Why an Impossible Black Hole Paradox Seems to Break the Laws of Physics!

Summary

This video explores the black hole information paradox, a concept introduced by Stephen Hawking suggesting that black holes may destroy information, contradicting the laws of quantum mechanics. It discusses how information is viewed in physics, its connection to entropy, and the implications for determinism and causality. The script also delves into Hawking's theory of black holes emitting radiation, leading to the potential loss of information, and various theories attempting to resolve this paradox. Sponsored by MyHeritage, the video includes a personal DNA heritage reveal, emphasizing the importance of understanding our origins.

Takeaways

• 🌌 The image of the black hole from the Event Horizon Telescope is from the M87 galaxy, 55 million light years away from Earth.
• 💥 Black holes form when a star exhausts its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravitational pull, creating a gravitational force so strong not even light can escape.
• 🔬 Stephen Hawking proposed in 1976 that black holes could destroy information, contradicting the laws of quantum mechanics which state that information should be conserved.
• 🔄 Information in physics is defined as the number of yes/no questions needed to fully specify a system's properties, closely linked to entropy.
• 🔗 The second law of thermodynamics implies that information is never lost, as entropy can never decrease, suggesting that information is always conserved in the universe.
• 🌐 A real-life example illustrates that information is not destroyed but changes form, as with a burned book whose particles still exist, just altered.
• 🧬 The video includes a sponsored segment on MyHeritage DNA testing, which allows individuals to explore their ethnic backgrounds and find relatives worldwide.
• 🔮 Determinism in physics is tied to information conservation; knowing a system's full information allows for prediction of its future and past states.
• ⚫ Hawking's theory suggests that black holes emit radiation, leading to their eventual evaporation, which seemingly destroys the information of matter that fell into them, creating a paradox.
• 🤔 The black hole information paradox remains unresolved, with theories suggesting information may be encoded in Hawking radiation or stored in another universe, impacting our understanding of determinism and causality.

Q & A

What is the significance of the black hole image captured by the Event Horizon Telescope?

The image is significant because it provides visual evidence of a black hole's existence, captured from the galaxy M87, 55 million lightyears away from Earth. It supports the theory of black holes and offers insights into their properties.

How does a black hole form?

A black hole forms when a star exhausts most of its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravitational pull. If the star is large enough, the compactification results in a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.

What is the black hole information paradox proposed by Stephen Hawking?

The black hole information paradox is the idea that black holes destroy information, which contradicts the laws of quantum mechanics that state information should be conserved in the universe. This paradox challenges our understanding of causality and the deterministic laws of physics.

How are causality and information conservation correlated in physics?

Causality and information conservation are correlated because the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic, meaning that given the full information about an initial state of a system, one can predict its future states. Information conservation ensures that there is a cause and effect for all interactions, maintaining the predictability and causality in the universe.

What is the role of entropy in the discussion of information conservation?

Entropy is closely linked to information in physics. The more information that is necessary to specify a system, the higher the entropy of that system. The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy can never decrease, which implies that information cannot be erased, as that would mean a decrease in entropy.

How does the concept of determinism relate to information conservation?

Determinism in physics is related to information conservation because if information were lost, it would be impossible to reconstruct the previous states of a system, thereby violating the deterministic nature of the universe's evolution.

What is Hawking radiation and how does it relate to the information paradox?

Hawking radiation is the theoretical black body radiation emitted by black holes, which is composed almost entirely of photons and is inversely proportional to the black hole's mass. It relates to the information paradox because the radiation does not seem to contain information about the matter that fell into the black hole, suggesting that information could be lost when a black hole evaporates.

What are some theories that attempt to resolve the black hole information paradox?

Some theories to resolve the paradox include the idea that information is encoded in the Hawking radiation, that there is a correlation between radiated particles and the information that fell into the black hole, or that black holes are gateways to other universes where the information is stored.

Why is the black hole information paradox important for our understanding of the universe?

The black hole information paradox is important because it challenges our understanding of determinism, predictability, and causality in the universe. Resolving this paradox could provide insights into the fundamental laws of physics and the nature of information in the cosmos.

What is the current status of the black hole information paradox in the scientific community?

