Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the modern age. His revolutionary theories and ideas completely changed the way we looked at the universe. Throughout his life, he solved many problems physicists were stuck on for decades. One of his lesser known works was on a perplexing problem - The Information Paradox.
What is information? In simple terms, it means knowledge. However, in physics, the information describes the arrangement of atoms in a substance. We know that both a bird and a fruit are made up of the exact same types of atoms. This arrangement is the information contained inside the object. Like energy or matter, information can never be destroyed, it can only change form. This makes it a problem when looking at black holes. Black holes are among the most extreme objects in the universe, formed from the collapse of a massive star, and crushing any matter to almost infinite densities. Their gravity is so immense that not even light and electromagnetic fields can escape. Any matter that falls into them becomes the exact same material as everything else – a super-dense sea of electrons and protons while the electrons get fired off as plasma jets. The reason why this is a problem is that the information contained within the matter that becomes part of the black hole is seemingly lost to the rest of the universe, beyond the veil of the event horizon. To summarise vaguely, black holes convert many substances into one singular substance.
There are three theorized possibilities for the information lost. The first one is the scariest; if the information is truly lost, we would literally have to start physics again from the very beginning, because every one of our theories is based on the fact that information is never lost. The second option is that the information is not lost, but it cannot be observed directly. It is hidden just beyond the veil, just beyond the point of no return. This is a bit like having a broken CD of pictures. You can never see the pictures, but they are saved somewhere. The third option involves radiation called Hawking Radiation. Throughout the universe, there are tiny particles and antiparticles being formed, and subsequently being destroyed. When this happens at the edge of a black hole, it loses a tiny bit of mass. Scientists think that these particles can actually encode the information lost by the matter that fell into the black hole. This is actually the most widely accepted theory and explains the process smoothly. Unfortunately, this process would take trillions of years depending upon the size of the black hole and its mass.
Creative Visualisation of a black hole
Comments