Nobody Knows Where A Black Hole's Information Goes
According to Google, Stephen Hawking is the most famous physicist alive, and his most famous work is the black hole information paradox. If you know one thing about physics, therefore, that’s what you should know. Before Hawking, black holes weren’t paradoxical. Yes, if you throw a book into a black hole you can’t read it anymore. That’s because what has crossed a black hole’s event horizon can no longer be reached from the outside. The event horizon is a closed surface inside of which everything, even light, is trapped. So there’s no way information can get out of the black hole; the book’s gone. That’s unfortunate, but nothing a physicist sweats over. The information in the book might be out of sight, but there’s nothing paradoxical about that.
While Einstein's theory makes explicit predictions for a black hole's event horizon and the spacetime just outside, quantum corrections could alter that significantly. Image credit: NASA.
Then came Stephen Hawking. In 1974, he showed that black holes emit radiation and this radiation doesn’t carry information. It’s entirely random, except for the distribution of particles as a function of energy, which is a Planck spectrum with temperature inversely proportional to the black hole’s mass. If the black hole emits particles, it loses mass, shrinks, and gets hotter. After enough time and enough emission, the black hole will be entirely gone, with no return of the information you put into it. The black hole has evaporated; the book can no longer be inside. So, where did the information go?
You might shrug and say, “Well, it’s gone, so what? Don’t we lose information all the time?” No, we don’t. At least, not in principle. We lose information in practice all the time, yes. If you burn the book, you aren’t able any longer to read what’s inside. However, fundamentally, all the information about what constituted the book is still contained in the smoke and ashes.
Anything that burns might appear to be destroyed, but everything about the pre-burned state is, in principle, recoverable, if we track everything that comes out of the fire. Public domain image.
This is because the laws of nature, to our best current understanding, can be run both forwards and backwards – every unique initial-state corresponds to a unique end-state. There are never two initial-states that end in the same final state. The story of your burning book looks very different backwards. If you were able to very, very carefully assemble smoke and ashes in just the right way, you could unburn the book and reassemble it. It’s an exceedingly unlikely process, and you’ll never see it happening in practice. But, in principle, it could happen.
Not so with black holes. Whatever formed the black hole doesn't make a difference when you look at what you wind up with. In the end you only have this thermal radiation, which – in honor of its discoverer – is now called "Hawking radiation." That’s the paradox: Black hole evaporation is a process that cannot be run backwards. It is, as we say, not reversible. And that makes physicists sweat because it demonstrates they don’t understand the laws of nature.
The white line indicates the expected boundary of the event horizon around a black hole. Information from inside can never get out, according to our best laws of physics. Image credit: Ute Kraus, Physics education group Kraus, Universität Hildesheim; background: Axel Mellinger.
Black hole information loss is paradoxical because it signals an internal inconsistency of our theories. When we combine – as Hawking did in his calculation – general relativity with the quantum field theories of the standard model, the result is no longer compatible with quantum theory. At a fundamental level, every interaction involving particle processes has to be reversible. Because of the non-reversibility of black hole evaporation, Hawking showed that the two theories don’t fit together.
The seemingly obvious origin of this contradiction is that the irreversible evaporation was derived without taking into account the quantum properties of space and time. For that, we would need a theory of quantum gravity, and we still don’t have one. Most physicists therefore believe that quantum gravity would remove the paradox – just how that works they still don’t know.
Gravity, governed by Einstein, and everything else (strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions), governed by quantum physics, are the two independent rules known to govern everything in our Universe. But they're fundamentally incompatible. Image credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
The difficulty with blaming quantum gravity, however, is that there isn’t anything interesting happening at the horizon – it's in a regime where general relativity should work just fine. That’s because the strength of quantum gravity should depend on the curvature of space-time, but the curvature at a black hole horizon depends inversely on the mass of the black hole. This means the larger the black hole, the smaller the expected quantum gravitational effects at the horizon.
Quantum gravitational effects would become noticeable only when the black hole has reached the Planck mass, about 10 micrograms. When the black hole has shrunken to that size, information could be released thanks to quantum gravity. But, depending on what the black hole formed from, an arbitrarily large amount of information might be stuck in the black hole until then. And when a Planck mass is all that’s left, it’s difficult to get so much information out with such little energy left to encode it.
