‘Hairy’ black holes explain Stephen Hawking’s paradox, according to scientists | to know

He highlighted that black holes behave in a way that puts two fundamental theories in conflict.

Black holes are dead stars that have collapsed And they have such a strong attraction that not even light can escape.

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New research claims to have resolved the paradox by showing that black holes possess a property they call “quantum hair”.

“The problem has been resolved!” Xavier Calmette, from the University of Sussex, told BBC News exclusively United kingdom.

He was among the scientists who developed mathematical techniques that they say have solved the paradox.

At the heart of this paradox is a problem that threatens to undermine two of the most important theories of physics. The Einstein’s general theory of relativity He claims that information about what enters the black hole cannot be revealed, but quantum mechanics says that this is impossible.

Calmette and colleagues claim to have shown that star components leave an imprint on a black hole’s gravitational field.

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The scientists called the brand “quantum hair” because their theory would replace an earlier idea called the “baldness theory” developed by Professor John Archibald Wheeler. Princeton Universityin New Jersey, USA, in the 1960s.

Wheeler suggested this name because it conveys the mathematical description of a black hole: an entity with mass, rotation and charge, but no other physical properties — bald, if you will.

The “Calmet’s Hair Theory, Yes” published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters is considered revolutionary. It claims to solve Hawking’s paradox, which has intrigued physicists so intensely since its introduction in the 1970s.

The paradox has raised the possibility that quantum mechanics or general relativity may be flawed, a terrifying prospect for theoretical physicists because they are the two pillars on which most of our understanding of the universe rests.

“Poetry theory, yes” claims to resolve the paradox by bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum mechanics. The idea of ​​”quantum hair” allows information about what enters a black hole to reappear without violating any of the important principles of any theory. It’s a simple and elegant solution.

“But it will take some time for people to accept it,” Calmette says.

This is because it is a big question in the world of theoretical physics.

“Hawking introduced the irony the year you were born,” he notes.

Since then, many famous physicists around the world have worked on it, proposing rather dramatic things to explain the paradox, including some who have suggested that certain aspects of quantum mechanics are wrong.

“So it will take some time for people to accept that you don’t need a radical solution to solve the problem,” he says.

If the “hair theory, yes” holds up to scrutiny, he thinks so It could be the first step towards linking the theories of relativity – which is about gravity – and quantum mechanicswhich mainly focuses on the other three forces of nature, which are electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces.

“One consequence of Hawking’s paradox is that general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible. What we find is that they are completely compatible.”

The research team, which also includes Professor Roberto Casadio from the University of Bologna in Italy and Professor Stephen Hsu from Michigan State University in the US, drew on the work of Professor Suvrat Raju from the International Center for Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore, India. .

Raju believes that together they resolved Hawking’s paradox.

“In recent years, it has been recognized that the baldness theory fails due to quantum effects and this solves the Hawking paradox,” he says.