Black Hole Hard Drives
Black Hole Hard Drives
Italian astrophysicists opened up the can of the holographic principle and applied it to black holes. Maybe this could bring us a Grand Unified Theory.
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
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Ever since black holes showed their nasty teeth in the equations of Einstein's general relativity they are a source of incredible hypothesis, theories, and ideas which we are trying to use to somehow understand these extreme objects. Over time, black holes became one of the sore spots of physics where general relativity meets quantum mechanics.
Italian astrophysicists Francesco Benini and Paolo Milan from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy think that black holes are like holograms in which all the information needed to create a 3D image is coded on a 2D surface.
Quantum mechanics suggests that black holes could be very complex and that they could concentrate enormous amounts of information in just two dimensions. Similarly to how hard drives work. But these would be the two largest hard drives in the Universe. But, general relativity describes black holes as 3D objects – simple, ball-shaped, and smooth. This corresponds to the first detailed image of a supermassive black hole we got to see last year (2019) thanks to the virtual telescope Event Horizon. But the new research of Benini and Milan unifies the two views.
It is precisely information which gives us soo much trouble when it comes to black holes. According to Einstein's relativity, black holes are incredibly simple objects – you could say information-free. But quantum physics says that they are the most complex objects ever because they have enormous entropy. And that means a lot of complexity and thus a lot of information.
Benini and Milan decided to use the 30-year-old idea of the holographic principle. It says that the behavior of gravity in a certain area of space can be described by a different system that exists only at the edge of this area and thus has one dimension less. This holographic gravity allowed scientists to describe gravity using math that doesn't include gravity. Thus, it doesn't have to get into conflict with quantum mechanics.
When the Italian scientists used the holographic principle on black holes their mysterious thermodynamic properties became somewhat more understandable. The started with black holes having enormous entropy and thus they described them from the point of view of quantum gravity. In that case, black holes have two dimensions – thus no need to describe gravity yet they generate objects in three dimensions.
This is not a revolutionary nor a conclusive solution. The new study is only the first step towards a detailed study of these strange cosmic monsters that would bring general relativity and quantum mechanics together. Soon, we may be able to test the theoretical predictions based on quantum gravity which would be the needed intersection between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Sources:
- https://phys.org/news/2020-06-black-holes-hologram.html
- https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.021037
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