The Hawking Paradox
No one is more aware than I of how totally unqualified I am to even so much as mention any topic at all in the highly rarefied world of theoretical physics. But then, how many people outside that world are qualified? And why should the theoretical physicists have all the fun?
If you have ever bothered to try to get even a small piece of a handle on the questions that theoretical physicists are forever exploring, then you already have an idea of what a fantastic melange of jiggery-pokery their ideas seem to be. There's nothing else in science like it. And the starring actor in all this is an English guy named Steven Hawking, who from an early age has been condemned by ALS or Lou Gehrig disease to spend all his days plastered to the back of his wheelchair as if by a silent but all-powerful wind that hasn't finished blowing. It's like a kind of massive lateral gravity that miraculously, and to the great credit of Hawking and his incredibly dedicated care-givers and co-workers, hasn't been able to crush his brain as yet.
I assume Hawking is still alive. Those kinds of things sometimes get by me. Medical theory forecast that he would have said goodbye many years ago, and the fact that he has been around for so long and still doing the equations is at least a much of a paradox as the out of the world stuff that has squeezed out of his brain.
Hawking and his colleagues are actually in a very favored position. They can propose situations that on the face of it are fanciful to the extreme, yet they're beyond the pale of criticism because few if any outside their discipline can have the math needed to prove or disprove their points. But they are not safe from the rogue non-entity like me who can openly speculate on whether this is all just another shell game.
A lot of institutions that we hold dear and absolutely inviolable --descendants from the earliest days of priesthoods -- are examples of this. These activities are readily identified by having clouds of impenetrable mumbo-jumbo surrounding them. That way the priests maintain an air of exclusive rights. Once one manages to clear away enough of that cloud to begin to understand things, it turns out that there wasn't much to it after all.
Religion is the most widespread, oldest, and most egregious example of this. Others are economics, politics, the arts, sports, engineering, and piloting airliners. (In my enthusiasm and because of my doubts about the existence of superhumans, I was tempted to toss in surgery, but it's obvious that surgery is an activity that requires superhuman abilities on several fronts.)
Hawking theorizes about various things but he keeps coming back to the favorite of us all, black holes. You know, those forever fearsome leftovers of huge stars after they've died, with so much gravity compressed inside them that they suck in everything that comes in range -- planets, stars, and even light and time itself!
The things that Hawking and his buddies say can't be taken lightly because they calculated that there were black holes years before telescopes were perfected enough to allow people to see them, and in fact there is a huge one right in the middle of our own galaxy, plus there could be miniature and even subatomic ones anywhere in your room and in our heads.
About 30 years ago Hawking kind of got a patent on black holes by saying that according to his calculations, all information that gets drawn into a black hole vanishes completely. This was a paradox and a very chilling one because it had been a solid principle of physics that the information contained in all the particles and things that make up the universe can't be destroyed or lost. That didn't mean there was a good chance someday of regaining all the good stuff that was lost with the destruction of the library at Alexandria, in Egypt, but it was close enough, and I personally like this theory because it explains a lot of things.
For one thing it explains the frequent violations of the Santayana Principle, the one that says all those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it. Also it explains lots of mysteries of old age. Memories, tools, papers, and other goodies that we knew we had have been gobbled up without a trace by those smaller black holes that are all around and inside us. That should make us all feel better.
But no, some of Hawkings colleagues couldn't buy that, and, as we are told on an excellent if sloppily written Discovery Science Channel program, "The Hawking Paradox," one of them, a Richard Suskind, announced that he had discovered, after many years of effort, that information didn't disappear forever down black holes after all. It was retained instead, and it could be found smeared instead along the event horizons, the whirling edges of black holes.
A few years ago, after a long stay in the hospital, Hawking kept himself alive by coming back strongly with the refutation. He announced that he had deduced that Suskind was right, and he had been wrong...partly. Information is not lost in black holes after all. But it isn't grabbed and held by the event horizons either. Instead Hawking picked up on an old science fiction concept and said that the information comes out again in parallel universes, most likely lots of them, some of which have black holes and some don't, and it is in the latter kind that the information still resides, safe and sound.
Naturally the Discovery Channel film showed all the assembled experts listening respectfully. After all, Hawking is a bonafide legend in his field, and they were glad to see him still in there kicking. But between the lines of what the report said about the reaction, you couldn't miss the general import, which unmistakeably was "Bullpoop!"
Hawking admitted that he didn't yet have the equations as proof, but he meant to come up with some.
