Information is the
property of the arrangement of atoms and sub atomic particles. E.g. Carbon atoms
can take on different arrangements and result in different things being
produced. Could be graphite in one arrangement and diamond in another. Even
though they are the same atoms, the information is different due to the
difference in arrangement. Information is not tangible. But without it,
everything in the universe would be the same. The different arrangements of
particles makes each object in the universe unique.
According to Quantum Mechanics, information is indestructible. It may change shape, but is never lost. E.g. If we burn paper, it turns into ash but if all properties of ash (carbon atoms, heat radiating from the ash etc.) are measured, it is theoretically possible to reconstruct the paper. Using this principle, if we can measure the state and properties of all the atoms in the universe, it is theoretically possible to retrace them all the way back to the Big Bang.
However, in black
holes, information is calculated to be deleted as many physical states will
devolve into the same state. Hawking's
calculations within his paper for Hawking Radiation indicated that when black
holes evaporate (which was mentioned in my last Black Hole post), they do not
preserve information. The particles emitted through hawking Radiation do not contain information about the body
that emitted it but instead just depend on the mass, angular momentum and
charge of the black hole, according to the No-Hair Theorem. So the radiation
would not give any information about the material that entered the black hole.
This information is essentially lost.
Solutions:
The information from the black hole about all the mass that has contributed to the black hole will be stored in a small Planck-sized constant, which would mean that we don't have to worry about finding a way for the information to escape in order to keep using the same laws of physics that we have used up till now. The remnant would, however, need to have an infinite number of internal states in order to store all the information from any evaporated black hole, even the smallest ones.
Or the information
could be stored in a new baby universe which was formed by the Black Hole
splitting off and forming into a new universe. We, from this universe, would
not be able to access this new universe or any of its information. However, it
will be very difficult to test this because we would need extremely high
densities to do so.
The Holographic
Principle: The Black Hole increases in size and surface area every time some
object is absorbed into it. The information from the 3D object is condensed and
stored on the 2D surface of the black hole, the event horizon. The Hawking
Radiation carries this information as it originates from the event horizon and
diminishes it so the Hawking Radiation does carry information on the objects
that have been absorbed into the black hole and information is conserved.
However, this leads into another problem. Could it not be that our 3D world is
just information encoded onto the 2D event horizon and we are all just
holograms based on that information?
According to Quantum Mechanics, information is indestructible. It may change shape, but is never lost. E.g. If we burn paper, it turns into ash but if all properties of ash (carbon atoms, heat radiating from the ash etc.) are measured, it is theoretically possible to reconstruct the paper. Using this principle, if we can measure the state and properties of all the atoms in the universe, it is theoretically possible to retrace them all the way back to the Big Bang.
The information from the black hole about all the mass that has contributed to the black hole will be stored in a small Planck-sized constant, which would mean that we don't have to worry about finding a way for the information to escape in order to keep using the same laws of physics that we have used up till now. The remnant would, however, need to have an infinite number of internal states in order to store all the information from any evaporated black hole, even the smallest ones.
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