Leonard Susskinds' "The Black Hole War"

neuvik · Aug 3, 2008

Physicists Leonard Susskind has recently released his book "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics," which he uses his knowledge of String Theory against Stephen Hawkins idea that any matter that enters a black hole is unrecoverable and black holes can evaporate.   He also did a radio interview on KQED, LINK. I have not read his book yet, but from what I gather he bases the core of his work based on the fundamental law of physics that matter can not be destroyed.   Leonard Susskind uses an analogy of a hologram to describe that the universe is simply a 2 dimensional film, but we view it as three dimensional; black holes are simply the two dimensional area only.  I'm not sure since I have not read the book what exactly the hologram analogy is trying to explain in entirety, I supposed it was more on the Inflationary Theory. Further Sussking hologram analogy is used to refute Hawkings claim that any information that falls in the black hole is unrecoverable (despit that Hawking proved that black holes do radiate heat, known as Hawking Radiation).   Susskind says that the heat generated by information that falls in to the black hole is saved, in a thin layer of the event horizon.  Leading Susskind to the analogy that the black hole was like a three dimensional projection of a two dimensional layer of information. Well my copy is on order, but I can't stand to wait and want to know more.  Susskind apparently marries General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics with his use of String Theory to explain that the evaporation of black holes do emit all the information that they have engulfed, but in extremely scrambled particles.      I'm confused, does Susskind claim that the evaporation of a black hole can be reconstituted into the many stars and other celestial objects that it engulfs if we could unscramble the particles?  And is it true he somehow used String Theory to marry Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity?   I thought were decades away from that because Quantum Mechanics is not compatible with Gravity detailed in General Relativity?Can I tell my friends that black holes are just giant storage devices that compress everything put in them to infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense, singularities and we will get back everything we put in to them in a few billion years?   Because we really don't like the idea of some parallel dimension stealing our star stuff! Thanks!       <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> I don't think I'm alone when I say, "I hope more planets fall under the ruthless domination of Earth!"SDC Boards: Power by PLuck - Ph**king Luck </div>

kg · Aug 4, 2008

I think what he was saying was that information about matter was saved not the matter itself.  If I got this right he was implying that because of time dilation objects falling into the event horizon appear to slow down and and shift to red end of the light spectrum and become fainter but never seem to actually pass through the event horizon.  So I guess he is saying that to an outside observer there is a record (in theory) of everything that's fallen into the black hole.  The object falling into the black hole itself would not experience anything strange as it passed through the event horizon (except of course actually falling into the black hole which would be strange enough).  The stuff that comes out of the black hole is Hawking radiation which is in the form of low energy photons.That's my understanding.  I'm most likely totally wrong but would love to hear more about this.

DrRocket · Aug 4, 2008

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Physicists Leonard Susskind has recently released his book "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics," which he uses his knowledge of String Theory against Stephen Hawkins idea that any matter that enters a black hole is unrecoverable and black holes can evaporate.   He also did a radio interview on KQED, LINK. I have not read his book yet, but from what I gather he bases the core of his work based on the fundamental law of physics that matter can not be destroyed.   Leonard Susskind uses an analogy of a hologram to describe that the universe is simply a 2 dimensional film, but we view it as three dimensional; black holes are simply the two dimensional area only.  I'm not sure since I have not read the book what exactly the hologram analogy is trying to explain in entirety, I supposed it was more on the Inflationary Theory. Further Sussking hologram analogy is used to refute Hawkings claim that any information that falls in the black hole is unrecoverable (despit that Hawking proved that black holes do radiate heat, known as Hawking Radiation).   Susskind says that the heat generated by information that falls in to the black hole is saved, in a thin layer of the event horizon.  Leading Susskind to the analogy that the black hole was like a three dimensional projection of a two dimensional layer of information. Well my copy is on order, but I can't stand to wait and want to know more.  Susskind apparently marries General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics with his use of String Theory to explain that the evaporation of black holes do emit all the information that they have engulfed, but in extremely scrambled particles.      I'm confused, does Susskind claim that the evaporation of a black hole can be reconstituted into the many stars and other celestial objects that it engulfs if we could unscramble the particles?  And is it true he somehow used String Theory to marry Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity?   I thought were decades away from that because Quantum Mechanics is not compatible with Gravity detailed in General Relativity?Can I tell my friends that black holes are just giant storage devices that compress everything put in them to infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense, singularities and we will get back everything we put in to them in a few billion years?   Because we really don't like the idea of some parallel dimension stealing our star stuff! Thanks!      Posted by neuvik</DIV> Your post is a bit unclear, but I think you are talking about something on which Hawking reversed himself several years ago.http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6193 <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

