(The Epoch Times March 22, 2022) (The Epoch Times reporter Gao Vinson compiled and reported) A team of scientists claims they have finally solved a paradox about black holes that has puzzled physicists for decades.
Black holes are arguably the strangest and most extreme celestial objects in the known universe. Scientists think they are formed by the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives. A black hole has a huge gravitational pull, and anything that comes close to it will be absorbed by it, even light.
Around the 1970s, the late well-known physicist Stephen Hawking and colleagues made a discovery that left physicists with a huge mystery about black holes. Their discovery is referred to as the “Hawking Radiation” theory, which means that a black hole leaks its energy in the form of faint light radiation. Over time, the black hole’s energy eventually leaks light, and the black hole disappears completely.
Why is this discovery such a huge mystery? Because various calculations performed by scientists show that the energy of “Hawking radiation” cannot be used to detect any information in black holes. In other words, when the black hole finally disappears, it means that any matter and information that the black hole has engulfed is completely lost with it.
But this contradicts quantum theory. The theory of quantum mechanics is one of the important pillars of contemporary physics, which can well explain a large number of physical phenomena at the fundamental level of the universe. Quantum mechanics holds that any information in the universe will never disappear. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) explained that as long as an observer knows the current state of any system, there is a way to know all the information about the past and future of the system.
This paradox is known as the black hole information paradox. The most annoying thing about this contradiction is that it shows that there is a problem with quantum mechanics and relativity, which are the two most important theoretical pillars of modern physics.
According to a study published March 17 in Physical Review Letters, they have finally resolved the paradox — finally being able to connect quantum mechanics and relativity.
The research was a collaboration between scientists from the UK, Italy and the US. The researchers found that in fact, the information inside the black hole can be detected through the external characteristics of the black hole, which they call the “hair theory”. This is relative to the previously well-known “no-hair theorem” of black holes. The “hairless theory” believes that only the three properties of mass, charge and angular momentum of a black hole can be detected from external features.
The calculations completed in this study suggest that more information about black holes can still be inferred from external characteristics. They found that matter falling into a black hole leaves a specific imprint on the black hole’s gravitational field. That is, these imprints retain information about these substances.
The significance of this discovery is that quantum mechanics and gravity can finally be linked without contradictions on the black hole paradox. One of the lead researchers, Xavier Calmet of the University of Sussex in the UK, told The Guardian: “Our study shows that the calculations made by both theories about black holes are Consistent, able to explain the storage of information without the need to develop new theories.”
Calmet admits that the discovery is “heavy” and that it will take some time for the scientific community to accept it. ◇#
Responsible editor: Ye Ziwei