The black hole information paradox remains unresolved and is an active area of research. It continues to be a topic of debate and investigation among physicists, with ongoing efforts to find a satisfactory explanation that aligns with the principles of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Outlines

00:00

🌌 Introduction to Black Holes and the Information Paradox

This paragraph introduces the concept of black holes, explaining how they form when a star collapses under its own gravity and how they have such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape. It discusses the black hole information paradox proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1976, which challenges the principle of information conservation in quantum mechanics. The paradox suggests that black holes might destroy information, which could disrupt the deterministic laws of the universe and the concept of causality. The paragraph also explains the physicist's definition of information and its relationship with entropy, and how information is never lost in the universe according to the second law of thermodynamics.

05:19

🧬 DNA Testing and the Conservation of Information

The speaker transitions from the topic of black holes to a personal anecdote about using a DNA testing service, MyHeritage, to explore his own heritage. He shares his surprise at discovering that his DNA results indicate 100% South Asian heritage, despite his previous thoughts of having Middle Eastern or Eastern European ancestry. The speaker expresses excitement about finding relatives across the globe and recommends the service, encouraging viewers to use a provided coupon for a free trial and free shipping. The paragraph then returns to the topic of information conservation, emphasizing the deterministic nature of physics and how information is preserved globally, even if it appears to be lost locally.

10:22

🔬 The Physics of Information and the Black Hole Paradox

This paragraph delves deeper into the relationship between information conservation and determinism in physics. It explains that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic, meaning that with complete information about a system's initial state, one can predict its future states. The paragraph addresses the misconception that quantum mechanics is non-deterministic, clarifying that while measurement outcomes are probabilistic, the evolution of quantum states is deterministic. The speaker then connects this to the black hole information paradox, explaining Hawking's theory that black holes emit radiation, which could lead to the loss of information. The paragraph concludes by discussing various theories that attempt to resolve the paradox, including the possibility that information is encoded in Hawking radiation, and the idea that black holes might be gateways to other universes.

Keywords

💡Black Hole

A black hole is a region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. In the video, the concept is central as it discusses the formation of black holes from collapsing stars and their role in the information paradox. The script mentions the black hole in the M87 galaxy as an example, emphasizing its immense distance from Earth and the technological feat of capturing its image.

💡Event Horizon

The event horizon is the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing can escape its gravitational pull. It is used in the script to describe the edge of a black hole and is part of the name of the telescope that captured the image of the black hole: the Event Horizon Telescope. This term is crucial for understanding the physical properties and limitations of black holes.

💡Gravitational Pull

Gravitational pull refers to the force of attraction between masses. In the context of the video, it is the force that causes a star to collapse and form a black hole when it exhausts its nuclear fuel. The script explains that if a star is large enough, its gravitational pull becomes so strong that it forms a black hole from which nothing can escape.

💡Information Paradox

The information paradox, as discussed in the video, is the apparent contradiction between the principles of quantum mechanics, which state that information is never lost, and the behavior of black holes, which seemingly destroy information. The script delves into this paradox by exploring Stephen Hawking's theories on black holes and their potential to violate the conservation of information.

💡Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the behavior of matter and energy at the smallest scales. The video mentions quantum mechanics in relation to the information paradox and the behavior of particles near a black hole. It is highlighted as the theoretical framework that suggests information should be conserved, challenging the idea that black holes could destroy information.

💡Entropy

Entropy, in the context of the video, is a measure of the amount of information or disorder in a system. It is closely linked to the concept of information, as the more information needed to specify a system, the higher its entropy. The script uses entropy to explain the second law of thermodynamics and the idea that information is never lost, even when it appears to be, such as when a book is burned.

💡Determinism

Determinism in physics refers to the idea that given the full information about an initial state of a system, one can predict its future states. The video script connects determinism with the conservation of information, suggesting that if information is lost, as it seemingly is in black holes, then determinism and causality could be violated, leading to a universe where events are not necessarily linked to prior causes.

💡Hawking Radiation

Hawking radiation, named after physicist Stephen Hawking, is the theoretical radiation emitted by black holes due to quantum effects near the event horizon. The video discusses Hawking's discovery that black holes are not entirely black but emit radiation, which leads to the information paradox as the radiation does not seem to carry the information of the matter that fell into the black hole.

