New Study Provides Solution to Hawking's Blackhole Information Paradox
What is it, how does it work?
Hiya!
Considering how advanced we humans have become, especially over the last couple of centuries, it’s easy to forget that there’s still a lot we don’t know. Some things leave even the brightest minds dumbfounded, yet this doesn’t stop them from making progress.
On Friday, I told you scientists now believe that information is the fifth form of matter. Today we’ll discuss another exciting possibility involving information — a possible solution to the infamous Black Hole Paradox.
What is a Black Hole?
Most of us are pretty familiar with what a black hole is — it’s basically a literal black hole in outer space so dense that light itself can’t escape. It’s believed that back holes form when massive stars die or collapse in on themselves. All the matter in a star gets squeezed into a tiny space, becoming extremely compact and heavy.
Since black holes gobble up light, we can’t see them with our naked eye — but we do have technology to spot them. This is because a black hole’s gravity is powerful thanks to its huge mass, so while we can’t see the black hole itself, we can see how its gravity impacts the light and gases nearby it.
Some scientists believe there are only three defining properties of a black hole — mass, angular momentum, and electrical charge. They also think all black holes are more or less identical in appearance to circular, smooth holes. But other scientists disagree. They believe black holes are actually distinct from one another and even have what they call “hair.” But we’ll talk more about that part later.
We don’t know what’s in a black hole for many reasons, but the biggest is that it’s far too dangerous for a spacecraft to get close. They might get pulled in, resulting in spaghettification. As such, there’s probably no way to know what’s inside a black hole. Or is there?
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