http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-soft-hair-on-stephen-hawkings-black-holes

On Tuesday, Stephen Hawking and friends posted a new paper to the arXiv server. It has a great, or at least peculiar, title: “Soft Hair on Black Holes.”

What in the great wide universe could that possibly mean? Glad you asked.

The subject of the paper is a deeply vexing problem known as the black hole information paradox. This is the conundrum that arises when we ask what happens to information as it falls into a black hole. Does it persist in some form or is it lost? We hope that it persists in accordance with the rules of quantum physics, which demand that the probabilistic information governing a quantum state not vanish, but that sure doesn’t seem to be the case.

Or at least it’s really hard to imagine how the information inside of a black hole might stay intact, given that there is no conceivable way of accessing it. Is it to be found in the junk leftover after a dying black hole disappears in a final fit of radiation? Or can we access it through Hawking radiation, that slow dissipative fizz of energy that gives every black hole a finite (if very, very, very long) lifetime?

Before going on, let’s restate the information paradox question in maybe more stark terms: Does there always exist a history? If there is a present, is there a past? If information can indeed be lost, well, then we can imagine something that exists but without a history.

Now, pause here for maybe five or 10 seconds to imagine a universe in which history itself is routinely gobbled up. Like in the Stephen King’s The Langoliers.

Anyhow, Hawking doesn’t have an answer to the information problem, but the new paper offers a tentative step toward an answer. This is where hair comes in.

Around 1973, the physicist John Wheeler declared that “black holes have no hair.” The phrase is the origin of what came to be known as the no-hair theorem or no-hair conjecture. What it states is that black holes are essentially bald, or featureless. From the outside, they can be characterized by three parameters: mass, electric charge, and angular momentum. But nothing else.

If you were to have two black holes with the same mass, charge, and momentum, but one of them consists of antimatter and the other consists of regular matter, they would be completely identical. The same black hole, really.
—-

more in link

dv said:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-soft-hair-on-stephen-hawkings-black-holes

On Tuesday, Stephen Hawking and friends posted a new paper to the arXiv server. It has a great, or at least peculiar, title: “Soft Hair on Black Holes.”

What in the great wide universe could that possibly mean? Glad you asked.

The subject of the paper is a deeply vexing problem known as the black hole information paradox. This is the conundrum that arises when we ask what happens to information as it falls into a black hole. Does it persist in some form or is it lost? We hope that it persists in accordance with the rules of quantum physics, which demand that the probabilistic information governing a quantum state not vanish, but that sure doesn’t seem to be the case.

Or at least it’s really hard to imagine how the information inside of a black hole might stay intact, given that there is no conceivable way of accessing it. Is it to be found in the junk leftover after a dying black hole disappears in a final fit of radiation? Or can we access it through Hawking radiation, that slow dissipative fizz of energy that gives every black hole a finite (if very, very, very long) lifetime?

Before going on, let’s restate the information paradox question in maybe more stark terms: Does there always exist a history? If there is a present, is there a past? If information can indeed be lost, well, then we can imagine something that exists but without a history.

Now, pause here for maybe five or 10 seconds to imagine a universe in which history itself is routinely gobbled up. Like in the Stephen King’s The Langoliers.

Anyhow, Hawking doesn’t have an answer to the information problem, but the new paper offers a tentative step toward an answer. This is where hair comes in.

Around 1973, the physicist John Wheeler declared that “black holes have no hair.” The phrase is the origin of what came to be known as the no-hair theorem or no-hair conjecture. What it states is that black holes are essentially bald, or featureless. From the outside, they can be characterized by three parameters: mass, electric charge, and angular momentum. But nothing else.

If you were to have two black holes with the same mass, charge, and momentum, but one of them consists of antimatter and the other consists of regular matter, they would be completely identical. The same black hole, really.
—-

more in link

Molly was not fond of this. I said to one of my daughters that I hope hawking leaves a nice surprise about his lifelong collaboration now and about the question he posed to answer to counter the previous counter proofs opposing his theories about multiverse and black holes. His efforts deserve a discovery to be made!

monkey skipper said:

Molly was not fond of this. I said to one of my daughters that I hope hawking leaves a nice surprise about his lifelong collaboration now and about the question he posed to answer to counter the previous counter proofs opposing his theories about multiverse and black holes. His efforts deserve a discovery to be made!

I think Molly is simply wrong on this count. As far as I’m concerned zero energy particles are the only plausible gravity mediator.

I haven’t heard more information about the Higgs particle since it was detected. That would be beneficial information.

I haven’t read The Langoliers.

The hair on my black hole is soft, but very curly.

If you have something perfectly smooth, uniform and symmetrical can you tell if it is rotating without touching it in some way?

AwesomeO said:

If you have something perfectly smooth, uniform and symmetrical can you tell if it is rotating without touching it in some way?

Only if it has magnetic properties that I can think of but technically that is touching it in some way.