💡Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope is a global network of telescopes that captured the first image of a black hole, as mentioned in the video. This technological achievement is significant as it provides visual evidence of the existence of black holes and supports the study of their properties, including the information paradox.

💡Causality

Causality refers to the relationship between cause and effect. In the video, causality is discussed in the context of the information paradox, suggesting that if information can be destroyed within a black hole, then events could occur without a clear cause, violating the principle of causality and leading to a universe that operates in unpredictable ways.

💡MyHeritage

MyHeritage is a DNA testing service mentioned in the video as a sponsor. While not directly related to the scientific content, the service is used as an example of how information can be preserved and discovered, much like the quest to understand the preservation of information within black holes. The video host shares his personal experience with the service, emphasizing the concept of uncovering information about one's heritage.

Highlights

A black hole is formed when a star exhausts its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravitational pull.

Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes destroy information, contradicting quantum mechanics laws.

Information in physics is defined as the number of yes/no questions needed to specify a system's properties.

The second law of thermodynamics implies that information, like entropy, cannot decrease in the universe.

The principle of information conservation supports the idea of determinism in physics.

Hawking's analysis suggests that black holes emit radiation, now known as Hawking radiation, which could lead to their eventual evaporation.

Hawking radiation is thought to not contain information about the matter that fell into the black hole, leading to the information paradox.

The information paradox challenges our understanding of determinism, predictability, and causality in the universe.

Some theories suggest that information is encoded in the Hawking radiation emitted by black holes.

Quantum gravity effects might allow Hawking radiation to contain information, according to recent research.

Entanglement between radiated particles and those that fell into the black hole could preserve information.

A speculative theory proposes black holes as gateways to other universes where lost information is stored.

The black hole information paradox remains unresolved and is a critical area of ongoing research in physics.

Determining the fate of information in black holes has profound implications for our understanding of the universe's fundamental laws.

The video also features a sponsorship by MyHeritage, offering DNA testing services to explore one's heritage.

The host shares his personal experience with MyHeritage, revealing 100% South Asian heritage.

MyHeritage's DNA matching feature connects the host with distant relatives across the globe.

Transcripts

This is a picture of a blackhole from  the Event Horizon Telescope from NASA:  

captured from a galaxy called M87, 55  million lightyears away from earth.

A black hole occurs when a star exhausts most  of its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own  

gravitational pull. If it’s a large enough  star, its compactification results in a  

gravitational pull so strong, that nothing can  escape, not even light. That’s why it’s black.

In 1976, legendary physicist Stephen Hawing  proposed that Black Holes, mysterious enough as  

they are, do something that should be impossible  according to the laws of quantum mechanics. They  

destroy information. This is a paradox because it  should not happen. Information should be conserved  

in the universe, because if it is not, then it  would mean that causality could be violated. In  

other words, random inexplicable events could  happen that are not linked to prior events.

This has huge implications for the way we  think our universe works. The order of events,  

time, and the deterministic laws we  think we know could all be garbage.

Surely, that’s impossible! What is  the black hole information paradox?  

How are causality and information  conservation correlated? And how do  

black holes potentially violate  it? That’s coming up right now…

The first question you might have  is what does information have to  

do with black holes. So I’ll explain that first.

The way physicists think of information  may not be the way you think of it. They  

usually don’t mean information like on  a hard drive or a book. These are things  

that can be encoded with zeros and ones.  They describe information as the number of  

yes/no questions that must be answered to  fully specify the properties of a system.

By the way, this definition of information  is also the way entropy is defined in  

physics. Entropy and information are  closely linked. The more information  

that is necessary to specify a system,  the higher the entropy of that system.

One of the basic laws of physics is that  information is never lost. Information always  

stays in the universe. In terms of entropy,  the second law of thermodynamics states that  

entropy can never decrease. So this also  has implications for information because  

if information could be erased, then that  would mean that entropy could be decreased.  

This is one of the reasons, scientists  believe information cannot be destroyed.

Let me put this in terms of a real life example,  if you burn a book, the book’s information doesn’t  

really get destroyed. The reason is that the  information is still retained in the universe. All  

the elementary particles of the book are preserved  in the soot and smoke resulting from the burning.  

