Soft Hair theory

Black holes. They’re weird.And a recent paper about them seems to me to be the strangest, one yet black holes might be covered in hair. So I hope you’re ready for me to get excited about space stuff. Let’s get started. So iconic theoretical physicist. Stephen Hawking may have passed away in 2018, but papers. He wrote are still coming out after his death his latest paper released in October argues that black holes might be covered in hair. What does he mean by that? We’re going to get there by the end of this blog. But first we’re going to understand what the actually a black hole is ?, I am doing a cool weird demo that shows us intuitively why you cannot escape a black hole according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. The gravity of any Given object is proportional to its density. So if an object is dense enough, then nothing that gets too close can ever escape no matter what nothing not even light can escape from an ultra dense object. So we would call that a black

You might assume that gravity is a pulling force and you’d be in good company, Sir Isaac Newton thought the same thing back in the 1600’s you noticed that when things move they tend to move straight unless a force acts on them and curves their path, of course like wind or Kick from Sir Isaac Newton, Newton been noticed that gravity also curves the path of things downwards. So he concluded that gravity must be a force Einstein thought differently. He noticed thing with an elevator. There was a moment. He realized an elevator out in space accelerating up would act the same as gravity here on Earth. Basically, there was a problem with our theory of gravity as a force. So what is gravity then? ,well Einstein wondered what if gravity Isn’t a force but the curved trajectory of a ball flying through the air is actually straight. I’m going to have to apologize in advance because the demo I’m going to show you broke my brain just a little bit pretend you live near the equator and you start walking East trying to walk a straight as possible on your initial path. You might think that you’d keep walking parallel to the equator and never hit it right? Well try testing this on a globe try it like this line up the edge of a piece of paper. So it’s parallel with a latitude line and then keep pushing it down straight to simulate. It’s your straight path and it will actually end up intersecting with the equator. What in fact if you draw the latitude line you started on on your paper and then flatten out the paper that path would look curved as well. So your path actually curves because while you may be walking straight the Earth you’re walking on is not flat no matter what all of the articles and theories in the sidebar may tell you that’s what Einstein proposed the gravity is not a force, but an object Curves in a gravitational field for the exact same reason that you’re straight walking path.

Straight gravity is what happens when you’re moving straight on a non flat thing only in the case of gravity that non-flat thing isn’t the globe. It’s space itself and time. That’s right. The fabric of the universe space-time is curved by large masses just like the earth’s surface is curved. So let’s bring it back to black holes. See they’re inescapable as an object gets denser and denser this stuff moving near it will take curvier and curvier paths and then when You get 2 black hole level dense. The path an object takes gets so curved it’ll never ever lead back out of the black hole. And then it’s Gone Forever Without a Trace. Not even a thank you note rude, except it’s not quite sure that object is completely gone. And that’s where the hair comes in now, unfortunately while a big dents fuzzy black space office sounds adorable. Stephen Hawking was only using hair as a metaphor for the stuff that gets left behind when objects fall into a black hole. Why call it hair? Well, imagine everything in space is a bunch of Guess Who characters it easy to tell them apart because either own distinguishing features and unique peer Styles black holes on the other hand only had a few decision character.

Maybe we’ll get some of a mass electric charge and angular momentum that’s always fun. If spin has other than that, they’re almost totally nondescript involves up when unique distinguishing objects, like stars stuff or Matthew McConaughey fall into a black hole and disappear leaving behind a slightly more massive, but still perfectly bald black hole everything unique about those objects is seemingly gone disappeared tooth almost as if black holes are sucking personality out of the universe depriving us of Matthew McConaughey’s beautiful lungs. But here’s the thing one of the fundamental ideas of quantum mechanics is that information cannot be destroyed it can Be changed into different forms, but it cannot be destroyed. So if black holes really are destroying distinctive information then. Are violating the fundamental laws of physics as we know them the theory of black holes has a built-in contradiction. It’s known as the black hole information Paradox. So to try and resolve this Paradox in that 2018 paper Hawking and his co-authors proposed that black holes don’t actually destroy the information of distinctive stuff that falls into them. But instead they proposed a process where the information sticks around in the universe as photons on the boundary of the black hole known as its Event Horizon. Basically as Matthew McConaughey’s falling into the black hole. He’s also depositing really low energy particles onto the black hole’s Event Horizon leaving behind a fuzzy edge of hair on a black hole. The word soft is used to describe the low energy particles to distinguish them from hard particles, which just have more energy hence a theory of black holes with soft hair. How can his collaborators think that these soft hair photons may be where the universe preserves its information from the stuff that falls into a black hole. So the information is not destroyed. It just hangs out there on the edge and that is roughly how Hawking his collaborators think that the existence of these soft hairs could solve the information paradox.

There’s of course a lot of Mass to which you are. Welcome to treat yourself to its tax season. You deserve a break kind of just to be clear. These questions are far from answered most of the research around black holes is theoretical remember We’ve only indirectly observed their existence but while theories like this the soft hair theories could help solve the information Paradox, they’re not the final say and that’s how science is done in bits and pieces that add to science as we know it and sometimes don’t I think Stephen Hawking would be honored to know that people like you are with his theories. I’m honored to be able to help keep his scholarship alive after his passing