Saturday, October 30, 2010

Where does information down a black hole go???

Stephen Hawking:
Anything that goes down a black hole does not come out. There is absolutely no way out - it only becomes a part of the immense density that comprises the core of black hole.
Why would it be a different case with 'Information' ??
Against the prevalent laws of conservation of energy, the case is different with black holes. There is no release of energy out of a black hole - and similarly no release of information out of a black hole - so no conservation there!

Leonard Susskind (decades later):
There is no way anything is an exception to the law of conservation. That would mean that is a case against the laws of Physics - none can exist like that.
Information that goes into a black hole actually comes out of the back hole, only, it would no longer appear in its earlier form. A signature of the information comes out but it is not distinguishable by humans since it is entirely segregated - seperated - spread out - far flung, at least to perceive. Still, it comes out and is present out there - so there actually is conservation - and the laws of Physics still stand unperturbed.
If the name 'MOHITH' goes into a black hole, what comes out is a signature of the name, only we will not be able to understand it.
output:
M              O                H   


             black hole


T                      I                  H


Mohith Kunta ;) ;) (2010):  
So, what comes out of a black hole is still present out there in the universe - out there waiting to be put together and understood??
Consider this, I will send in the name 'BILL GATES' into the black hole just a few micro seconds after 'MOHITH' went in. Susskind's explanation would hold good here also, and the signature of the second name would also spread out as it comes out of the black hole.
output:
M             L            O                   A       T        I
I                                                                                  S
B                               black hole
                                                                           E
H                 H                  L                G                  T
The above signature still contains the names MOHITH and BILL GATES. Only it is severely scrambled.
Now consider that a few trillion names go into the black hole. The signature picture is very complex - just imagine.
Now as per Susskind, since the laws of conservation cannot have exceptions, so the two names are still out there along with the other few trillion names. So the information is still out there.
But... then... how can you call the output 'Information'??? There is something out there - trillions of alphabets -  when no one knows what they make up for sure - Is it correct to still call the output of the black hole 'Information'? I would just call it random sporadic nothing - can it be called information?. If we go deeper into understanding this, one alphabet M which goes into the black hole comes out, but is no longer M - it would just be a million subparts of a hundred pixels (of which M is made of). Now, imagine what just happened to each alphabet of the names MOHITH and BILL GATES along with the few trillion other names.
What happened was that the input 'information' became output 'nothing'.
Now do you call this conservation? Conservation of what??
Now this is different from other types of conservation like from light to heat. Both light and heat are different types of energy and are understandable.  That is not the case with Information.
It is more like losing the key to a really really complex cipher.

There are ideas out there that black hole computers can be built one day. Lot can go in - stays there heavily dense. Lot of information goes in - what comes out - signature of the information. How can information be reconstructed by the computer out of the 'nothing' that the 'information' has become?

Just some of my thoughts... may be if there is a way to still somehow keep a copy of the key, we may reconstruct information out of nothingness. Imagine the possibilities then - we can know the name of each person who lived on this earth ever, then how the person looked, then every thing he ever did in his life... same for every organism/thing in the universe - living/non living.