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There has been a lot of misunderstanding regarding Hawking's recent
statements. His theory about black hole radiation said things like: T= (h c^3) / (8 pi K G M) --- T is temperature of a black hole, c is the velocity of light, h is the Planck constant (6.626 x 10^-34), K is the Boltzmann constant, G is the universal gravitational constant, and M is the mass of the black hole. Hawking said that since the black hole has a temperature observable by the outside it is radiating energy, a very logical reasoning. Therefore, by E=Mc^2, it is also radiating away mass. This theory has NOT been proven wrong. The problem is this: when Hawking realized that mass radiates away, he began to think what happens to all the information, or entropy, that was sucked into the black hole when its mass radiates to 0 ? If it dissapears, then the law of entropy is broken, which says entropy cannot decrease, only increase. He suggested that the information is lost forever. However, by solving his theory in a new way, he saw that the energy radiating away is in the form of mangled information of the contents of the black hole. Therefore, information CAN escape a black hole eventually. Sorry to all you Star Trek fans, but this also means black holes cannot be portals to other universes, because the information within is not lost into a parallel world, but simply radiated away. So, the data does not show that Hawking has been wrong for 30 years, but instead shows that the question he posed when his theory developed, the question of how can entropy be destroyed, was not a valid question to ask. This discovery is still important though because if he had not been wrong about this question and entropy could be destroyed, the foundations of physics would have been shaken. sources: Time Magazine August, Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking |
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