For the last 40 years, some of the brightest minds on the planets have tried to solve this conundrum. It might seem bizarre that such an outlandish problem commands so much attention, but physicists have good reasons for this. The evaporation of black holes is the best-understood case for the interplay of quantum theory and gravity, and therefore might be the key to finding the right theory of quantum gravity. Solving the paradox would be a breakthrough and, without doubt, result in a conceptually new understanding of nature.
So far, most solution attempts for black hole information loss fall into one of four large categories, each of which has its pros and cons.
Information may come out of the black hole at early times, but the mechanism has not been uncovered. Image credit: Petr Kratochvil.
1. Information is released early. The information starts leaking out long before the black hole has reached Planck mass. This is the presently most popular option. It is still unclear, however, how the information should be encoded in the radiation, and just how the conclusion of Hawking’s calculation is circumvented.
The benefit of this solution is its compatibility with what we know about black hole thermodynamics. The disadvantage is that, for this to work, some kind of non-locality – a spooky action at a distance – seems inevitable. Worse still, it has recently been claimed that if information is released early, then black holes are surrounded by a highly-energetic barrier: a “firewall.” If a firewall exists, it would imply that the principle of equivalence, which underlies general relativity, is violated. Very unappealing.
Illustration credit: ESA, retrieved via http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/blackholes2.html.
2. Information is kept, or it is released late. In this case, the information stays in the black hole until quantum gravitational effects become strong, when the black hole has reached the Planck mass. Information is then either released with the remaining energy or just kept forever in a remnant.
The benefit of this option is that it does not require modifying either general relativity or quantum theory in regimes where we expect them to hold. They break down exactly where they are expected to break down: when space-time curvature becomes very large. The disadvantage is that some have argued it leads to another paradox, that of the possibility to infinitely produce black hole pairs in a weak background field: i.e., all around us. The theoretical support for this argument is thin, but it’s still widely used.
Active galaxies both devour, as well as accelerate and eject infalling matter, that gets close to their central, supermassive black hole. Perhaps information is fundamentally lost as well. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Meyers (STScI).
3. Information is destroyed. Supporters of this approach just accept that information is lost when it falls into a black hole. This option was long believed to imply violations of energy conservation and hence cause another inconsistency. In recent years, however, new arguments have surfaced according to which energy might still be conserved with information loss, and this option has therefore seen a little revival. Still, by my estimate it’s the least popular solution.
However, much like the first option, just saying that’s what one believes doesn’t make for a solution. And making this work would require a modification of quantum theory. This would have to be a modification that doesn’t lead to conflict with any of our experiments testing quantum mechanics. It’s hard to do.
Perhaps what we perceive as a black hole isn't truly black; perhaps some subtlety is how this paradox is altogether avoided. Image credit: Dana Berry/NASA.
4. There’s no black hole. A black hole is never formed or information never crosses the horizon. This solution attempt pops up every now and then, but has never caught on. The advantage is that it’s obvious how to circumvent the conclusion of Hawking’s calculation. The downside is that this requires large deviations from general relativity in small curvature regimes, and it is therefore difficult to make compatible with precision tests of gravity.
There are a few other proposed solutions that don’t fall into any of these categories, but I will not – cannot! – attempt to review all of them here. In fact, there isn’t any good review on the topic – probably because the mere thought of compiling one is dreadful. The literature is vast. Black hole information loss is without doubt the most-debated paradox ever.
And it’s bound to remain so. The temperature of black holes which we can observe today is far too small to be observable. Hence, in the foreseeable future nobody is going to measure what happens to the information which crosses the horizon. Let me therefore make a prediction. In 10 years from now, the problem will still be unsolved.
Stephen Hawking, at age 73 (in 2015), with Richard Ovenden and Sir David Attenborough, at the opening of the Weston Library at Oxford. Image credit: John Cairns / The Bodleian Libraries.
Hawking just celebrated his 75th birthday, which is a remarkable achievement by itself. 50 years ago, his doctors declared him dead soon, but he's stubbornly hung onto life. The black hole information paradox may prove to be even more stubborn. Unless a revolutionary breakthrough comes, it may outlive us all.
(I wish to apologize for not including references. If I’d start with this, I wouldn’t be done by 2020.)
とても興味深く読みました：
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{latexsym,amsmath,amssymb,amsfonts,amstext,amsthm}
\numberwithin{equation}{section}
\begin{document}
\title{\bf Announcement 179: Division by zero is clear as z/0=0 and it is fundamental in mathematics\\
}
\author{{\it Institute of Reproducing Kernels}\\
Kawauchi-cho, 5-1648-16,\\
Kiryu 376-0041, Japan\\
\date{\today}
\maketitle
{\bf Abstract: } In this announcement, we shall introduce the zero division $z/0=0$. The result is a definite one and it is fundamental in mathematics.
