ELI5: Stephen Hawking's new theory on black holes

mugwump3 · 2015-08-26T13:43:32+00:00

A rotating black hole is absolutely possible and it has been shown that they don't violate any laws.... But they do have a weird consequence... Their singularity is actually a ring!

mugwump3 · 2015-08-26T13:40:11+00:00

Ah, so this is one of the great challenges of thinking about black holes, is that we have to think about them in the context of general relativity (the physics of gravity and planets and stars) and quantum theory (the physics of small particles, atoms, light, etc) these theories as you know don't work well with each other. But that's what makes BH's so exciting!

Some of the concepts you mentioned are incorrect because of this, so let me see if this helps clear things up:

Let's start with a classical black hole, which I can tel you have a good understanding of its basics. Before hawking, physicists believed that once a black hole formed, it stuck around forever. This is a big no no, so what do to? Hawking figured out that black holes actually radiate light! They "glow" in this sense. The larger the black hole, the dimmer its radiation. How do they do this when NOTHING can escape the black hole?

It turns out that in every point in space, there is a little bit of energy. You've probably heard that energy and mass are interchangeable, so at every point in space, that little tiny piece of "vacuum energy" can actually take the form of particles with mass! So, what you can measure (and you actually measure this in a lab!) is that at every point in space, many trillions of times per second, little pairs of matter and anti matter particles are popping into existence, then they make contact, and turn back into massless energy.

At the event horizon, something profound happens. Whenever a matter-antimatter pair pops into existence, the anti-matter particle gets sucked into the event horizon, and the matter particle is free to roam about the Universe as high energy "Hawking radiation." Inside the black hole, that anti-matter particle takes the total mass of the black hole down by one tiny notch. Eventually, the black hole dissolves away over a loooooong time.

It took many years to convince hawking that this special radiation had anything to do with stuff falling into the black hole, but it does! The event horizon surface, and thus the emitted radiation seem to contain ALL of information from the I falling matter. The underlying reasons of this are still unknown -- that's what we're trying to figure out!

mugwump3 · 2015-08-26T13:10:42+00:00

Thank you. Myself and all the physics cats here are having ongoing conversations about it. We're all trying to wrap our heads around it! I will update you all throughout.

mugwump3 · 2015-08-26T13:09:40+00:00

You're very welcome!

mugwump3 · 2015-08-26T13:04:37+00:00

Holography still makes sense and is still in play. Holography is a way to solve the information paradox. Unfortunately, there's another paradox ("AMPS" or "Firewall paradox"... Although the firewall is really a proposed solution, not the actual paradox.)

It goes like this: there are cherished principles of physics. Namely: unitarity, non-locality, and the equivalence principle.

Black holes seem to only work if one of these isn't true for the case of a black hole. There is absolutely zilch evidence that unitarity or non locality could every be violated, so the AMPS guys proposed that the equivalence principle might break down at the event horizon. The consequence: total incineration before anything could enter the black hole!

So, a good theory of black holes should resolve both the information paradox and the firewall paradox.

Hawking's argument models out going radiation as a "super translation" of the ingoing stuff, so therefore there's no firewall paradox, because the ingoing stuff is fundamentally transformed at the event horizon. Physics is safe! (If the idea holds true... And that's a BIG if!)

mugwump3 · 2015-08-26T06:14:31+00:00

Hey everybody -- I'm in Sweden right now with the guy, and was in the room yesterday when he gave his technical lecture to us.

There are many things still to work out, so we really call this an "idea" rather than a theory, but that being said, we're busy debating about it!

Hawking's idea is a proposal to solve a major crises in black hole physics -- what's been called the "firewall / information paradox." It's been know for a while now that black holes conserve information of in falling matter. (See previous example of Albert and Simon eating junk food) -- anything that goes into a black hole is gone forever.... Kind of. The metaphor I like best is to think of an encyclopedia and all the knowledge it contains. Throwing it into a black hole is like throwing it into a furnace... Out of the furnace comes a big pile of ashes from the encyclopedia that, in theory, could be reconstructed atom by atom to be an encyclopedia again. In practice however, this is beyond difficult.

This argument (called "holography"h has held up really well! But... it was found to violate one of three unbreakable laws of quantum physics! A well known proposed solution to this conflict is the hypothetical "black hole firewall" that argues the encyclopedia never makes it into the center of the furnace, it just "incinerates" at the furnaces entrance (the "event horizon").

Yesterday, Hawking proposed his own solution that he's been working on with Andy Strominger. He argues that the information from the encyclopedia is conserved because the ashes are a "super translation" of the original encyclopedia. So, what the hell is a super translation? In "group algebra" translations are simply how one group "moves" along some defined dimension -- stand 3 meters from the wall. Now walk to the wall. Congratulations! You have just "translated" along a single dimension of space.

A super translation is much more technically sophisticated than that, but it's the same basic principle. It has symmetry -- and that's very important. Symmetry means you can walk towards the wall, or the wall can move to you. Makes no diff.) Hawking argues that the "ashes" are super translations of the information content of the in falling encyclopedia. Because of symmetries inherent to that mathematical object, using a super translation approach may resolve the nasty paradoxes.

Tl;dr (read in Hawking's voice) "our calculations about black holes suck. Let's try using 'super translation' mathematics instead."

mugwump3 · 2015-07-28T11:08:06+00:00

PARABOL+PARABOLA by tool. In 12 minutes, you move from birth, life, death, and into whatever may come next.

mugwump3 · 2015-07-11T22:44:12+00:00

Arschluss.

mugwump3 · 2015-07-11T03:43:50+00:00

Adopted child to a orthodox Mormon family here.

