Escaping Gravity’s Clutches: Black Hole Breakout
Black holes are objects in space that are so massive and compact they were described by Einstein as “bending” space. Conventional thinking asserts that black holes swallow everything that gets too close and that nothing can escape, but a study by Professor Samuel Braunstein and Dr. Manas Patra at the University of York gives a fresh perspective on the physics of black holes, suggesting that information could escape after all.
The implications could be revolutionary, suggesting that gravity may not be a fundamental force of Nature.
“Our results didn’t need the details of a black hole’s curved space geometry. That lends support to recent proposals that space, time and even gravity itself may be emergent properties within a deeper theory. Our work subtly changes those proposals, by identifying quantum information theory as the likely candidate for the source of an emergent theory of gravity,” said Professor Braunstein.
But quantum mechanics is the theory of light and atoms, and many physicists are skeptical that it could be used to explain the slow evaporation of black holes without incorporating the effects of gravity. The research, which appears in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters, uses the basic tenets of quantum mechanics to give a new description of information leaking from a black hole.
“Our results actually extend the predictions made by well-established techniques that rely on a detailed knowledge of space time and black hole geometry,” said Professor Braunstein:
Dr Patra adds, “We cannot claim to have proven that escape from a black hole is truly possible, but that is the most straight-forward interpretation of our results. Indeed, our results suggest that quantum information theory will play a key role in a future theory combining quantum mechanics and gravity.”
