The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

by Brian Greene

So the conclusion is that from your perspective, you pass seamlessly through the horizon and (less happily) hurtle on toward the black hole’s singularity, while from the distant observer’s perspective, you are immolated by a scorching corona that surrounds the horizon. Which perspective is right? The claim advanced by Susskind and others is that both are. Granted, this is hard to square with ordinary logic—the logic by which you are either alive or not alive. But this is no ordinary situation. Most saliently, the wildly different perspectives can never confront each other. You can’t climb out of the black hole and prove to the distant observer that you are alive. And, as it turns out, the distant observer can’t jump into the black hole and confront you with evidence that you’re not. When I said that the distant observer “sees” you immolated by the black hole’s Hawking radiation, that was a simplification. The distant observer, by closely examining the tired radiation that reaches her, can piece together the story of your fiery demise. But for the information to reach her takes time. And the math shows that by the time she can conclude you’ve burned, she won’t have enough time left to then hop into the black hole and catch up with you before you’re destroyed by the singularity. Perspectives can differ, but physics has a built-in fail-safe against paradoxes.