[PerpetualYnquisitive]

After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week.

The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox.

It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost.

Full article: http://www.newscient...p?id=ns99996151


Now this should be interesting.

[Sayonara³]

What'll be interesting are the "well if you are saying you were wrong then, why should we believe you are right now?" arguments, accompanied by the sounds of struggling as Hawking tries to keep hold of his encyclopedia*.



* Score +10 for obscure Hawking reference.

[ceres]

I'm not particularily well versed in black holes but does this open up the possiblity of 2 way travel?

Please excuse my ignorance.

[PerpetualYnquisitive]

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What'll be interesting are the "well if you are saying you were wrong then, why should we believe you are right now?" arguments, accompanied by the sounds of struggling as Hawking tries to keep hold of his encyclopedia*.



* Score +10 for obscure Hawking reference.

I always use extra Tabasco on mine, kills that foul aftertaste. :-)

[jana]

There have been many arguments put forward to resolve this issue. Hawking is simply going to discuss his within the description of quantum gravity he knows best, euclidean quantum gravity.

[MolecularMan14]

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What'll be interesting are the "well if you are saying you were wrong then, why should we believe you are right now?" arguments, accompanied by the sounds of struggling as Hawking tries to keep hold of his encyclopedia*.



* Score +10 for obscure Hawking reference.

Well I think you're looking at it the wrong way, lol. So what if Hawking was wrong back then. He had the intelligence to correct his own folly now, because of newer research and technology. But ya know, there will still be those who question it. But there is always more to know, so in a few more years, we'll discover something new, and IT will solve another questioned concept.

But for now, mad props to Stevey!
:-)

[ydoaPs]

I think Sayo was talking about the people that will ignore what he said at the conference.

[Martin]

Hi all,
Here is the website with the program of the GR17 conference

http://www.dcu.ie/~nolanb/gr17.htm

the conference starts the 18th, next week


there is a short summary of Hawking's planned talk available
if you go to the site and click under "scientific program"
where it says "plenary abstracts"

Roger Penrose is also giving a talk (Friday 23 July) at GR17
called "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in theoretical physics"

He gave a talk by the same name at princeton and you can listen to it online with some bad video. If anyone wants I have the links somewhere.

It is a good talk, I thought it was really interesting. So they plan for that to be one of the public lectures at GR17.

Hawking's approach to quantum gravity is called the "Euclidian Path Integral"
or just "Path Integral" for short.
It has some kinship with LQG, Simplex, and Spinfoam approaches.
It would be great if he actually can resolve the paradox---which is a famous outstanding one.
I am pessimistic that he will succeed in resolving it in a generally satisfactory way---but at least he will spotlight it.
(I would advise him not to consider the bet decided and not to give Preskill the Encyclopedia yet, it aint over till its over)

[Martin]

to get the summary of Hawking's planned talk you go to that site
and on the sidebar you click on
"plenary abstracts"
(where it says scientific program)
because Hawking's is one of the plenary talks

the summary is not terribly informative, here is a bit of it:
"The Euclidean path integral over...[technical stuff]... Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon."
*

[Sayonara³]

yourdadonapogos said:

I think Sayo was talking about the people that will ignore what he said at the conference.

Pretty much yeah. If anyone knows whether he is right or wrong, it certainly isn't me - I was only talking about how he will be received.

Ah well, at least Martin caught the flying encyclopedia :-)

[jana]

Martin said:

Hawking's approach to quantum gravity is called the "Euclidian Path Integral" or just "Path Integral"

Yeah, your right: If someone says "hawking's path-integral approach to quantum gravity", everyone knows that they mean "Euclidean Path Integral". But it doesn't hurt to add that the path-integral's "euclideaness" is the whole point of hawking's approach. It's what led to his famous no-boundary proposal.

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I am pessimistic that he will succeed in resolving it in a generally satisfactory way---but at least he will spotlight it.
(I would advise him not to consider the bet decided and not to give Preskill the Encyclopedia yet, it aint over till its over)

Can't argue with that. :-)

[admiral_ju00]

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Pretty much yeah. If anyone knows whether he is right or wrong, it certainly isn't me - I was only talking about how he will be received.

