Sabine Hossenfelder: Black holes vs. quantum mechanics = something has to give

Let’s stand up to that social time hog at coffee break! We can politely know at least some things too. The author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, has produced both a vid and a post on black holes, telling us tells us ten things to know:

9. What is the information loss paradox?

The information loss paradox is caused by the emission of Hawking radiation. This happens because the Hawking radiation is purely thermal which means it is random except for having a specific temperature. In particular, the radiation does not contain any information about what formed the black hole.

But while the black hole emits radiation, it loses mass and shrinks. So, eventually, the black hole will be entirely converted into random radiation and the remaining radiation depends only on the mass of the black hole. It does not at all depend on the details of the matter that formed it, or whatever fell in later. Therefore, if one only knows the final state of the evaporation, one cannot tell what formed the black hole.

Such a process is called “irreversible” — and the trouble is that there are no such processes in quantum mechanics. Black hole evaporation is therefore inconsistent with quantum theory as we know it and something has to give. Somehow this inconsistency has to be removed. Most physicists believe that the solution is that the Hawking radiation somehow must contain information after all.Sabine Hossenfelder, “10 things you should know about black holes” at BackRe(Action)

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See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: “We know that quantum mechanics is wrong.” Do we know that quantum mechanics is wrong and, if so, how can it be useful?

and

Sabine Hossenfelder: Has The Large Hadron Collider “Broken Physics”?

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