Dark secrets.Astronomers and physicists seem to speak of black holes as though they took matter completely out of the universe ("Information, Please," SN: 9/25/04, p. 202). An evaporating black hole would not fizz away into nothingness noth·ing·ness n. 1. The condition or quality of being nothing; nonexistence. 2. Empty space; a void. 3. Lack of consequence; insignificance. 4. Something inconsequential or insignificant. . It would lose energy and reappear in normal space as a very dense object (complete with information). Someone might consider this when discussing quasars Proper naming of quasars are by Catalogue Entry, Qxxxx±yy using B1950 coordinates, or QSO Jxxxx±yyyy using J2000 coordinates. This page lists quasars.
NANCY PARKER, CALDWELL, IDAHO Caldwell is a city in and the county seat of Canyon County, Idaho, United States.GR6 The population was 25,967 at the 2000 census. Caldwell is the home of the College of Idaho. It is considered part of the Boise metropolitan area. There are many obvious ways to destroy information, one of which is thermodynamically ther·mo·dy·nam·ic adj. 1. Characteristic of or resulting from the conversion of heat into other forms of energy. 2. Of or relating to thermodynamics. irreversible processes. The article says, "Conservation of information, it turns out, is tantamount to saying you can always run a film backward." But you can't. That's what irreversible processes are all about. JOHN MYERS, SAN DIEGO San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. , CALIF. The supposed "paradox" of information being in two places at once occurs only when the infalling observer reaches the event horizon. Prior to that, general relativity general relativity n. The geometric theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein, incorporating and extending the theory of special relativity to accelerated frames of reference and introducing the principle that gravitational and inertial forces provides a consistent model for the experiences of both the infalling and the distant observers. The distant observer sees the infalling observer slow so that it would require an infinite amount of time for him to reach the event horizon. The infalling observer would see his partner speed up correspondingly. MICHAEL MCGINNIS, SEATTLE, WASH. Asked to comment on these and many other letters on this story, Lenny Susskind of Stanford University replied: "I imagine the reader [Nancy Parker] is referring to the discredited 'remnant theory,' in which the black hole decays to an ultimate tiny [visible] remnant that contains all the information that ever went into it." However, "as long as the [black hole] remains significantly larger than [a certain subatomic subatomic /sub·atom·ic/ (-ah-tom´ik) of or pertaining to the constituent parts of an atom. sub·a·tom·ic adj. 1. Of or relating to the constituents of the atom. 2. length], classical relativity would require it to remain a black hole." The scenario John Myers describes "is true, but it's really an issue of information getting scrambled, not lost." In the black hole paradox, the problem is that the information appears to be truly lost, not merely scrambled, yet "the foundations of classical mechanics and statistical mechanics are based on the exact conservation of information." Finally, "a number of the letters express a very common misconception, namely, that because an outside observer sees an infalling observer slow down, that the in falling observer sees the outsider speed up. This is simply not so. The in falling observer looks back and sees nothing unusual."--R. COWEN |
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