\bigskip
\section{Introduction}
%\label{sect1}
By a natural extension of the fractions
\begin{equation}
\frac{b}{a}
\end{equation}
for any complex numbers $a$ and $b$, we, recently, found the surprising result, for any complex number $b$
\begin{equation}
\frac{b}{0}=0,
\end{equation}
incidentally in \cite{s} by the Tikhonov regularization for the Hadamard product inversions for matrices, and we discussed their properties and gave several physical interpretations on the general fractions in \cite{kmsy} for the case of real numbers. The result is a very special case for general fractional functions in \cite{cs}.
The division by zero has a long and mysterious story over the world (see, for example, google site with division by zero) with its physical viewpoints since the document of zero in India on AD 628, however,
Sin-Ei, Takahasi (\cite{taka}) (see also \cite{kmsy}) established a simple and decisive interpretation (1.2) by analyzing some full extensions of fractions and by showing the complete characterization for the property (1.2). His result will show that our mathematics says that the result (1.2) should be accepted as a natural one:
\bigskip
{\bf Proposition. }{\it Let F be a function from ${\bf C }\times {\bf C }$ to ${\bf C }$ such that
$$
F (b, a)F (c, d)= F (bc, ad)
$$
for all
$$
a, b, c, d \in {\bf C }
$$
and
$$
F (b, a) = \frac {b}{a }, \quad a, b \in {\bf C }, a \ne 0.
$$
Then, we obtain, for any $b \in {\bf C } $
$$
F (b, 0) = 0.
$$
}
\medskip
\section{What are the fractions $ b/a$?}
For many mathematicians, the division $b/a$ will be considered as the inverse of product;
that is, the fraction
\begin{equation}
\frac{b}{a}
\end{equation}
is defined as the solution of the equation
\begin{equation}
a\cdot x= b.
\end{equation}
The idea and the equation (2.2) show that the division by zero is impossible, with a strong conclusion. Meanwhile, the problem has been a long and old question:
As a typical example of the division by zero, we shall recall the fundamental law by Newton:
\begin{equation}
F = G \frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}
\end{equation}
for two masses $m_1, m_2$ with a distance $r$ and for a constant $G$. Of course,
\begin{equation}
\lim_{r \to +0} F =\infty,
\end{equation}
however, in our fraction
\begin{equation}
F = G \frac{m_1 m_2}{0} = 0.
\end{equation}
\medskip
Now, we shall introduce an another approach. The division $b/a$ may be defined {\bf independently of the product}. Indeed, in Japan, the division $b/a$ ; $b$ {\bf raru} $a$ ({\bf jozan}) is defined as how many $a$ exists in $b$, this idea comes from subtraction $a$ repeatedly. (Meanwhile, product comes from addition).
In Japanese language for "division", there exists such a concept independently of product.
H. Michiwaki and his 6 years old girl said for the result $ 100/0=0$ that the result is clear, from the meaning of the fractions independently the concept of product and they said:
$100/0=0$ does not mean that $100= 0 \times 0$. Meanwhile, many mathematicians had a confusion for the result.
Her understanding is reasonable and may be acceptable:
$100/2=50 \quad$ will mean that we divide 100 by 2, then each will have 50.
$100/10=10 \quad$ will mean that we divide 100 by10, then each will have 10.
$100/0=0 \quad$ will mean that we do not divide 100, and then nobody will have at all and so 0.
Furthermore, she said then the rest is 100; that is, mathematically;
$$
100 = 0\cdot 0 + 100.
$$
Now, all the mathematicians may accept the division by zero $100/0=0$ with natural feelings as a trivial one?
\medskip
For simplicity, we shall consider the numbers on non-negative real numbers. We wish to define the division (or fraction) $b/a$ following the usual procedure for its calculation, however, we have to take care for the division by zero:
The first principle, for example, for $100/2 $ we shall consider it as follows:
$$
100-2-2-2-,...,-2.
$$
How may times can we subtract $2$? At this case, it is 50 times and so, the fraction is $50$.
