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<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><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>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<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></BODY></HTML>