Professor Claims to Have Solved Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Paradox
- Jessica Michele Herring
- Mar 26, 2014 05:12 PM EDT
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A professor from Michigan State University may have solved Stephen Hawking's black hole paradox.
According to The Space Reporter, professor Chris Adami may have solved the mystery of black holes, which are objects that have gravitational fields that are so strong that nothing can escape them.
Hawking wrote that event horizons do not exist, which recently reignited discussions about black holes.
One of the mysteries about black holes is what happens with "information," or matter or energy and their features at the atomic and subatomic level, in black holes.
"In 1975, Hawking discovered that black holes aren't all black. They actually radiate a featureless glow, now called Hawking radiation," Adami wrote. "In his original theory, Hawking stated that the radiation slowly consumes the black hole and it eventually evaporates and disappears, concluding that information and anything that enters the black hole would be irretrievably lost."
Yet, the theory poses a problem, called the information paradox, because information cannot disappear. Adami now believes that he may have solved that paradox.
"According to the laws of quantum physics, information can't disappear," Adami noted. "A loss of information would imply that the universe itself would suddenly become unpredictable every time the black hole swallows a particle. That is just inconceivable. No law of physics that we know allows this to happen."
According to Adami, the information is held in the stimulated emission of radiation, which occurs with the Hawking radiation. Stimulated emission makes the hole glow in the information it consumed.
"Stimulated emission is the physical process behind LASERS (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). Basically, it works like a copy machine: you throw something into the machine, and two identical somethings come out.
"If you throw information at a black hole, just before it is swallowed, the black hole first makes a copy that is left outside," he continued. "This copying mechanism was discovered by Albert Einstein in 1917, and without it, physics cannot be consistent," Adami explained.
While other physicists will now debate whether or not Adami is correct, Adami and other MSU professors stated: "Stephen Hawking's wonderful theory is now complete."
More details about Adami's work are available in the journal "Classical and Quantum Gravity."
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