The second case, for example, for $3/2$ we shall consider it as follows:
$$
3 - 2 = 1
$$
and the rest (remainder) is $1$, and for the rest $1$, we multiple $10$,
then we consider similarly as follows:
$$
10-2-2-2-2-2=0.
$$
Therefore $10/2=5$ and so we define as follows:
$$
\frac{3}{2} =1 + 0.5 = 1.5.
$$
By these procedures, for $a \ne 0$ we can define the fraction $b/a$, usually. Here we do not need the concept of product. Except the zero division, all the results for fractions are valid and accepted.
Now, we shall consider the zero division, for example, $100/0$. Since
$$
100 - 0 = 100,
$$
that is, by the subtraction $100 - 0$, 100 does not decrease, so we can not say we subtract any from $100$. Therefore, the subtract number should be understood as zero; that is,
$$
\frac{100}{0} = 0.
$$
We can understand this: the division by $0$ means that it does not divide $100$ and so, the result is $0$.
Similarly, we can see that
$$
\frac{0}{0} =0.
$$
As a conclusion, we should define the zero divison as, for any $b$
$$
\frac{b}{0} =0.
$$
See \cite{kmsy} for the details.
\medskip
\section{In complex analysis}
We thus should consider, for any complex number $b$, as (1.2);
that is, for the mapping
\begin{equation}
w = \frac{1}{z},
\end{equation}
the image of $z=0$ is $w=0$. This fact seems to be a curious one in connection with our well-established popular image for the point at infinity on the Riemann sphere.
However, we shall recall the elementary function
\begin{equation}
W(z) = \exp \frac{1}{z}
\end{equation}
$$
= 1 + \frac{1}{1! z} + \frac{1}{2! z^2} + \frac{1}{3! z^3} + \cdot \cdot \cdot .
$$
The function has an essential singularity around the origin. When we consider (1.2), meanwhile, surprisingly enough, we have:
\begin{equation}
W(0) = 1.
\end{equation}
{\bf The point at infinity is not a number} and so we will not be able to consider the function (3.2) at the zero point $z = 0$, meanwhile, we can consider the value $1$ as in (3.3) at the zero point $z = 0$. How do we consider these situations?
In the famous standard textbook on Complex Analysis, L. V. Ahlfors (\cite{ahlfors}) introduced the point at infinity as a number and the Riemann sphere model as well known, however, our interpretation will be suitable as a number. We will not be able to accept the point at infinity as a number.
As a typical result, we can derive the surprising result: {\it At an isolated singular point of an analytic function, it takes a definite value }{\bf with a natural meaning.} As the important applications for this result, the extension formula of functions with analytic parameters may be obtained and singular integrals may be interpretated with the division by zero, naturally (\cite{msty}).
\bigskip
\section{Conclusion}
The division by zero $b/0=0$ is possible and the result is naturally determined, uniquely.
The result does not contradict with the present mathematics - however, in complex analysis, we need only to change a little presentation for the pole; not essentially, because we did not consider the division by zero, essentially.
The common understanding that the division by zero is impossible should be changed with many text books and mathematical science books. The definition of the fractions may be introduced by {\it the method of Michiwaki} in the elementary school, even.
Should we teach the beautiful fact, widely?:
For the elementary graph of the fundamental function
$$
y = f(x) = \frac{1}{x},
$$
$$
f(0) = 0.
$$
The result is applicable widely and will give a new understanding for the universe ({\bf Announcement 166}).
\medskip
If the division by zero $b/0=0$ is not introduced, then it seems that mathematics is incomplete in a sense, and by the intoduction of the division by zero, mathematics will become complete in a sense and perfectly beautiful.
\bigskip
section{Remarks}
For the procedure of the developing of the division by zero and for some general ideas on the division by zero, we presented the following announcements in Japanese:
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 148} (2014.2.12): $100/0=0, 0/0=0$ -- by a natural extension of fractions -- A wish of the God
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 154} (2014.4.22): A new world: division by zero, a curious world, a new idea
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 157} (2014.5.8): We wish to know the idea of the God for the division by zero; why the infinity and zero point are coincident?
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 161} (2014.5.30): Learning from the division by zero, sprits of mathematics and of looking for the truth
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 163} (2014.6.17): The division by zero, an extremely pleasant mathematics - shall we look for the pleasant division by zero: a proposal for a fun club looking for the division by zero.
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 166} (2014.6.29): New general ideas for the universe from the viewpoint of the division by zero
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 171} (2014.7.30): The meanings of product and division -- The division by zero is trivial from the own sense of the division independently of the concept of product
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 176} (2014.8.9): Should be changed the education of the division by zero
\bigskip
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\begin{thebibliography}{10}
\bibitem{ahlfors}
L. V. Ahlfors, Complex Analysis, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966.
\bibitem{cs}
L. P. Castro and S.Saitoh, Fractional functions and their representations, Complex Anal. Oper. Theory {\bf7} (2013), no. 4, 1049-1063.
