What is the nature of information in black holes?

AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the nature of information in black holes, highlighting the debate between Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind regarding whether information is lost when matter falls into a black hole. Initially, Hawking argued that information is destroyed at the event horizon, but later revised his stance to suggest that information might be conserved on the black hole's surface. Susskind proposed that this conserved information could be represented as a quantum hologram, suggesting a two-dimensional nature with three-dimensional illusions. The conversation emphasizes that while classical physics applies to black holes, the understanding of information remains incomplete, particularly around the event horizon. This ongoing debate illustrates the complexities of black hole physics and the fundamental questions about the nature of information itself.
shounakbhatta
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Hello.

I was reading through Black holes and what happen when information falls inside the black hole. The intellectual battle between Susskind and Hawking...I also heard through the lectures on Susskind describing what is information.

(a) Bits
(b) A single photon
(c) The n number of molecules ......

If anybody can explain what is information?

Thanks.
 
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Information in this context is charge, spin, and mass
 
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I am also curious to know more about it.
 
In the context of something falling into a black hole, information is everything you would need to know to reproduce the object that has made the descent and its exact state. When estimating the amount of information required to describe such an object, the unit "bits" can be used - but the information is never actually in bit form. That is, if the amount of information required to fully describe a rock is X petabytes, that doesn't mean that that information is available for downloading to your X petabyte thumb drive.
 
shounakbhatta said:
Hello.

I was reading through Black holes and what happen when information falls inside the black hole. The intellectual battle between Susskind and Hawking...I also heard through the lectures on Susskind describing what is information.

(a) Bits
(b) A single photon
(c) The n number of molecules ......

If anybody can explain what is information?

Thanks.
The argument that Hawking first put forward was that all information was lost as material was torn to pieces at the event horizon. Susskind could not accept that all, or any?, information was lost.

Hawking redressed his original claim about the issue and put forward a proof that suggested that information might be conserved on the surface of a black hole, Susskind suggested that the conserved information might represent a type of quantum hologram - 2d with the aspects and illusions of 3d.

Calculations, by persons I can't quote, suggest that the surface of the black hole will increase proportional to the increase in information absorbed from the matter consumed, but I believe there is a published account of that argument. The Conservation of Information around a Black Hole...
 
This serves to demonstrate our definition of information is incomplete. Black holes seem entirely unaffected by this dichotomy. They are perfectly well behaved by all the usual laws of classical physics. It only gets weird when you probe around the event horizon.
 

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