Scientists say they have solved one of the greatest paradoxes in science, first identified by Prof. Stephen Hawking.
He emphasized that black holes behave in a way that conflicts with two fundamental theories.
Black holes are dead stars that have collapsed and have such strong gravity that not even light can escape.
New research claims to have solved the paradox by showing black holes have a property they call “quantum hairs.”
“The problem has been cracked!” Prof Xavier Calmet of Sussex University told BBC News exclusively with great satisfaction. He was among those who developed the mathematical techniques they say solved the paradox.
At the heart of the paradox is a problem that threatens to undermine two of physics’ most important theories. Einstein’s general theory of relativity says that information about what goes into a black hole can’t get out, but quantum mechanics says it can’t.
Prof Calmet and his colleagues say they have shown that the star’s constituents leave an imprint in the black hole’s gravitational field.
The scientists dubbed the imprint “quantum hair” because their theory supersedes an earlier idea called the “No Hair Theorem” developed in the 1960s by Prof. John Archibald Wheeler of Princeton University in New Jersey.
Prof. Wheeler came up with the name because it conveys the mathematical description of a black hole: an entity that has mass, spin, and charge, but otherwise no other physical properties, bare if you will.
Prof. Calmet’s “yes hair theorem”, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, is revolutionary. It claims to solve the Hawking paradox, which has deeply troubled physicists since Prof. Hawking invented it in the 1970s.
The paradox raised the possibility that either quantum mechanics or general relativity could be flawed, a terrifying prospect for theoretical physicists since they are the twin pillars on which most of our understanding of the universe rests.
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The “yes hair theorem” claims to resolve the paradox by bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum mechanics. The notion of quantum hairs allows information about what goes into a black hole to come out again without violating any of the important principles of either theory. It’s a simple and elegant solution.
“But it will take time for people to accept it,” says Prof Calmet.
That’s because it’s such a big deal in the world of theoretical physics.
“Hawking came up with the paradox the year I was born,” says Prof. Calmet.
Since then, many famous physicists around the world have worked on it and proposed very dramatic things to explain it, including some who had suggested that some aspects of quantum mechanics are wrong.
“So it will take a while for people to accept that you don’t need a radical solution to solve the problem,” said Prof Calmet.
If the “yes hair theorem” stands up to scrutiny, it could be the first step in connecting the theories of relativity involving gravity and quantum mechanics, which largely focus on the other three forces in nature, namely electromagnetism and two nuclear forces .
“One of the consequences of the Hawking paradox was that general relativity and quantum mechanics were not compatible. What we find is that they are very compatible.”
The research team built on the work of Prof. Suvrat Raju from the International Center for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, India. He believes that together they solved the Hawking paradox.
“In recent years, it has been recognized that the no hair theorem fails due to quantum effects, and this solves Hawking’s paradox,” he said.
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