north
December 10, 2008, 4:52am
21
I think people here are confusing mathematical terms with physical ones…
Now i can’t talk about what hawkins says or what anyone else says… but I am familiar with general relativity and quantum mechanics… The concept of a singularity is basically a nullification of activity… “information” is a term refering to physical states in a system. As you reduce the possible states in a system the “information” contained is lost.
A “bit” of information is basically one state… which in classical physics is either true or false “on” or “off”… a “bit” of information in quantum mechanics is a dimensional vector. “Losing” information in a black hole is basically saying that this state is no longer an option… or this vector is no longer possible…
reducing the number of states in a system “speeds” it up but also means it dosn’t “change” very much at all. for example a system with only 2 states would be done one step after it began but it would be almost no different than when it began, and the only place to go from the second state would be back to the original state. There is very limited information there… there are only 2 “bits” of information.
A black hole or a singularity is a gravity well… where gravity by virtue of a uniform influence on each state gives us a unidirectional vector of all states reduce the number of possible states.
So if I have a system that goes from state 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 before going back to 1… If then i introduce gravity into this system such that it influences state 2 so as to lead back to state one… It would have reduced the “bits” of information. there would now only be 2 possible states.
A singularity is then when there is but one possible state… only one “bit” of information…
Now if the development of a system or operation of it were like in classical physics the system would be irreversably destroyed… There is no way to reach state number 3 from that 2 bit system…
But quantum mechanics operates on probabilities… each vector or “bit” of quantum information is operated, or shifted into the next state with a determined half-life… so the best you can ever achieve with a quantum state is to increase the half-life of state 1 to state 2… the information is still there… the shift is still possible… the half-life is merely extended to such a degree that the probability in each state is reduced to near infinite… but it will shift… so the information is maintained…
So one can sa things like “Chemistry is paused” in a singularity… but quantum states remain active…
If we were to imagine each “shift” of a quantum state as a precurser to another shift in the system, then a cascade effect is achieved… depending on its point of origin it might cascade past the gravitational influence thus “dispersing” the singularity… or fall back down into it.
It’s not something magical where “time stops”… whatever “time” is supposed to mean in that context…
But then… it’s been a long time since I read up on this stuff… I might be mixing it all together…
certainly I don’t know what you are on about
be clearer
Fin666
December 10, 2008, 1:29pm
22
Here is another article about the same study
kansascity.com/105/story/931670.html
Relevant quotes:
Not many astronomers doubt the holes exist anymore. The precision of measurements [of a black hole dead center in the Milky Way] supports the theory that all galaxies are formed around black holes, so dense with such gravity that even light cannot escape its pull.
Researchers have studied this one for 16 years — recently with the aid of two Chilean telescopes — and by now they were both pretty sure it was there and pretty sure of the size. Now, they’re much more sure.
[The black hole at the center of our galaxy] was detected by watching the orbits of 28 stars — many of which acted like a random swarm of bees — near the center of the galaxy, said Richard Genzel, at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.
Genzel’s team was able to observe the stellar movements with enough magnification to have been able to resolve a coin 6,000 miles away. The black hole is actually 158 thousand, million, million miles away.
The above links don’t say anything. It’s like a Christian telling us Jesus was real. Nothing of merit.