- Pallab Ghosh
- Science Correspondent, BBC News
image source, Getty Images
Scientists say they have solved one of the biggest paradoxes in science first identified by Professor Stephen Hawking.
Hawking highlighted the fact that black holes behave in a way that faces a two theories fundamental.
Black holes are dead stars that have collapsed and have gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
New research claims to have resolved the paradox, showing that black holes have a property they call “hair or quantum hair”.
“The problem has been solved!” Professor Xavier Calmet, from the University of Sussex, UK, told the BBC exclusively and with great satisfaction.
Calmet was one of the scientists who developed the mathematical techniques that they say solved the paradox.
no-hair theorem
At the heart of the paradox is a problem that has threatened to undermine two of the most important theories in physics.
The Einstein’s general theory of relativity says that information regarding what goes into a black hole can’t get out, but quantum mechanics says that’s impossible.
Calmet and his colleagues say they have shown that the star’s constituents leave an imprint on the black hole’s gravitational field.
image source, Getty Images
Hawking highlighted the fact that black holes behave in a way that pits two fundamental theories once morest each other.
Scientists called this imprint “quantum hair” because his theory supersedes an earlier idea called the “theorem of the absence of skinO”O “of no hair”(of English, no hair theorem) developed by Professor John Archibald Wheeler of Princeton University in New Jersey in the 1960s.
Wheeler came up with the name because it conveys the mathematical description of a black hole: an entity that has mass, charge and turn, but otherwise has no other physical characteristics. She is “bald” so to speak.
simple and elegant
The “theorem of sthere by the“ by Professor Calmet, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, it is revolutionary. He claims to solve the Hawking paradox that has deeply troubled physicists since Hawking invented it in the 1970s.
The paradox raised the possibility that quantum mechanics or general relativity might be flawed, which is a terrifying prospect for theoretical physicists because they are the twin pillars on which most of our understanding of the universe rests.
This new theory claims to resolve the paradox by bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
The notion of quantum hair allows information regarding what goes into a black hole to get back out once more without violating any of the important principles of either theory. It is a simple and elegant solution.
image source, Getty Images
Einstein’s general theory of relativity says that information regarding what goes into a black hole can’t get out, but quantum mechanics says that’s impossible.
“But it’s going to take a while for people to accept it,” says Calmet.
That’s because it’s a big problem in the world of theoretical physics.
Problem solved
“Hawking came up with the paradox in the year I was born,” says Calmet.
Since then, many famous physicists around the world have been working on it, coming up with some very dramatic things to explain it, including some who suggested that some aspects of quantum mechanics were wrong.
“So it will take a while for people to accept that no radical solution is needed to solve the problem“explained the scientist.
If the hair-presence theorem stands up to scrutiny, Calmet says it might be the first step in connecting theories of relativity, which deal with gravity, and quantum mechanics, which focus heavily on the other three forces. of nature, which are electromagnetism and two nuclear forces.
“One of the consequences of Hawking’s paradox was that general relativity and quantum mechanics were incompatible. What we are discovering is that they are very compatible“.
The research team, which also includes Professor Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna, Italy, and Professor Stephen Hsu of Michigan State University in the United States, built on the work of Professor Suvrat Raju of the International Science Center. theoretical, in Bengaluru, India. Raju believes that together they have solved the Hawking paradox.
“In recent years, it has been recognized that the hairless theorem fails due to quantum effects and this resolves Hawking’s paradox,” he said.
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