Catchy, we gotta admit:
In 1976, Hawking suggested that, as black holes evaporate, they destroy information about what had formed them.
That idea goes against a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states any process in physics can be mathematically reversed.
In the 1960s, physicist John Archibald Wheeler, discussing black holes’ lack of observable features beyond their total mass, spin, and charge, coined the phrase “black holes have no hair”—known as the no-hair theorem.
However, the newly discovered “quantum hair” provides a way for information to be preserved as a black hole collapses and, as such, resolves one of modern science’s most famous quandaries, experts say.
Prof Calmet said: “Black holes have long been considered the perfect laboratory to study how to merge Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics.
“It was generally assumed within the scientific community that resolving this paradox would require a huge paradigm shift in physics, forcing the potential reformulation of either quantum mechanics or general relativity.
“What we found—and I think is particularly exciting—is that this isn’t necessary.”
“Scientists may have solved Stephen Hawking’s black hole paradox” at Phys.org (March 18, 2022)
Here’s a puff piece for the idea:
Let’s wait and see. Our favorite line from the media release: “In the first paper, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers demonstrated that black holes are more complex than originally thought and have gravitational fields that hold information about how they were formed.”
Where, oh, where have we heard the signature tune “more complex than originally thought”? Funny how the universe in general is not devolving down into a few simple “nothing” principles …
Both the Physics Letters B paper and the Physical Review Letters paper are open access.