Things that make the brain go "boom", part 1
For today, let us take a break from politics. Annoyingly enough, the impotence of UN has deleted this organisation from the international map of political power.
Today I will present you with the first installment of a series somewhat related to the paradox series that I wrote earlier, a series that refers to things that force the brain to the limit and sometimes have caused people to go mad.
In this episode one, we will deal with the concept of black holes and the information paradox. The information paradox is a pretty famous concept in physics. This paradox stems from the very first axiom of science: information cannot be destroyed. As you may (or may not), in physics information is well defined as the state of particles. Under the balance given by Eintein's generalized theory of relativity neither mass nor energy is spontaneously created in the universe, but transformed from one to another. Therefore particles of a quantum state can be subject to transformation (by means of energy or mass and therefore by quantum state - which by definition is a wavelength function that defines any state in which a particle can be) but not destruction (by destruction meaning its dissapearance from the universe).
What does this have to do with black holes? Well, let's see.
A black hole is a concentration of mass of such nature that it develops a gravitational field of an escape speed greater than the speed of light (again definition time, escape speed: the speed necessary to escape the gravitational pull of an object - eg, to escape Earth: 11655 km/s). A black hole is formed if a sufficiently big star (above 5 times the mass of the Sun) consumes all its fuel for nuclear reactions and suffers a collapse where all its mass would be compressed towards its center beyond the limits of known physics. This center point would be then known as a singlarity while the limit of no escape (going towards the singularity beyond that limit would make it impossible for you to escape being drawn towards the singularity) would be known as an 'event horizon'. A black hole becomes a distorsion in space-time as time would pass slower in its proximity. Actually that's debatable since time it's just a convention to measure the interval between sending and receiving information, but we'll go along and play nice and use this concept.
For example, let us take two people Jane and Jimmy. Jane is well outside the event horizon, while Jimmy moves towards it and eventually steps over the event horizon. What happens then?
One intersting aspect is that Jane will -never- see Jimmy dissapear. As he passes over the event horizon, the light that carries this information is also caught by the black hole and never reach Jane, all this while the light that departs near the event horizon takes an exponentially longer time to reach Jane as it is more and more difficult to escape the gravitational pull. As the distance between Jimmy and the event horizon, it takes longer and longer for the light to reach Jane while the light that departs sufficiently close, but still outside of the event horizon will take an infinite amount of time to reach Jane. An observation would be that, hypothetically, looking at a black hole would reveal images of all objects that have once been sucked in. (i've inquired a professor in physics from the Virginia Institute of Technology about this ... I'll update the blog with the reply .... if it will come).
Of course if Jimmy was already inside the black hole, Jane wouldn't see him at all.
What happens to Jimmy? Well, physics dictates that his body would be ripped apart then compressed into the black hole's structure and eventually spit out via Hawking radiation. What about the information carried on his body?
Today I will present you with the first installment of a series somewhat related to the paradox series that I wrote earlier, a series that refers to things that force the brain to the limit and sometimes have caused people to go mad.
In this episode one, we will deal with the concept of black holes and the information paradox. The information paradox is a pretty famous concept in physics. This paradox stems from the very first axiom of science: information cannot be destroyed. As you may (or may not), in physics information is well defined as the state of particles. Under the balance given by Eintein's generalized theory of relativity neither mass nor energy is spontaneously created in the universe, but transformed from one to another. Therefore particles of a quantum state can be subject to transformation (by means of energy or mass and therefore by quantum state - which by definition is a wavelength function that defines any state in which a particle can be) but not destruction (by destruction meaning its dissapearance from the universe).
What does this have to do with black holes? Well, let's see.
A black hole is a concentration of mass of such nature that it develops a gravitational field of an escape speed greater than the speed of light (again definition time, escape speed: the speed necessary to escape the gravitational pull of an object - eg, to escape Earth: 11655 km/s). A black hole is formed if a sufficiently big star (above 5 times the mass of the Sun) consumes all its fuel for nuclear reactions and suffers a collapse where all its mass would be compressed towards its center beyond the limits of known physics. This center point would be then known as a singlarity while the limit of no escape (going towards the singularity beyond that limit would make it impossible for you to escape being drawn towards the singularity) would be known as an 'event horizon'. A black hole becomes a distorsion in space-time as time would pass slower in its proximity. Actually that's debatable since time it's just a convention to measure the interval between sending and receiving information, but we'll go along and play nice and use this concept.
For example, let us take two people Jane and Jimmy. Jane is well outside the event horizon, while Jimmy moves towards it and eventually steps over the event horizon. What happens then?
One intersting aspect is that Jane will -never- see Jimmy dissapear. As he passes over the event horizon, the light that carries this information is also caught by the black hole and never reach Jane, all this while the light that departs near the event horizon takes an exponentially longer time to reach Jane as it is more and more difficult to escape the gravitational pull. As the distance between Jimmy and the event horizon, it takes longer and longer for the light to reach Jane while the light that departs sufficiently close, but still outside of the event horizon will take an infinite amount of time to reach Jane. An observation would be that, hypothetically, looking at a black hole would reveal images of all objects that have once been sucked in. (i've inquired a professor in physics from the Virginia Institute of Technology about this ... I'll update the blog with the reply .... if it will come).
Of course if Jimmy was already inside the black hole, Jane wouldn't see him at all.
What happens to Jimmy? Well, physics dictates that his body would be ripped apart then compressed into the black hole's structure and eventually spit out via Hawking radiation. What about the information carried on his body?
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