Yes, Stephen Hawking Lied To Us All About How Black Holes Decay

Sabine Hosenfelder .. she has some well thought out views on many subjects.

I wonder if she will report on the subject.

So information can be lost.....not likely...

Information can be lost but misinformation travels on forever propagated by conspiracy theorists and climate scientists!

"Lied" may be too strong a word for this; "made a mistake" is more likely.

The whole principle behind the scientific method is to create a theory, carry out experiment to test the theory, and if the outcome of the experiment doesn't agree with the theory then the theory is plain wrong. Full stop.

So any revelation is hardly newsworthy.

That's the way it used to work. Nowadays, the Theory guys get way ahead of the Experiment guys. Apparently, Hawking radiation has been measured and has a thermal spectrum as predicted.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-014-9778-0

Often the theory can be significantly before the capability to perform practical experiments. From memory, the theory of semiconductors was derived not long after the vacuum tubes went into full production, but the necessary technology to achieve the purity of material as substrate for the chips took decades to deliver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

This is a good explanation of the information problem. It seems the crux of the matter is the irreversibility that occurs when a quantum measurement happens, the collapse of the wavefunction which is only defined by probability. This is a break in the cause and effect relationship that can't be reversed. Scientists don't like an effect with no causes.

I've always had a problem with seeing the "information" problem as a problem at all. To me it seems like the theoreticians calling this a problem are upset with the given condition to a proposed problem or paradox. The given is that the matter that does enter the realm within the Schwarzschild radius cannot come back for it must exceed the absolute limit of the speed of light in order to return. Therefore running the scenario in reverse is forbidden for material can only cross this boundary in one direction. Stuff inside this realm are beyond the known laws of our universe, don't be surprised that laws of our universe don't apply to those outside the laws of our universe.

To an observer far away from the black hole where the spacetime is nice and flat, an object never falls through the event horizon because the time dilation becomes infinite. To an observer falling into a supermassive black hole - supermassive, so the tidal forces would not be extreme - would feel nothing passing the event horizon. The last few milliseconds before passing through for the infalling observer maps to time stretching to infinity for the distant observer.

"To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole would appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.^[79] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.^[80]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole

From our standpoint, everything that has been captured by a black hole is plastered outside the event horizon and will be until the end of time.

All true but I'm not sure if you are agreeing, or disagreeing with me or just adding a non-sequitur truism to baffle me. Can you tie this in with the information problem that one cannot run this process backwards in time to identify where things started.

You seem to be implying that, in theory, one can determine where things originated for all of the information still resides in our universe due to time dilation even though an actual reversal is not possible. Thus this "information problem" is actually a common misunderstanding.

I guess it was a bit of a non sequitur, but certainly not meant to baffle.

My picture is that an observer falling into a black hole is basically "jumping on a time machine" from our perspective, being transported to our future and beyond. We see the very last moments of his trajectory outside of the event horizon, which, for us, lasts until the end of time. This part of the trajectory is, I believe, reversible to us and to him. We could, theoretically, run the film backward with all forces reversed.

But I think the "information problem" has not to do with an object crossing the event horizon (which it hasn't from our viewpoint), but with the process of Hawking radiation. No matter what falls into the black hole, the Hawking radiation is black body radiation of a temperature that depends only on the mass of the black hole.

My understanding is that this matter is still not settled.

Thanks for reminding me of the Wikipedia article on this supposed paradox. I am glad to see that it is still being debated over whether this is a real problem or not.

Your proposal seems to be called the holographic principle, where the quantum information is imprinted on the surface of the event horizon. Thus the quantum information never actually leaves our universe. But I question your conclusion that running the film backwards from the perspective of the material that actually crosses the event horizon will be reversible for that violates the fundamental principle that not even light can escape a black hole. Yes, from our side of the event horizon running the film backwards the quantum information imprints on some matter leaving the event horizon providing the expected reverse trajectory. However we know not what happens on the other side of the event horizon. The quantum information from the other side is lost to us.

To use the example Hosenfelder provided to portray the paradox, we cannot tell what other particle(s) combined when crossing the event horizon for we know nothing about the resultant trajectory of the combined particle on the other side of the event horizon.

This is why believe this really is a non-problem but sharper minds than mine see this as an avenue to explore. I wish them the best because I certainly don't have the answer, just a hunch.