I suspect that he will be perceived as a scientist. He created the theory, and he may also debunk the theory(even if it's his own) - he may be a unique individual at that, but nonetheless. Unless something turns into the a priori law, then why should people choose to ignore how the scientific method works??

If the reaction take on the opposite note, then I would question the audience(their integrity or whathave you) as opposed to the man himself.

Here's the method(Euclidean path integral) that he uses to work out his theory of the singularity.

http://arxiv.org/PS_...801/9801023.pdf

Damn, just looking at all the numbers and hieroglyphics :D(heh, I probably shouldn't say that, but for the sake of fun, why not, eh?) there makes me wonder how in the world do the physicists do what they do.

[Sayonara³]

Sorry, but I don't think the following is highly reliable:

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Hi guys!

Remember when I said that black holes destroy everything they collect? And you guys said that the information can't be destroyed? And I said you were wrong then went quiet for a while?

Well now I have decided that black holes eventually open up and reveal all the information they have stored*. They don't destroy information you know, they can't!

* Essentially how he has "solved" the problem. What he will be announcing is "yeah, I was wrong", without necessarily agreeing with everybody else.

[admiral_ju00]

huh?
Where did you get the above quote? Or to whom is it aimed in this thread?

{ edit }

And also, what is this "encyclopaedia "from which information can be recovered at will" that they are talking about?

[Sayonara³]

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huh?
Where did you get the above quote? Or to whom is it aimed in this thread?

It's a reply to you.

It's a paraphrased summary of what Hawking will say.

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And also, what is this "encyclopaedia "from which information can be recovered at will" that they are talking about?

The encyclopedia mentioned in this thread is the prize in a bet between Hawking and Preskill.

The information mentioned is the data that matter entering a black hole is reduced to.

[admiral_ju00]

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It's a reply to you.

It's a paraphrased summary of what Hawking will say.

Lol. I'm glad that Nature and other publishers phrased that a bit more elegantly ;)

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The encyclopedia mentioned in this thread is the prize in a bet between Hawking and Preskill.

I know about the bet, but you haven't answered the question.
What is so special to this encyclopedia that one highly respected scholar and researcher places a bet on it? Surely it's not the common stock encyclopedia like Britannica or something.

[TheProphet]

This might be more interesting than too just state that Hawking was wrong! Due too this new aproach the history of black holes can be read! And maybe also further explaind! One more interesting thing is if these black holes do consist of a singularity similar too the one thought our universe came out of this might give us new keays to unravel more of our own history aswell (far fetched, but hey that's science ;))

Too bad i can't take that last minute flight too ireland. Those GR17 talks and all would be really nice too hear, if it's open too the generl puplic that is. Don't remember that but shure it is! I'll have too check what Martin Wrote.. :confused:

Cheers

[JaKiri]

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I know about the bet, but you haven't answered the question.
What is so special to this encyclopedia that one highly respected scholar and researcher places a bet on it? Surely it's not the common stock encyclopedia like Britannica or something.

Other scholarly bets have included beer and subscriptions to Penthouse.

Going by this interpretation, the encyclopedia will be full of fart jokes.

[admiral_ju00]

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Other scholarly bets have included beer and subscriptions to Penthouse.

Going by this interpretation, the encyclopedia will be full of fart jokes.

Bleh, you ruining my expectation of what this encyclopedia really is.
On the other hand, I'll take a subscription to Penthouse.

I bet you that our Earth is round, but not a perfect circle. Give me a day or so and I'll give you my proof. Have my Subscription paid and ready till then. :D

[senexa]

Truth in advertising first of all ... I have never liked Hawking or agreed with much of his conclusion(s) on just about anything.

This whole thing smacks of self-aggrendizement (IMO).

Basically, he just said that this is what he has decided to be the truth, and then jumbled together a lot of the points of criticism and new understandings from the past ten years or so.

These are ALL theories, folks. To say that Hawking's latest wunderkind announcement actually advances our understandings is comparable to saying you believe in WMD because Bush decided they were there.

Others have been doing far more interesting work, without all the fanfare:

Gravitational vacuum condensate stars
Mazur and Mottola PNAS.2004; 101: 9545-9550.

http://www.space.com...y_030128-1.html

http://www.lanl.gov/...ve/02-035.shtml