Wednesday, February 28, 2007

A fundamental problem for Hawking Radiation?

PhysOrg brings to attention a paper on the black hole information paradox that seems to be important to the issue of whether Hawking Radiation really exists. (Well, I think that is one possible implication of the article, even though that is not stated in explicit plain English.)

The actual paper is here. (Actually, it seems to be a year old, so why is PhysOrg running it now?)

Its conclusion:

A robust statement of this result leads to a severe formulation of the black-hole information paradox: Either unitarity fails or Hawking’s semi-classical predictions must break down. The
no-hiding theorem rigorously rules out any “third possibility” that the information escapes from the black hole but is nevertheless inaccessible as it is hidden in correlations between semi-classical Hawking radiation and the black hole’s internal state. This provides a criterion to test any proposed resolution of the paradox: Any resolution that preserves unitarity must predict a breakdown in Hawking’s analysis [2] even for cosmologically-sized black holes.

Hey, I didn't say it was easy! But I am assuming that a "breakdown in Hawking's analysis" means that possibly Hawking Radiation doesn't exist. (Which, for any new readers of this blog, is relevant to the issue of whether micro black holes that may be created at CERN soon will evaporate and be no danger to the Earth.)

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