\bibitem{kmsy}
S. Koshiba, H. Michiwaki, S. Saitoh and M. Yamane,
An interpretation of the division by zero z/0=0 without the concept of product
(note).
\bibitem{kmsy}
M. Kuroda, H. Michiwaki, S. Saitoh, and M. Yamane,
New meanings of the division by zero and interpretations on $100/0=0$ and on $0/0=0$,
Int. J. Appl. Math. Vol. 27, No 2 (2014), pp. 191-198, DOI: 10.12732/ijam.v27i2.9.
\bibitem{msty}
H. Michiwaki, S. Saitoh, M. Takagi and M. Yamada,
A new concept for the point at infinity and the division by zero z/0=0
(note).
\bibitem{s}
S. Saitoh, Generalized inversions of Hadamard and tensor products for matrices, Advances in Linear Algebra \& Matrix Theory. Vol.4 No.2 (2014), 87-95. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ALAMT/
\bibitem{taka}
S.-E. Takahasi,
{On the identities $100/0=0$ and $ 0/0=0$}
(note).
\bibitem{ttk}
S.-E. Takahasi, M. Tsukada and Y. Kobayashi, Classification of continuous fractional binary operators on the real and complex fields. (submitted)
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}
For the procedure of the developing of the division by zero and for some general ideas on the division by zero, we presented the following announcements in Japanese:
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 148} (2014.2.12): $100/0=0, 0/0=0$ -- by a natural extension of fractions -- A wish of the God
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 154} (2014.4.22): A new world: division by zero, a curious world, a new idea
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 157} (2014.5.8): We wish to know the idea of the God for the division by zero; why the infinity and zero point are coincident?
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 161} (2014.5.30): Learning from the division by zero, sprits of mathematics and of looking for the truth
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 163} (2014.6.17): The division by zero, an extremely pleasant mathematics - shall we look for the pleasant division by zero: a proposal for a fun club looking for the division by zero.
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 166} (2014.6.29): New general ideas for the universe from the viewpoint of the division by zero
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 171} (2014.7.30): The meanings of product and division -- The division by zero is trivial from the own sense of the division independently of the concept of product
\medskip
{\bf Announcement 176} (2014.8.9): Should be changed the education of the division by zero
\bigskip
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\begin{thebibliography}{10}
\bibitem{ahlfors}
L. V. Ahlfors, Complex Analysis, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966.
\bibitem{cs}
L. P. Castro and S.Saitoh, Fractional functions and their representations, Complex Anal. Oper. Theory {\bf7} (2013), no. 4, 1049-1063.
\bibitem{kmsy}
S. Koshiba, H. Michiwaki, S. Saitoh and M. Yamane,
An interpretation of the division by zero z/0=0 without the concept of product
(note).
\bibitem{kmsy}
M. Kuroda, H. Michiwaki, S. Saitoh, and M. Yamane,
New meanings of the division by zero and interpretations on $100/0=0$ and on $0/0=0$,
Int. J. Appl. Math. Vol. 27, No 2 (2014), pp. 191-198, DOI: 10.12732/ijam.v27i2.9.
\bibitem{msty}
H. Michiwaki, S. Saitoh, M. Takagi and M. Yamada,
A new concept for the point at infinity and the division by zero z/0=0
(note).
\bibitem{s}
S. Saitoh, Generalized inversions of Hadamard and tensor products for matrices, Advances in Linear Algebra \& Matrix Theory. Vol.4 No.2 (2014), 87-95. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ALAMT/
\bibitem{taka}
S.-E. Takahasi,
{On the identities $100/0=0$ and $ 0/0=0$}
(note).
\bibitem{ttk}
S.-E. Takahasi, M. Tsukada and Y. Kobayashi, Classification of continuous fractional binary operators on the real and complex fields. (submitted)
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}
Title page of Leonhard Euler, Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra, Vol. 1 (edition of 1771, first published in 1770), and p. 34 from Article 83, where Euler explains why a number divided by zero gives infinity.
私は数学を信じない。 アルバート・アインシュタイン / I don't believe in mathematics. Albert Einstein→ゼロ除算ができなかったからではないでしょうか。
1423793753.460.341866474681。
Einstein's Only Mistake: Division by Zero
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