times larger than our earth experiencing temperature extremes at both ends of the spectrum, and physical forces beyond our scope of comprehension, much less experimentation. For quantum physics, it's a problem that the smallest observable object is the electron, and only just. And I don't even think that lets us see much except maybe the biggest atoms. But visual reference isn't definitive proof. I mean, electron tunneling microscopes pretty much corroborate the tunneling theory, right? That's how they operate. So there's plenty of evidence that the theorized behavior matches the observed behavior. But with sub-subatomic particles like quarks, strings, leptons, etc... I don't know what to think. Some of it seems...circumstancial. Almost like some grad student needed to fill the hole in his thesis, so he fabricated something to explain it. ;)

OK, now there are plenty of GAFers much better versed in quantum physics than I am, so I'm prepared to be totally owned on this topic. LOL! Again, I'm playing devil's advocate, and with my limited knowledge of the subject, I'm gonna miss the boat on some of this. I just really have some reservations about how some of this stuff is derived. When one model doesn't agree with another, color me skeptical. It means that one or both are wrong and that some of the results should be questioned. PEACE.
 

Ghost

Chili Con Carnage!
The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997

I knew physicists were wild, but Woah!
 

Phoenix

Member
Pimpwerx said:
Quantum and astrophysics = science fiction.

Sorry, the engineer in me cannot accept these theories. I took one semester's worth of quantum physics, and it was one semester too much. Besides being confused as hell by relativity, I just couldn't wrap my head around the difference in mechanics at a subatomic level.

Its science fiction because you couldn't understand? Quantum is not just theoretical ramblings. The problem is that to really observe the experiments you require equipment more specialized than most schools stock. I took Quantum and Physics 3 in college just because it was fascinating and I was able to come to terms with it. It made sense to me for some reason.
 

Phoenix

Member
ScientificNinja said:
Man... Event Horizon is the one and only movie to genuinely scare the willies out of me in the last 15 years. I thought I'd blocked out all the eye-popping imagery and now, thanks to you, it's back. My day is just totally screwed up now :)

Sorry dude, when I saw that scene I bust out laughing in the theater. Steve (he's around here somewhere) was with me as well. It was the last time we let my wife pick a movie :)
 
Don't get me wrong, they've written countless books on all of this. But haven't we already corrected the atomic model a few times last century? And aren't we always readjusting the physics models when some new theory comes around? Yes, experimental/observational data has corroborated a lot of it, but wasn't the atom once able to produce experimental results in line with predictions using the Thomson and Rutherford models too?

We correct the models because we develop better tools to test the theories. Most of the models and formulas you take for granted now in engineering were once more primitive, it goes without saying. Because the technology has advanced so greatly, we have explanatory theories that are far superior to the old ones. As technology advances even more, we develop better tools to test theories in other fields. Because this particular field is still a work in progress doesn't mean it's "fiction". They're the best explanations we have given our technological constraints. I dont think hawking would ever go so far as to say that all of his theories are guarenteed to be true. The fact that he corrected his past error shows that he's willing to create a theory to fit the data, and not fuck with his data to fit his old theories.
 

-=DoAvl=-

Member
Is the puddle in the stargate supposed to represent the event horizon? I know it's only a show, but I think they said that once, and I'm just curious as to why (aside from aesthetical gains) an event horizon would be a puddle. Please explain :D
 

Willco

Hollywood Square
I have a question for you physics nerds. So if black holes exist, which I've seen footage of none (where is my footage, bitches!), wouldn't the universe eventually get sucked up in one giant black hole and cease to exist?

Then what happens?

Do we go to heaven and play Madden on Xbox Live? Anything?
 

fart

Savant
think about it willco, if that were true we'd all be in raimi's butt by now.

obviously there's something else at work here
 

Willco

Hollywood Square
fart said:
think about it willco, if that were true we'd all be in raimi's butt by now.

obviously there's something else at work here

I take away my previous commentary on your humour and wit in IRC just a few hours ago. That was awful, made no sense and I put a curse on your entire family for it!
 

Meier

Member
Haha, one of my best friends from school is named Samir Mathur. I had to do a doubletake at first.

P.S. Burger's avatar is fucking disturbing. Firefox image block +1.
 
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