Hawking's Information Paradox solution

Hawking's Information paradox on my limited understanding means, that after a black hole "ends" all the matter with it gets destroyed. This shouldn't be because matter can never be destroyed it just gets changed to something else like energy or heat etc.Stephen Hawkins' explanation to this was that as there are other universes and some of them are without those black holes so no information is lost..... What?Could someone please explain it to me in layman's terms or in semi-technical language, what is the logic behind all this because I can't see it. And are alternate universes even a commonly accepted explanation for the Hawking's information paradox?Edited by AdminAsgara, : fixed titleEdited by Neutralmind, : HawkingsEdited by Neutralmind, : spelling corrected

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Certainly, but first could someone please change the title to reflect Stephen's real name It's HAWKING !!!

Black hole information paradox - Wikipedia

I corrected it now. Could you please explain Hawking's solution, I don't understand it.

Our universe aways preserves information, according to Hawking's result, which means that information never leaks elsewhere.
Hawking used the example of travel to alternate universes to demonstrate what he meant. Since information never leaks out of our universe, travel to another is impossible.
However the result has nothing to do with alternate universes, they're just useful in demonstrating certain features. (At least this is my take on it)

Grrr, wrote this post once already yesterday and lost it as (I assume) the EvC server went down. Thanks for fixing the title...Ok, some misconceptions here to clear up...A black hole "ends" when it has evaporated all of its mass away. There is therefore no matter left to destroy. That is quite key to actual problem, in that there doesn't seem to be anything left in the "remnant" to store the lost information. But we'll get back to that later...Matter can be destroyed or "annihilated" as we say. By matter, we mean fermions: electrons, quarks, etc - the stuff that gives solidity to the universe. I'm sure you've heard that an electron and a positron (both matter) can annihilate and leave just a pair of photons (not matter). In this precise context you cannot use vague terms such as "energy" or "heat" which only apply at much larger scales when looking at bulk behaviour.As we start to consider quantum gravity, various possibilities are introduced. One of these is the idea of baby universe: branches of space-time separating off from the trunk space-time via black-holes and similar phenomena. One of Hawking's proposed solutions to the information problem used baby universes (dating back to the 80s). These are not alternate or "other" universes as such. Imagine a treee as the whole of our space-time. Take a horizontal slice through the tree at a particular height, and that gives a picture of how we consider our universe with thes ebaby universes: a central area (the x-section of the trunk) and lots of smaller distinct isolated areas (x-sections of the branches). It looks like lots of separate universes. But when you look at the whole tree, you realise that it is all one big connected space-time.Finally, the information paradox itself: if say a tea-cup falls into a black-hole, eventually it will be re-radiated out via Hawking Radiation. However, the radiation is completely thermal and there will be no way of determining that the radiation had once been a tea-cup. This is contrary to everything we know about quantum mechanics. Information has gone missing. Where is it? The baby universe idea is that information may filter into the baby universe via the black hole, and from the point of view of our observation, information has been lost. But when the baby universe is counted as part of our universe (as it should) then nothing has been lost.Sorry, this is not great. I had a much longer and better piece written yesterday that the aether-net swallowed. Just a bit rushed at the moment.

Didn't Hawking "recant" his position on this a couple years ago?

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Yes, and I went into some detail on this in my "lost" post. There was something immensely elegant about Black Hole Thermodynamics, how it almost-unified thermodynamics with quantum field theory and black holes. It did seem to make so much sense that the black hole should radiate purely themally, and that was what all the (admittedly semi-classical) quantum gravity mathematics suggested. However, as soon as it became apparant that we had black holes in string theory, attempts were made to push through the nice semi-classical work into the real hardcore non-perturbative (or at least higher-order perturbative) quantum theory to see if corrections could be found that would show that the radiation was not purely thermal, and indeed encoded the infomration that had fallen into the black hole. The discovery of AdS/CFT correspondance pushed this further to the point where calculations these days are highly suggestive that information is re-radiated. There may well still be baby universes but we don't need them to solve the infomration paradox.

Just an uneducated question. If the teacup was melt was there any way of knowing precisely it had been a teacup?On another note, I thought the information paradox was about matter being completely destroyed and about that not being possible. Guess I misunderstood it somehow... Emphasis mine.
What does it come if not matter? Dark matter? Dark energy?One more question. Am I correct to assume not all matter that falls in to the black hole gets back emitted via Hawking radiation and some matter just gets destroyed/annihilated?And thanks for the current answers. Although I'd appreciate if you'd use analogies and more layman terms if possible. I'm no scientist.

I'd still like to know all this stuff. I understand if you've been busy. Just bumping this in case you've forgotten...

Photons are 'normal' energy, not dark stuffs.... E = mc²

Theoretically yes, practically no. But if Hawking had been right, then it would have also have been "theoretically no", which has profound implications for physics. No, this really has nothing to do with the issue. In this case, the electron/positron pair "come from" the pair of photons. Photons are simply excitations of the quantum electrodynamic field (think of isolated waves upon an ocean). Electrons are a different kind of excitation of the quantum electrodynamic field, with particular properties that we describe as matter, but they are still like isolated waves (of a different kind) upon this same ocean. Given the right circumstances, photons waves can combinme to become electron waves.Dark matter and dark energy are yet other varieities of waves upon this ocean. You yourself are an amazingly complex stable arrangement of waves upon this ocean. No, everything that falls into a black hole will eventually radiate out, unless the universe should recollapse (unlikely given current evidence) in which case some black holes will not have evaporated to extinction before the big crunch. Heh, heh... well, if you will pick a subject at the frontiers of human knowledge, be prepared for a few headaches!

As the universe will go on an infinite time (play along) there will be an infinite number of big crunches (and big bangs) and so... The total amount of matter will sometime be drastically reduced or become nill? Aww nuts... I really don't like headaches

I postulate that the cosmos at Delta S = 0 will be so homogenous as to be non existant by any means of measure. The paradox of Hawking radiation is the least of the universe's problem in maintaining it's existance. Thermal dynamics is a bitch. And shes back in heat..hee hee git it..