Stephen Hawking Agrees With Interstellar’s Science of Black Holes

Professor Stephen Hawking talks about a possible breakthrough in the Black Hole Information Paradox.

Professor Stephen Hawking speaks at a media event to launch a global science initiative at The Royal Society in London. (Photo: Reuters) 

Humanity has had a long, glorious affair with space. Curiosity and a capacity for wonder, arguably our best attributes, are most perfectly exemplified in our collective fascination with the cosmos; the elemental need to gaze up at the stars in awe.

It’s no surprise then, that Professor Stephen Hawking’s almost archetypal story of genius defying extreme biological limitations, along with his passion for sharing his knowledge with the world, has made him a beloved icon. Speaking at a conference at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm on 25 August, Professor Hawking presented a new theory on that eternally enigmatic entity, the black hole.

Professor Stephen Hawking speaks at a media event at The Royal Society in London. (Photo: Reuters)

A black hole is a region of spacetime with gravitational forces so strong that nothing, including light, can escape from inside it. Professor Hawking elaborated on a new theory about Information Paradox, a concept that has been a point of hair-clutching, forehead-screwing dilemma for the scientific community.

The paradox involves the fact that physical information concerning the star that formed the black hole, is seemingly lost inside it and will disappear when the black hole does. However, according to the fundamental forces of physics that govern the world (according to our understanding, at least), this information cannot truly be destroyed. What happens to the information then?

Artist representation of a black hole. (Photo: iStock)

Professor Hawking might, at long last, have an answer to the question. At the conference, he stated

I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole, as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon.
— The Washington Post

An event horizon, the defining feature of a black hole, is a spacetime boundary through which matter and light can only pass inside. Nothing ever escapes from inside the boundary. This means, theoretically at least, that each of us could be crime-fighting, ass-kicking vigilantes inside the black hole and we would never know.

The artist’s rendition represents the immediate vicinity of a black hole; the black sphere is the event horizon (Photo: Reuters)

As per Hawking’s theory, the particles entering the black hole leave traces of their information on the event horizon. When Hawking Radiation occurs, i.e when black holes lose mass as a result of quantum phenomenon on the edge of the event horizon letting energy escape its gravitational grip, these particles, in theory, carry some of the information back out.

This information, however, remains inaccessible. Hawking says:

The information is stored in a super translation of the horizon that the ingoing particles cause...the information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form. For all practical purposes the info is lost.
— The Washington Post

Professor Hawking compared the scrambled return of the information to burning an encyclopaedia; the information isn’t lost technically, but good luck to us in making any sense or use of it. The scientific community now awaits the submission of Professor Hawking’s papers to further consider the theory.