derekmcd · Aug 4, 2008

I can understand most things if you describe them even at a level  above layman's terms... This isn't one of them.  Even when they dumb it down as much as they can, it's still over my head.I understand, better than an average layman, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes, Hawking Radiation and String Theory (not so much string theory, but I grasp the simple basics)...But when they throw them all together in the Information Paradox, I'm completely befuddled.  From what I gather is that Hawking basically was saying that either General Relativity is correct or Quantum Theory is correct.  One has to be wrong and they cannot be compatible.  Seems this concept upset a few folks and untimately Hawking resolved it by admiting he was wrong.How his theory, and retraction of, work is beyond me explaining in my own words.  <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div> <div>"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</div> </div>

neuvik · Aug 4, 2008

Thanks for the Link DrRocket.Sorry my difficulty in explaining my questions, I have not read the book yet and made assumptions based on that radio interview I linked in my first post.   From the broadcast Leonard Susskind is apperantly at odds over whether information in a black hole is lost (as Hawking once thought, but later retracted...thanks again for the link); he believes that the information is simply saved in a compressed format that would still by some miracle of computation display critical information.Hopefully my litte explanation works, again I'm honestly in pain that I can't express my thoughts better. By Hawkings work, any information that falls in to a black hole is so scrambled, if we were to get a hold of it, there is no way we could tell what that object might have been in the past before it got engulfed by the black hole. Susskinds idea (from the scraps of info I can gather) is that the information that falls in a black hole is simply compressed on the two dimensional level.   And if we got a hold of a piece of that information, and 'held' it in just the right way, it would give us a description of what it once was; like a hologram.  My question I guess, is that a correct explanation of what he is trying to explain?   And how does he marry String Theory with General Realativity (if at all he did that)? Thanks again for the imput.  <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> I don't think I'm alone when I say, "I hope more planets fall under the ruthless domination of Earth!"SDC Boards: Power by PLuck - Ph**king Luck </div>

DrRocket · Aug 5, 2008

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'> Thanks for the Link DrRocket.Sorry my difficulty in explaining my questions, I have not read the book yet and made assumptions based on that radio interview I linked in my first post.   From the broadcast Leonard Susskind is apperantly at odds over whether information in a black hole is lost (as Hawking once thought, but later retracted...thanks again for the link); he believes that the information is simply saved in a compressed format that would still by some miracle of computation display critical information.Hopefully my litte explanation works, again I'm honestly in pain that I can't express my thoughts better. By Hawkings work, any information that falls in to a black hole is so scrambled, if we were to get a hold of it, there is no way we could tell what that object might have been in the past before it got engulfed by the black hole. Susskinds idea (from the scraps of info I can gather) is that the information that falls in a black hole is simply compressed on the two dimensional level.   And if we got a hold of a piece of that information, and 'held' it in just the right way, it would give us a description of what it once was; like a hologram.  My question I guess, is that a correct explanation of what he is trying to explain?   And how does he marry String Theory with General Realativity (if at all he did that)? Thanks again for the imput.  Posted by neuvik</DIV>String theory is an attempt to marry quantum mechanics with general relativity, so you don't have to marry marry it with GR.  The problem is that string theory is not well formulated (there are a whole bunch of string theories) and none of them actually work.I doubt that Susskind actually understands what is going on.  I don't think Hawking does either.  He did retract his earlier position and he paid off a bet to Preskill.  But he and Kip Thorne both made the bet with Preskill  and Thorne has not agreed with Hawking's concession.Somewhere back in 2005 I got a copy of Hawking's concession.  It made no sense to me and apparently not to many other people either  I  have seen responses by some physicists to Hawking's rationale and it is basically "Huh?".  This is the paper that he wrote: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0507/0507171v2.pdfSo despite the concession by Hawking and the fact that apparently he and Susskind are on the same side of the issue, it also appears that absolutely no one really understands what is going on in the black hole.  But Susskind has nothing to fight with Hawking about on this topic.  <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

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