Séminaires LLR

New black hole simulator may shed more light on contradiction in fundamental physics

par Pisin Chen (Université National de Taiwan et Directeur du centre de Cosmologie NTU CC Leung Chair Professor of Cosmology)

Europe/Paris
Seminar room (LLR)

Seminar room

LLR

Description
A newly proposed experiment promises to create a “tabletop” black hole that could prove whether information is truly lost when black holes evaporate. The idea that information could be lost this way has created a paradox in our current understanding of basic physics. 43 years ago, Stephen Hawking combined quantum field theory with Einstein’s theory of general relativity and discovered black hole evaporation. The debate over whether information is really lost during Hawking evaporation has persisted ever since. Almost all the contemporary leading theoretical physicists have participated in this “black hole war”. In quantum mechanics, the probability, or information, must be preserved before and after a physical process. The seeming loss of information as a result of the black hole evaporation therefore implies that general relativity and quantum mechanics, the two pillars of modern physics, may be in conflict.
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