Hawking loses the bet

[autodata]

and coughs up a baseball encyclopedia.

Anyway, I haven't touched physics in a long time. Anyone want to what exactly is meant by "information?"

[Brad]

Uh, care to elaborate?

A link? An explanation of the bet? Anything? :err:

[autodata]

Sorry. I figured everybody knew by now. :o

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2941288

In case you are interested which encyclopedia:
His original offer of a cricket encyclopedia was turned down in favor of "Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia" -- from which the winning physicist, Dr. John Preskill, can recover information at will.
mlb.com (http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/news/mlb_news.jsp?ymd=20040722&content_id=806540&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp)

[curiousuburb]

Black Holes were thought to be places where nothing could escape, not even light. All of the energy or information vanished into the event horizon.

Some theoretical physicists and plenty of science fiction writers argued that this must mean wormholes or parallel universes which must have some form of "White Hole" which spews out light/energy/information, thus conserving the total.

Hawking's new theoretical argument seems to suggest that Black Holes aren't all consuming after all, and that some energy or information eventually leaks back into our universe. Not to say that the gravitational whirlpool doesn't alter that stuff beyond recognition in its pass through the 'almost-event-horizon'... but the fact it does eventually escape is a fundamental revision to the standard model of a Black Hole (which Hawking helped establish).

At least that's my take.

[Moogs]

Drat! Beaten to it. Burb is correct AFAICT.

Hawking has basically conceeded (and apparently has mathematically proven in his paper) that matter cannot be completely obliterated when consumed by a black hole. Essentially, matter it just information... and so he's saying that the black hole holds onto (instead of annihilating) the information and lets it go at the end of its life, in a completely unrecognizeable form.

So if your spaceship ever gets drawn into a black hole, you will be stretched, smashed, frapeéd and swirled into little itty bitty chunks of humanoid information... and eventually expelled like so much cosmic excrement... but you will not be completely annihilated (or "disintegrated" if you prefer the Marvin the Martian school of astro-physics).

:D

[autodata]

Everyone knows what a black hole is, but I'm wondering is what exactly what the "information" in "information paradox" is. What exactly does this "information" consist of? According to his previous theory, black holes radiate energy, but that energy contains no information about the black hole. Now he's saying it does. So what's "information?"

[Moogs]

Molecular bonds are information, DNA is information, light of a certain wavelength is information, etc. etc.

[autodata]

Here's some more: (http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040712/full/040712-12.html)
The problem is that quantum theory, which describes space and matter on very tiny scales, contradicts this. Quantum theory says any process can be run in reverse, so starting conditions can theoretically be inferred from the end products alone. This implies that a black hole must somehow store information about the items that fell into it.
So how does a black hole store it? Or am I asking a currently unanswerable question?

[ast3r3x]

I'll believe him as soon as I can look over his figures and solve it myself ;)

[Wrao]

Does this mean BR will have to change his name?

[ThunderPoit]

how exactly does a black hole "die"? i was under the impressoin that a black hole was the last remains of a supernova, so its essentially a superdense chunk of matter, and its extreme density causes its insanely-huge gravitational field. how does something like this "die" and release anything that it sucked it?

[Barto]

A black hole gradually evaporates over time.

[Brad]

Hawking's new theoretical argument seems to suggest that Black Holes aren't all consuming after all, and that some energy or information eventually leaks back into our universe.I thought we'd known this for a few years now, no? We've been able to watch what are believed to be black holes for years because they emit X-rays.

And the whole white hole theory, as I recall, is bunk.

*grumble, grumble* Now I'm going to have to go dig through my book pile...

[pscates2.0]

...you will be stretched, smashed, frapeéd and swirled into little itty bitty chunks of humanoid information... and eventually expelled like so much cosmic excrement... but you will not be completely annihilated (or "disintegrated" if you prefer the Marvin the Martian school of astro-physics).:D

Some of us just call that "Friday happy hour". :p

[murbot]

you will be stretched, smashed, frapeéd and swirled into little itty bitty chunks of humanoid information... and eventually expelled like so much cosmic excrement... but you will not be completely annihilated (or "disintegrated" if you prefer the Marvin the Martian school of astro-physics).

:D

Actually, I said that to a beer once...

[curiousuburb]

I'd always thought the x-rays were byproducts of gravitational destruction of matter infalling or that the emissions didn't technically count as 'escaping' the BH in the way Hawking seems to be suggesting there is no absolute Event Horizon.

I might be misinterpreting. It's been a while since I was current with Hawking's work.

[billybobsky]

information isn't really the bonds of a molecule -- at least bonds aren't that information rich... most of the information is contained in the quantum state of a molecule or atom, of which bonds make up more of a surface on which information can be written...

the specific state of a specific molecule is dependent on everything that the molecule and its atoms have interacted with. the thought is that with a thorough theoretical framework you can work out the lifetime of the second carbon atom, say. thus if you think about it the amount of information in the universe has to increase and thus theoretically at least cannot be destroyed. what was surprising was that in hawking's theoretical treatment of blackholes, he found a way in which information was either destroyed or somehow made inaccessible (and thus in quantum mechanics destroyed). he was wrong. its a good thing too...

i think i will take up quantum gravity as a hobby...

and here i thought model airplanes or proteins would excited my mind...

[Moogs]

I think we've known or suspected for a few years now that blackholes (or suspected black holes) sometimes emit very enormous "jets" of plasma and energy along a very focused axis... in fact there are photos of such things, though there's no way to confirm from photos as to exactly what is emitting such jets. However, I think that what Hawking is describing is analogous to this:

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2000/20/images/a/formats/web_print.jpg