Hawkings Rethinks Black Hole Theory

[Guest guest]

Okay so why am I posting this bit of news on a Shaktism news board?

Well, why not? The Cosmos is the body of Devi. The more we

understand it, the more effectively we can understand Her. Well,

that's my take anyway:

 

EXPERT RETHINKS BLACK HOLE THEORY

 

WASHINGTON (July 22, 2004) - Stephen Hawking, a chap who knows a bit

about physics, admitted yesterday that he was wrong about what

happens when matter is sucked into a black hole.

 

While the concession, which led Hawking to give a baseball book to a

physicist who had bet him he was wrong, will not affect baseball or

much else in the short term, it could have significant implications

for cosmology and theories of matter, scientists said yesterday.

 

Speaking at a scientific meeting in Dublin, Hawking said black

holes, objects so dense and compact not even light can escape, may

eventually reveal some information about the matter they swallow, a

change of heart for the renowned Cambridge cosmologist.

 

Hawking had maintained since 1975 that any object unlucky enough to

fall into a black hole would be lost without a trace, although the

hole itself might eventually burp forth a bit of thermal radiation

that would give no clue on what had fallen in.

 

That didn't settle well with some physicists, especially those who

study the subatomic world of quantum mechanics, who argued that

fundamental information, such as the identity of basic particles and

their properties, must be conserved no matter where they wander.

 

"There has long been a split between those who believed information

was really going to be lost and those who didn't," said Sean

Carroll, a University of Chicago cosmologist. By analogy, he said,

suppose you tossed an encyclopedia into the sun. It would be burned

to a crisp. But, in principle, if physicists knew everything

possible about the state of the sun and the encyclopedia, Carroll

said, they should be able to gather outgoing sunlight and eventually

reconstruct the information in the encyclopedia.

 

Under Hawking's original theory, not so for a black hole. Toss a TV

or a fridge in and that's the end of them. The hole eventually would

emit generic radiation but no clues to the identity of the in-going

objects. How to solve the information paradox? According to the

Institute of Physics, Hawking's new calculations show that the event

horizon - the surface of a black hole - is subject to quantum

fluctuations that gradually allow information to leak out.

 

Even before Hawking's presentation yesterday, similar views on black

hole behavior had been posited by some theorists who've been trying

to describe the basic particles and forces in nature, including

gravity, in terms of tiny entities called strings.

 

Hawking is "now corroborating what string theorists have been saying

for the past decade," said Andrew Strominger, a Harvard physicist.

But he said the field still has its work cut out for it. Even

Hawking, he said, has not explained in a fundamental sense what was

wrong with his earlier argument.

 

Source: 2004, Newsday, Inc. BY EARL LANE WASHINGTON

BUREAU

URL: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-

hshawk223901697jul22,0,3879205.story?coll=ny-health-headlines