The Information Paradox: Do Black Holes "Bleach" Cosmic History? With Christophe Galfard.

The Information Paradox: Do Black Holes "Bleach" Cosmic History?

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Steven Hawking's protege, Christophe Galfard, says there are only two events in the universe that defy the laws of physics: black holes and the Big Bang, and while scientists try to explain them both, black holes may be eating up crucial evidence that helps explains the Big Bang. Black holes, Galfard explains, may destroy matter that is gravitationally attracted to them such that scientists cannot use it to learn about the early the moments of the universe.

Comparing it to throwing an encyclopedia in a fire, Galfard is concerned that crucial information is being "burned" out of existence by black holes. If that were the only difficulty with understanding where our universe came from, many physicists could rest easier at night. But another fundamental problem, called the "information paradox," confronts any attempt to know how our universe came to be. Simply put, the paradox says that gathering more information on a given topic doesn't necessarily tell you how it came to be — they are two fundamental different events. So even if we had all the data currently being sucked into black holes, we might not be closer to understanding how the laws of physics emerged.

And that, says Galfard, is the ultimate goal of physicists the world over: to understand not just how the universe works, but why it works the way it does, and how it came into being. The much sough-after "theory of everything" would solve these problems and give us a complete understanding. But there is nothing so near a proof of any such theory — only the positing of events, like vibrating strings and multiple universes, says Galfard.

His book is The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond.

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CHRISTOPHE GALFARD:

Christophe Galfard holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cambridge University, where he was Professor Stephen Hawking’s graduate student from 2000 to 2006. He now devotes his time to spreading modern scientific knowledge to the general public in entertaining ways, in France and in Europe, giving talks to more than 50,000 people, and is a regular contributor to French TV and radio shows. Galfard has written four young-adult novels about science, and was co-author with Stephen Hawking and his daughter on their first young-adult novel, George's Secret Key to the Universe. He is also the author of The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Christophe Galfard: The interesting thing about trying to unravel the laws of nature is that yes, we have found some laws. We understand gravity to some extent. We understand the quantum world with some extent. But we don’t understand everything. We know that there are some laws missing, laws that we haven’t found yet. Now what theoretical physicists do is the following. They try to learn what we know so far and they try to see where the limits of today’s knowledge lie and they try to go beyond. They try to make one step beyond what is known. And that is what is called theoretical physics. Theoretical physics is trying to see a law beyond the laws we have. There are at least two places in our universe where we know that we do not know what laws apply. Those two places are inside black holes and at the Big Bang. In both cases the conditions surrounding everything are so extreme that the laws we know they break down. And that is why both these – that is one reason why both these places are so interesting to look at.

For a long time gravity has told us that nothing can escape the gravitational grip of a black hole. But then in 1976 or 75 Professor Stephen Hawking discovered that it was not the case. That actually things could escape black holes. How did that come about? Picture yourself in outer space. There is a black hole right in front of you. You don’t see anything. No light can come out of it. So it’s like a dark patch that distorts the stars that are around. But there is this dark patch right in front of you and you’re far away and you look at it and it’s scary and you don’t want to get closer which is normal. But – and respectable. But what you know is that gravity is not everything. The matter that surrounds you, the light that surrounds you obeys a different kind of law. They obey quantum physics. They obey the law of the quantum world...

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