Space Forum / Astronomy / July 2008

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-susskind26-2008jul26,0,797
8363.story
Leonard Susskind: "So the question is, What happens to the information
trapped in the black hole? Stephen said it was lost forever. Stephen
didn't just say it, he proved it. At least he convinced himself and
everybody else mathematically that it was true. It violates one of the
fundamental principles of physics, which says nothing is ever lost
completely. You may say, "How can you say information isn't lost? I
can erase information on my computer." But every time a bit of
information is erased, we know it doesn't disappear. It goes out into
the environment. It may be horribly scrambled and confused, but it
never really gets lost. It's just converted into a different
form.....One result is something called Black Hole Complementarity.
Let's say Alice falls into a black hole while Bob stays on the outside
and watches. Nothing drastic happens to her when she crosses the event
horizon [the point of no return around a black hole]. Of course she's
eventually going to get it. On the other hand, there is another
picture of the black hole, where every bit of information that you
throw onto the horizon of a black hole gets sort of stuck on the
horizon and builds up a soup of information bits. And this soup is
hot, about a 100 billion billion billion degrees. We have a dilemma.
One theory, based on general relativity, simply says Alice just floats
past the horizon. That would be Alice's view of things. But Bob's view
of things, if he believes in quantum mechanics, is that Alice falls
into this soup of hot bits and her molecules are ripped apart. So,
which one is correct? Alice can't both be killed at the horizon and
not killed at the horizon. The answer is they are both correct. These
two ideas are not in conflict because to be in conflict, there has to
be a contradiction. Well, nobody can see a contradiction for the
simple reason that nobody can send a message from the inside of a
black hole. Alice can't send a message saying, "Bob, I'm OK, don't
worry about me," because the message can't get out of the black hole.
Yet everything Bob sees is consistent with saying that Alice was
thermalized. We've had these things before in Einstein's thought
experiments. Einstein, in the special theory of relativity, proved
that different observers, in different states of motion, see different
realities."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/26/healthandwellbeing2
"American psyche. Everyone thinks that Einstein was so smart. Let's
examine this. What was his big contribution? Everyone knows that: the
theory of relativity. This theory states that, when moving near the
speed of light, everything is related. For example: say your uncle is
moving at the speed of light. Then he is also my uncle. Also, our
uncle, moving faster than the speed of light, becomes smaller and goes
slightly back in time, to the moment just before he accelerated past
the speed of light, at which time he goes back to his regular size.
This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the original size of
one's uncle. The other theory Einstein developed was Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle, which stated that Einstein felt unsure about
Heisenberg. Heisenberg responded with his famous Einstein's Annoying
Theory, which stated that Heisenberg found Einstein hard to take. Some
believe their dispute originated when Einstein tricked Heisenberg into
travelling faster than the speed of light, thus decreasing
Heisenberg's mass - and Heisenberg was already quite small. After
Heisenberg came back from travelling at the speed of light, Einstein
could hold him in one hand. And often did, to Heisenberg's
consternation, causing Einstein to formulate his Heisenberg's
Consternated Theorum. But history proved Einstein wrong, since there
is no such word as "consternated". The idea that mass decreases as one
approaches the speed of light is compelling, especially for dieters.
It implies that one way to lose weight is to run, briefly, at the
speed of light. As stated above, the downside is one will also go back
in time. So you'll be lighter, but may find yourself in the 1400s,
when everyone was lighter, due to malnutrition, and no one will even
notice you've lost weight. Also, due to your modern clothes, you'll
probably be declared a witch and burned at the stake. On the bright
side, post-burning, you'll achieve your lowest body weight. Einstein
once explained relativity like this: "If you're sitting on a hot stove
for even a minute, it will seem like an eternity; but if you're
sitting on a hot stove with a pretty girl, your a.s will burst into
flames and not a girl in the world will seem pretty. Trust me, I've
tried it." Part of Einstein's mystique was his tendency to wander
around completely lost, hair sticking up, playing the violin.
Heisenberg tried this but was too small, well-organised and balding,
so ended up with neat hair, dragging his violin behind him, sure where
he was. And hence Einstein is remembered as the greater genius."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com