They don’t disappear. They have just changed.  They have undergone numerous interactions. But in  

principle, if we had the technical capability to  look at the quantum state of all those elementary  

particles, even after the burning process, we  could recreate their quantum state immediately  

prior to that, and then immediately prior to  that, and so on until we recreated the book.

The same can be said for scrambled  eggs, shattered glass, and anything  

else you can think of where you  think information may be lost.

Now, in practice, this is nearly impossible  to do because of the amount of information  

that we could need to keep track of,  but in principle if we were superbeings  

with infinite capability, the information is  available in the universe for us to do this.

You might be asking, how is this information  conserved? First, this is very closely  

related to determinism in physics. So how are determinism and information  

conservation related. Before I answer that  fascinating question, I want to give a big  

shout out to MyHeritage, our sponsor. Ever since I learned about DNA services  

several years ago, I been fascinated by  the idea of learning more about myself  

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about partnering with MyHeritage on this video. I received this kit from them only a few weeks  

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Ok, so let’s find out where I’m from, what do you  think my ethnicity is? You probably already have  

a clue based on my skin color and my facial  features. I received the results in an email. 

So let’s look at it right now. I’m  looking at it for the first time. 

Ready to explore your ethnicity, yes. Let’s  go. Arvin, you are….100% south Asian. Ok 

This is interesting. It’s a surprise and not a  surprise. I guess it’s not a surprise because  

both my parents are of Indian heritage, so it  makes sense that I would be, had some thoughts but  

for some reason, I had some thoughts that maybe I had a little  bit of Middle Easter or Eastern European heritage. 

But it doesn’t look like that’s the case.  So I’m 100% South Asian. There you go. 

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Oh wow, wow, wow, look at this! I don’t think  I’ve ever heard of these names, but 3rd cousin’s son,  

3rd cousin’s son, 3rd cousin’s son, 4th cousin.  Somebody in Ukraine, wow! India of course. 

Oh my goodness, there’s 3 pages of this! All over the world, Germany,  Australia. That’s really interesting guys. 

Boy, it sure is nice to know that  there’re a few relatives all over  

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And now let’s answer the question how information  conservation is related to determinism. 

The fundamental laws of physics are deterministic, that is, given the full information about an initial  

state of a system, you can (in principle at least)  predict the evolution of that system. That is,  

you can predict its state in any later  moment in time. And you can also reconstruct  

the earlier states of the system. You might object to this by pointing  

out that quantum mechanics is considered  a non deterministic theory. That’s true,  

but it's only with respect to measurement. In  other words the result of a measurement is  

not deterministic, but the underlying laws of  quantum mechanics are different. The evolution  

of the wave function that determines the quantum  state of any system is completely deterministic  

in producing a probability of an outcome. The  probability of all outcomes added together is  

always equal to one. This is called the  Principle of Unitarity. In other words,  

nothing is lost when a quantum system evolves  from one state to another. The quantum state  

of any system preserves information. One can apply this to any system. If  

you think there are cases of information loss  such as cooking an egg or something like that,  

it’s really not true. While information about  the uncooked egg may be lost locally in your pan,  

it is preserved globally in the gases and  energy produced in the cooking process. The  

universe is considered to be a closed system  overall, so any information that appears  

locally lost is preserved within the universe. Bottom line is that if we know the state of any  

quantum particle, we can determine its state in  the moment just prior to that, and prior to that,  

going all the way, to the beginning of time.  There is a cause and effect for all interactions. 

What follows from this is that you can’t  have two different initial states evolve  

into exactly the same final state, because  then you would not be able, even in principle,  

to reconstruct the previous state of the system.  So, “information loss” for a physicist means:  

having many different initial states evolve into  exactly the same final state. If that were the  

case, the idea of determinism would be lost. The principle of conservation of information,  

therefore, is what makes the universe  deterministic. And we can infer from this,  

a predictability and causality in the universe. So when Stephen Hawking suggested that information  

was not preserved in Black Holes, the physics  community reacted with collective incredulity.  

How could that be? Surely, there must be  something wrong with Hawkings calculations,  

they thought. But his analysis was air tight.  No one could find anything wrong with it.  

So what was the rationale that Hawking  used to suggest this blasphemous idea?

To make a long story short, he did  this by considering how the quantum  

effects of matter would behave within General  Relativity. According to general relativity a  

blackhole has just three properties: Mass,  electric charge and Angular momentum.

