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<DIV><FONT size=2>Dear Howard,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Is not every living being shedding irretrivable information
into the universe? Cheers, Val Geist</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=isaacsonj@hotmail.com
href="mailto:isaacsonj@hotmail.com">isaacsonj@hotmail.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:43
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking
surprises GR 17</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>All thanks, Joel. I seized on this one, too.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The insight--that black holes DO allow information to escape, seemed
intuitively obvious, perhaps because in big bang theory this entire cosmos
leaked into existence from the equivalent of a black hole--a
singularity.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If I understand what Hawking's getting at, and there's a chance
that I may not, his notion gives credence to one of my bizarre
speculations--that whatever information this cosmos gathers in its lifetime,
it will be able to pass on to the universe on the other side of the big
crunch in which the cosmos will end. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In other words, universes, I suspect, can gather a store of
networked information and, if they have clever beings with will and hubris,
can compress that information and pass it on to their progeny.
J</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>ust as we living beings pass information on through genes or through
memes, the cosmos that produces willfull, living beings can take their
primitive capacities a long way in 20 billion years or so.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>That 20 billion year figure, by the way, is based on my guess that this
cosmos will survive for a total span of 30 billion years from
birth to destruction. Others better qualified than I am--Max Tegmark for
example, who has a toroidal theory like mine-- put the total
lifespan of the universe in the trillions of years.
Onward--Howard</DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 7/15/2004 2:07:56 PM Eastern Standard Time,
isaacsonj@hotmail.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><BR><FONT
face=Arial>The World's No.1 Science & Technology News
Service<BR><BR><BR>Hawking cracks black hole
paradox<BR>==========================<BR><BR>19:00 14 July
04<BR><BR>Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4
free issues.<BR><BR>After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole
destroys everything that <BR>falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was
wrong. It seems that black <BR>holes may after all allow information within
them to escape. Hawking will <BR>present his latest finding at a conference
in Ireland next week.<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
face=Arial><BR>The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the
University of <BR>Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in
1997. More <BR>importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles
in modern <BR>physics, known as the black hole information
paradox.<BR><BR>It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976,
he calculated <BR>that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by
radiating energy. <BR>This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about
the matter inside the <BR>black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all
information is lost.<BR><BR>But this conflicts with the laws of quantum
physics, which say that such <BR>information can never be completely wiped
out. Hawking's argument was that <BR>the intense gravitational fields of
black holes somehow unravel the laws of <BR>quantum physics.<BR><BR>Other
physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004,
<BR>Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues
showed <BR>that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in
which the <BR>universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than
point-like particles <BR>- then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of
strings. And the Hawking <BR>radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does
contain information about the <BR>insides of a black hole (New Scientist
print edition, 13 March).<BR><BR><BR>Big reputation<BR><BR><BR>Now, it seems
that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the <BR>physics
community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last <BR>minute
that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International
<BR>Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin,
Ireland.<BR><BR>"He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole
information paradox and <BR>I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a
physicist at the Albert <BR>Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is
chairing the conference's <BR>scientific committee. "I haven't seen a
preprint [of the paper]. To be quite <BR>honest, I went on Hawking's
reputation."<BR><BR>Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths
behind his finding, <BR>sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking
gave at Cambridge. <BR>According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an
expert on the physics of <BR>black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's
black holes, unlike classic <BR>black holes, do not have a well-defined
event horizon that hides everything <BR>within them from the outside
world.<BR><BR>In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the
kind that gobble <BR>up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation
for a long time, and <BR>eventually open up to reveal the information
within. "It's possible that <BR>what he presented in the seminar is a
solution," says Gibbons. "But I think <BR>you have to say the jury is still
out."<BR><BR><BR>Forever hidden<BR><BR><BR>At the conference, Hawking will
have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If <BR>he succeeds, then,
ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical <BR>physicist Kip
Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in <BR>Pasadena
made with John Preskill, also of Caltech.<BR><BR>They argued that
"information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, <BR>and can never
be revealed".<BR><BR>"Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes
that black holes do not <BR>destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to
concede the bet," Preskill <BR>told New Scientist. The duo are expected to
present Preskill with an <BR>encyclopaedia of his choice "from which
information can be recovered at <BR>will".<BR><BR><BR>Jenny
Hogan</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 PTSIZE="10"
FAMILY="SANSSERIF">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global
Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University; Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of
Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big
Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:
Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For
information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV>
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