This amazing new physics theory made me believe time travel is possible
By any chance, do you happen to know where the information goes?
Hawking was wrong, then he was right
Lev’s article goes on to explain how Stephen Hawking eventually conceded (he lost a bet) that the information entering a black hole wasn’t gone. He, of course, couldn’t explain exactlywhereit went. But most physicists were pretty sure it had to go somewhere – nothing else in the universe justvanishes.
Fast forward to 2019 and two separate research teams (working independently of each other)publishedpre-print papersseemingly confirming Hawking’s hunch about the persistence of information.
Not only were the papers published within 24 hours of each other, but the lead authors on each ended up sharing the2021 New Horizons Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics.
What both teams discovered was that a slight change in perspective made all the math line up.
When information enters a black hole itappearsto be lost because, for all intents and purposes, it’s no longer available to the universe.
And that’s what stumped Hawking. Imagine a single photon of light getting caught in a black hole and swallowed up. Hawking and his colleagues knew the photon (and the information that was swallowed up with it) couldn’t bedeleted.
But, according to Hawking, black holes leak thermal radiation. And that means they eventually lose their energy and mass and… fade away.
Hawking and company couldn’t figure out how to reconcile the fact that once a black hole is gone, anything that’s ever been inside it appears to be gone too.
That’s because they were looking in the wrong places. Hawking and others were trying to find signs ofthe missing information leaking out simiarlyalong a black hole’sevent horizon.
Unfortunately, using the event horizon as a starting point never panned out – the numbers didn’t quite add up.
The 2021 New Horizons Prize winners figured out a different way to measure the “area” of a black hole. And, by applying the new lens to measurements over various stages of a black hole’s life, they were finally able to make the numbers add up.
Here’s how this relates to time travel
If these two teams did in fact demonstrate thateven a black holecan’t render information irreversible, then there might be nothingphysicallystopping us from time travel.
And I’m not talking about that hard-to-explain, gravity at the edge of a black hole, your friends would get older while you stayed young kind of time travel.
I’m talking about real-life Marty Mcfly time travel where you could set the dials in the DeLorean for 13 March 1986 so you could go back and invest in Microsoft on the day its stock went public.
Now, much like Stephen Hawking, I don’t have any math or engineering solutions to the problem at hand. I’ve just got this physics theory.
If information canand doesescape from black holes, then it’s only logical to assume that other processes which we only see in quantum mechanics could also be explained through classical physics.
We know that time travelispossible in quantum mechanics. Google demonstrated this by buildingtime crystals, and numerous quantum computing paradigms rely on a form of prediction that surfaces answers using what’s basicallymolecular time-travel.
But we all know that, when it comes to quantum stuff, we’re talking about particles demonstrating counter-intuitive behavior. That’s not the same thing as pushing a button and making a car from the 1980s appearback in the old Wild West.
However, that doesn’t mean quantum time travel isn’t just as mind-blowing. Translating time crystals into something analogous in classical physics would mean creating donuts that reappear on your plate after you eat them or beer that reappears in your glass no matter how many times you chug it.
If we concede that time crystals exist and informationcanescape a black hole, then we have to admit that donuts – or anything, even people – could one day travel through time too.
Then again, nobody showed up forHawking’s party. So, either it isn’t possible or time travelers are jerks.
Story byTristan Greene
Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns:(show all)Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns: He/him
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