But the same theory also predicts that anything  that falls into a black hole is lost forever,  

it can never be recovered from the  perspective of the outside. It  

falls into the singularity of  the black hole. It can only add  

to the three properties of the black  hole – mass, charge and momentum.

So the question is, what happens to  the information that was contained  

in the matter that fell into it. For example,  if a book falls into the black hole what  

happened to its information? If  the book only added to the mass,  

charge and momentum of the black hole, we  cannot recover all its information from only  

those three properties, at least not from  the perspective of outside the black hole.

Prior to Stephen Hawking, this  was not considered a big deal,  

because it was thought the information  contained in the book, even though not  

recoverable outside the black hole, was at  least contained inside the black hole. And  

therefore it was still in the universe.  We can’t get to it, but it’s there.

This ideas blown up when Stephen Hawking  used the ideas of quantum field theory to  

delve deeper into what happens around the area  of the edge, which is also known as the event  

horizon of a black hole. What he found  was that the state of the quantum vacuum, that is,  

the properties of the severely curved space near  the edge of the black hole was fundamentally  

different than the state of the quantum vacuum  far away from the black hole, where space is flat.

His calculations showed that black holes  cannot be stable within that curved space.  

The difference in the quantum vacuum near the  edge vs far away would lead to a continuous  

emission of black body radiation. This is  known today as Hawking radiation in his  

honor. His calculations showed that this radiation  would be composed almost entirely of photons,  

It would be inversely proportional to the black  hole’s mass, and would be emitted in a time  

frame proportional to the mass of the black  hole cubed. This meant that black holes would,  

over time, eventually completely  evaporate via Hawking radiation.

This presented a problem because now it seemed  that our book and everything else containing  

information that ever fell into the black hole  would eventually be emitted as photons. And  

since this is purely black body radiation  which depends only on the mass and angular  

momentum of the black hole, it would not contain  properties which would be needed to answer yes/no  

questions allowing us to recover the initial  quantum state of the matter that fell into it.

In other words, Hawking radiation does  not seem to have any properties that would  

allow us to recover the information about the  book that fell into it. Information, it would  

appear is completely lost from the universe,  forever. This is the information paradox.

So the big puzzle and paradox is, where does  this information go? All the information that  

went inside the black hole seems to disappear  in the eventual evaporation of black holes.

There are several theories that attempt  to answer this question. Some scientists  

speculate that the information that goes into  making a black hole is somehow encoded in the  

evaporated Hawking radiation. One idea is that  perhaps the information is shed at the end of  

the life of black hole in its last moments. This  is hard to test because we would need to observe  

a black hole die and measure what comes out of  it. But black holes take, in most cases 100s  

of billions to trillions of years to evaporate.  Who knows if we will still be here at that time.

There is a recent paper suggesting that  although Hawking's calculations show that  

the radiation contains no information,  when the effects of quantum gravity are  

taken into account in his equations,  that same radiation can be shown to  

contain information. This is not settled  science, and is ongoing area of research.

Others suggest that there is a correlation  between every radiated particle of a black  

hole and the information that fell into  it, and that if we were to examine all the  

particles coming out over the lifetime of all  the Hawking radiation from a given black hole,  

we would see pattern that would contain all  the information that fell into it. This is  

similar to the idea of entanglement, that is, the  particles coming out of the black hole are somehow  

entangled with all the particles that fell into  it. This is difficult to test because we don’t  

currently have the capability to detect Hawking  radiation, let alone detect any information in it.

Another wild theory is that Black holes are  gateways to other universes and that the seemingly  

lost information is actually stored in another  universe. The problem with this is that there  

is no evidence that other universes exist, let  alone that black holes could be a gateway to them.

But make no mistake, no matter what claims  you may have heard in books or online,  

the black hole information paradox is still  unresolved. It is an active area of research.  

And it’s important because it has implications for  the way we think our universe works. Determinism,  

predictability and causality are tied to us finding the answer to this paradox.

I Hope you enjoyed this video. And again,  

be sure to click the link in the description  or scan the QR code that's on the screen right now,  

And use the coupon code ArvinAsh to learn  about your heritage and take advantage  

of the MyHeritage free shipping offer and 30 day free trial. I’ll see you in the next video my friend.