As for me, I only know that I have always loved the idea of parallel universes, and I hope that he or somebody comes up with some good numbers on the possibility soon, though it's impossible to imagine how math could do that.
If you have ever bothered to try to get even a small piece of a handle on the questions that theoretical physicists are forever exploring, then you already have an idea of what a fantastic melange of jiggery-pokery their ideas seem to be. There's nothing else in science like it. And the starring actor in all this is an English guy named Steven Hawking, who from an early age has been condemned by ALS or Lou Gehrig disease to spend all his days plastered to the back of his wheelchair as if by a silent but all-powerful wind that hasn't finished blowing. It's like a kind of massive lateral gravity that miraculously, and to the great credit of Hawking and his incredibly dedicated care-givers and co-workers, hasn't been able to crush his brain as yet.
I assume Hawking is still alive. Those kinds of things sometimes get by me. Medical theory forecast that he would have said goodbye many years ago, and the fact that he has been around for so long and still doing the equations is at least a much of a paradox as the out of the world stuff that has squeezed out of his brain.
Hawking and his colleagues are actually in a very favored position. They can propose situations that on the face of it are fanciful to the extreme, yet they're beyond the pale of criticism because few if any outside their discipline can have the math needed to prove or disprove their points. But they are not safe from the rogue non-entity like me who can openly speculate on whether this is all just another shell game.
A lot of institutions that we hold dear and absolutely inviolable --descendants from the earliest days of priesthoods -- are examples of this. These activities are readily identified by having clouds of impenetrable mumbo-jumbo surrounding them. That way the priests maintain an air of exclusive rights. Once one manages to clear away enough of that cloud to begin to understand things, it turns out that there wasn't much to it after all.
Religion is the most widespread, oldest, and most egregious example of this. Others are economics, politics, the arts, sports, engineering, and piloting airliners. (In my enthusiasm and because of my doubts about the existence of superhumans, I was tempted to toss in surgery, but it's obvious that surgery is an activity that requires superhuman abilities on several fronts.)
Hawking theorizes about various things but he keeps coming back to the favorite of us all, black holes. You know, those forever fearsome leftovers of huge stars after they've died, with so much gravity compressed inside them that they suck in everything that comes in range -- planets, stars, and even light and time itself!
The things that Hawking and his buddies say can't be taken lightly because they calculated that there were black holes years before telescopes were perfected enough to allow people to see them, and in fact there is a huge one right in the middle of our own galaxy, plus there could be miniature and even subatomic ones anywhere in your room and in our heads.
About 30 years ago Hawking kind of got a patent on black holes by saying that according to his calculations, all information that gets drawn into a black hole vanishes completely. This was a paradox and a very chilling one because it had been a solid principle of physics that the information contained in all the particles and things that make up the universe can't be destroyed or lost. That didn't mean there was a good chance someday of regaining all the good stuff that was lost with the destruction of the library at Alexandria, in Egypt, but it was close enough, and I personally like this theory because it explains a lot of things.
For one thing it explains the frequent violations of the Santayana Principle, the one that says all those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it. Also it explains lots of mysteries of old age. Memories, tools, papers, and other goodies that we knew we had have been gobbled up without a trace by those smaller black holes that are all around and inside us. That should make us all feel better.
But no, some of Hawkings colleagues couldn't buy that, and, as we are told on an excellent if sloppily written Discovery Science Channel program, "The Hawking Paradox," one of them, a Richard Suskind, announced that he had discovered, after many years of effort, that information didn't disappear forever down black holes after all. It was retained instead, and it could be found smeared instead along the event horizons, the whirling edges of black holes.
A few years ago, after a long stay in the hospital, Hawking kept himself alive by coming back strongly with the refutation. He announced that he had deduced that Suskind was right, and he had been wrong...partly. Information is not lost in black holes after all. But it isn't grabbed and held by the event horizons either. Instead Hawking picked up on an old science fiction concept and said that the information comes out again in parallel universes, most likely lots of them, some of which have black holes and some don't, and it is in the latter kind that the information still resides, safe and sound.
Naturally the Discovery Channel film showed all the assembled experts listening respectfully. After all, Hawking is a bonafide legend in his field, and they were glad to see him still in there kicking. But between the lines of what the report said about the reaction, you couldn't miss the general import, which unmistakeably was "Bullpoop!"
Hawking admitted that he didn't yet have the equations as proof, but he meant to come up with some.
As for me, I only know that I have always loved the idea of parallel universes, and I hope that he or somebody comes up with some good numbers on the possibility soon, though it's impossible to imagine how math could do that.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 6:37 PM
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