Physicists have found an explanation for Stephen Hawking’s black hole paradox, which the scientist could not solve

Physicists believe they have solved the black hole paradox discovered by famed physicist Stephen Hawking. New research has shown that black holes can still store information about the massive stars that created them.

The results of the research, published in the journal Physics Letters B, may finally solve the difficult problem that Goecking worked on in the last years of his life.

What is the paradox of black holes

According to the famous physicist’s work, radiation slowly “leaks” from black holes in the form of thermal energy, which has come to be known as “Hawking radiation”. But such radiation is thermal, which means it cannot carry information. Therefore, Goking believed that when evaporating, black holes destroy all information about the stars from which they were created.

However, such an assumption contradicted the laws of quantum mechanics, according to which information cannot be destroyed, and the final state of an object can give clues about its initial state.

This problem, dubbed the “Hawking information paradox,” scientists have tried unsuccessfully to solve for decades.

Black hole and quantum hair

Now, new research shows that black holes can store information about their past. Such information may be contained in the radiation around black holes, which is called “quantum hair”.

Theoretically, as scientists believe, this information can be withdrawn to study the origin of a particular black hole.

“(This study) is the final nail in the coffin of the paradox as we now understand the exact physical phenomenon by which information flows out of a decaying black hole,” said Xavier Calmette, lead author of the study, professor of physics at the University of Sussex, in an interview. Live science.

He proposes to modify the data on the Hawking radiation and recognize it as “non-thermal” and capable of spreading information.

“Quantum physics says that the film of this black hole’s ‘life’ can be rewound. Starting with radiation, we will be able to reconstruct the initial black hole, and then, eventually, the star,” Calmette is convinced.

Back in 2022, he and Michigan State University professor of theoretical physics Steve Hsu argued that black holes do indeed have “quantum hair” in the form of a unique quantum imprint in the gravitational fields surrounding them.

In the new study, the scientists revised Hawking’s 1976 calculations to account for the effects of “quantum gravity,” something the physicist did not.

“Although these quantum gravitational corrections are negligible, they are crucial for the evaporation of black holes. We were able to show that these effects modify the Hawking radiation in such a way that this radiation becomes non-thermal … can contain information,” Calmet explained.

Thus, Calmette and Hsu determined the exact physical phenomenon by which information escapes a black hole through the Hawking radiation, as well as how an observer can receive it. However, it is not yet possible to obtain this information, since this requires an instrument sensitive enough to measure the Hawking radiation, which is purely theoretical.

Previously, GLOBAL HAPPENINGS talked about an unfolded black hole in a distant galaxy, sending a beam towards the Earth.

Source: Obozrevatel

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