Escaping gravity's clutches: the black hole breakout
Posted on 11 August 2011
Black holes are objects in space that are so massive and compact they were described by Einstein as “bending” space. Conventional thinking asserts that black holes swallow everything that gets too close and that nothing can escape, but the study by Professor Samuel Braunstein and Dr Manas Patra suggests that information could escape from black holes after all.
Our results actually extend the predictions made by well-established techniques that rely on a detailed knowledge of space time and black hole geometry
Professor Samuel Braunstein
The implications could be revolutionary, suggesting that gravity may not be a fundamental force of Nature.
Professor Braunstein says: “Our results didn’t need the details of a black hole’s curved space geometry. That lends support to recent proposals that space, time and even gravity itself may be emergent properties within a deeper theory. Our work subtly changes those proposals, by identifying quantum information theory as the likely candidate for the source of an emergent theory of gravity.”
But quantum mechanics is the theory of light and atoms, and many physicists are sceptical that it could be used to explain the slow evaporation of black holes without incorporating the effects of gravity.
The research, which appears in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters, uses the basic tenets of quantum mechanics to give a new description of information leaking from a black hole.
Professor Braunstein says: “Our results actually extend the predictions made by well-established techniques that rely on a detailed knowledge of space time and black hole geometry.”
Dr Patra adds: “We cannot claim to have proven that escape from a black hole is truly possible, but that is the most straight-forward interpretation of our results. Indeed, our results suggest that quantum information theory will play a key role in a future theory combining quantum mechanics and gravity.”
Notes to editors:
- The paper ‘Black hole evaporation rates without space-time’ by Professor Samuel Braunstein and Dr Manas Patra will appear in the August 12, 2011 edition of Physical Review Letters at prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v107/i7/e071302
- The New York Times article “A Scientist Takes On Gravity,” July 3, 2010, discusses growing indications that space, time and gravity may be emergent properties, at www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html
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