麻豆传媒

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鈥檚 own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This 鈥淗awking radiation鈥� contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking鈥檚 argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics.

Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier this year, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory 鈥� in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles 鈥� then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this 鈥渇uzzball鈥� does contain information about the insides of a black hole (麻豆传媒, 13 March, p 10).

Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. 鈥淗e sent a note saying 鈥業 have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it鈥�,鈥� says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference鈥檚 scientific committee. 鈥淚 haven鈥檛 seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking鈥檚 reputation.鈥�

Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking鈥檚 black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world. In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. 鈥淚t鈥檚 possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution,鈥� says Gibbons. 鈥淏ut I think you have to say the jury is still out.鈥�

At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. They argued that 鈥渋nformation swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed鈥�.

鈥淪ince Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet,鈥� Preskill told 麻豆传媒. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice 鈥渇rom which information can be recovered at will鈥�.