"Hawking's discussion of black holes drew attention to the need to unify the fundamental teachings of science

Prof. Zvi Piren from the Hebrew University says in a conversation with the Hidaan site that the solution of the paradoxes concerning the fate of black holes, which Hawking warns about, even if not with the method he proposes, may help in discovering the Torah that will unite the theories of relativity and quantum, which has troubled scientists in the last century due to the contradictions between them

It is difficult to understand the scientific world of Stephen Hawking. Also the explanation we gave yesterday It was too complicated for many readers, but one thing is clear, black holes exist but there is also a black hole in physics, which this phenomenon may try to close.
We asked for clarification from Prof. Zvi Piren from the Rakeh Institute of Physics, he is a world-renowned expert on astrophysics and black holes: nearly 40 years since Hawking proposed evaporating black holes, there is a conflict between quantum theory and relativity. As long as the holes didn't evaporate there was no problem everything that falls into the black hole stays there forever and that's it.

"In an instant, black matter evaporates and eventually disappears, the matter inside it returns out into the universe, but then the question arises as to what happens to the information that fell into it together with the matter. Hawking at first strongly claimed that this information is lost and disappears from the world. Other people in the scientific community did not accept this claim because the idea that information is disappearing contradicts quantum theory and then there was the famous intervention in which Hawking was a partner on the question Is the information gone or not."

In February 1997, Hawking and the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne intervened on the outcome of the black hole paradox with their colleague John Preskill (see the text of the intervention on the Caltech website - http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/info_bet.html). Thorne and Hawking argued that since relativity makes it impossible for a black hole to evaporate and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking radiation must be uninformative and not information that came from the black hole's event horizon. Since this goes against the quantum mechanics idea of ​​micro-causality, quantum theory would have to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics asserts that the information emitted from a black hole belongs to the information that fell into it at an earlier time, the way a black hole is described in relativity must undergo some adjustment. Hawking and Thorne believe that the information swallowed by a black hole is lost forever, and Priscilla claims that the information will be released when the hole evaporates. The prize in the intervention was a copy of an encyclopedia of the winner's choice.

Prof. Piren adds in a conversation with the science website: "In 2004, Hawking declared at a scientific conference that he lost in this intervention. The statement made a lot of noise at the time. Thorne, who was by Hawking's side in the intervention, never agreed to admit that he lost in the intervention. Hawking received the The fact that during evaporation, the information that initially fell into the black hole also slowly escapes. Practically it would be impossible to collect this information, but theoretically if there is If you have a big enough computer, you can in principle reproduce it. It's like you take a book and throw it into a fire. Hypothetically, if you collect the molecules during the combustion and the photons and you have a big enough computer, you can recover the information."

"In the last two years, a group of researchers from California showed that if we accept the conclusion that if the material evaporates and the information leaks out, there is another paradox that things don't work out with. They claimed that material that falls into the black hole leaves its information in one way or another on the black hole's shell and penetrates inside. The place where the information remains until it is released is known as a 'firewall'.

"Hawking and others think that the idea of ​​a firewall is more absurd than the paradox it is supposed to solve, and therefore we need to see how they deal with it and find another solution. Hawking's solution says that the basic concept of a black hole as we know it does not exist, but instead something more subtle exists. Instead of the hole The black holds what falls into it and nothing escapes it forever, the more subtle 'something' that Hawking suggests is that what falls into the black hole is locked in it for a very, very long time Very much, but in the end it will be released. Even according to Hawking's view, black hole-like bodies exist today. The question is only how absolute is the lack of escape from them."

Does it have any practical implications?
Prof. Piren: "From a practical point of view, this solution, even if Hawking's idea is correct (and I don't think it is correct) it will not help an astronaut who falls into a black hole. These are huge durations of 10 to the 60th or 80th power when the age of the universe so far is 10 to the 10th power A number so large that for all practical purposes it is eternal. The problem is theoretical and not really the question of whether it is possible to escape from a black hole who fall to him.

What does it give us?

"This is an interesting and important subject, which we know that there are two basic theories in nature - Bohr's quantum theory and Einstein's theory of relativity. These theories are not consistent with each other, it is clear to us that there is a super theory that should unite both, it even has a name (quantum gravity) but We do not know the details of it. The theory of quantum gravity has to answer many questions, including this question. This is a very important and intriguing theory It bothers us that we don't understand it. One of the places where we can try to make even a basic understanding of this Torah is precisely at this point of the information paradox because it is a paradox that arises from the conflict between these two theories. The hope is that by discussing this paradox we can Find clues on how to construct this new theory.

Since we don't know the essence of the theory, we don't know how to tell what will happen to us after we understand it. For example, in the 19th century, Faraday made the first experiments with electricity, and a famous story is that Queen Victoria visited his laboratory and asked what we would do with it, he answered her with the question: Is it good for a one-day-old baby? Imagine us living without electricity today. In 1915, Einstein found the theory of relativity, which was also far from everyday life. It had no consequence, no use. At the time it was thought that it was not relevant to anything on earth and that it was not interesting until in the eighties they started building GPS devices and it turned out that without using the theory of relativity we would have missed our house by a few hundred meters."