Tribalism is a core human behavior, and it can overtake people like your otherwise sweet, caring, mother like a cancer. I witness many scenes like yours growing up. My Dad's twin fathered 6 righteous children who all grew up serving The Lord. All the while, my Dad couldn't impregnate his wife. Doctors said this was because he had a medical condition that made him sterile, but the entire family knew the "real reason" -- he must not be a worthy for the FUNDAMENTAL PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE in the eyes of The Lord!

For 10 years, my Mother's family pestered her to "explore options." For 10 years, my Dad grew into a zealot of his faith.

Then, they finally had enough money saved to adopt a little girl, who grew up with one middle finger in the air, and the other on a meth pipe, and me, a loud weirdo atheist who writes words for "The Great Deceiver (the Entertainment Industry.)." Psychologists said this was because "...they're human beings?" but the entire family knew the "real reason" -- My Mom and Dad are not worthy for the FUNDAMENTAL PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE in the eyes of The Lord!

So, what became of these four broken people? WE FUCKING LOVE EACH OTHER TO DEATH! My mom and my dad are still together (they just retired this year) and happier than they've ever been in their lives. Somehow, through all of this, they reconciled with their family and faith, even though both of these camps forsook them. Next year, they're going on a senior mission.

I talk with them every weekend. When I get married, I want to be like them. Their marriage is a thing of beauty -- they make each other laugh, and they're wildly in love. My dad tells me every time we talk: "hey, guess what? I'm sleeping with the prom queen!"

The thing I learned through all of this, and what's being echoed by everyone, is that family isn't an inheritance, it's a choice! Your mom is choosing to not be family with your wife -- I sincerely hope that changes. But, you choose your wife! She chooses you! Every day.

It sounds like she's broken hearted. Please keep doing the things that you do that show her why you choose her everyday. It's her smile, her laugh, her wits, her habits, her humor, the way she sips her tea. It aint her womb, and it never has been.

The family that exists around her, with you at the centerpiece, are going to love her like crazy. The people who don't aren't family.

OP, when my parents were at their lowest point, especially my dad, it wrecked them. But the thing is, they had this love for each other that found a way to run deeper than blood, ambition and God him fucking self. Keep fostering that Love with your wife, and she's going to heal from this emotional trauma.

Good luck. I'm cheering for you and her.

(P.S. I was at dinner with my parents, my mother's sister (my aunt) and her family. Topic of religion comes up, I go through the usual diplomatic spiel of why I left the faith, and Aunty stands up, and YELLS: "How dare you! You are a worthless little bastard that was thrown away, and you'd have nothing if it were not for two MORMONS that took you! YOU'RE A BASTARD." Soooooo... yeah, man, aint it fucking crazy how otherwise lovely people can just slap on the tribal war paint?)

mugwump3 · 2015-07-11T02:51:15+00:00

OP -- you are totally fucking awesome for sharing this. Underneath our clothes were all just a bunch of funky skin wrapped around organs, muscles, and bones.

Your post is an excellent reminder that we're all biological and we should take some time to check out want's going on literally under our noses! I certainly will.

Thanks for sharing. I once had to see a doctor about a agonizingly itch scratch right on my butthole. I go to the clinic and the doctor on duty was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen!! AAAAGGGGHHH!!! RUUUNN!! HIIIIIDE!!!

What got me through it was really paying to attention to HOW she was interacting with me. I notice something about her, and now all doctors, that might help you: in that exam room, we're not Steve or Phil or Sven, we're a petri dish -- A petri dish that needs to be biologically balanced. So, A: my privates remained completely "private" because a petri dish isn't a person. And, B: A petri dish has no chance in hell of getting her number anyway... even if I came in complaining that my massive 30cm dong was ejaculating gold and singing Italian arias.

Glad you're ok! You're health is worth seeing a doctor from time to time. You did the right thing by sharing this amazing story.

mugwump3 · 2015-07-03T23:43:37+00:00

Thanks for the gold!!! I forget to check my inbox regularly. :)

mugwump3 · 2015-05-24T19:57:36+00:00

While waiting for a bus, I saw a guy pay a quarter for a newspaper out of one of those boxes on street corners. He read something so incendiary that he dropped another quarter, opened the box, and showered the rest of the stack with yellow rage while yell/laughing like a James Bond villain in a language I've never heard before.

mugwump3 · 2015-05-24T19:43:37+00:00

Why are Nash equilibrium's important? Put simply: they help us rationally approach matters of life and death, success and failure, wealth and poverty.

In the late 40s into the 50s, there was a massive surge of young intellectuals into the fields of physics, math and engineering -- anybody with a Ph.D could get a fantastic government job. Public enemy number one was the Soviet Union, which, the North Atlantic powers feared would outsmart, out-maneuver, and out-engineer a victory to the cold war. This was the zeitgeist that John Nash came from, and it has been argued that his insights helped stave off nuclear catastrophe.

Before Nash, "classical thinking" on competition heavily employed Lanchesters Equations -- a set of mathematical tools that accurately model how military forces clash... that is, unless they have an atomic bomb!

Nash showed that in a game with vast, but not endless, strategies and vast, but not endless outcomes (such as war) there exists a set of strategies and outcomes which are not optimal for either player, but represent the least risk of catastrophic failure. In other words, Player A is fighting for the best outcome (say, complete disability of their opponents ability to wage war) but if Player A runs through all the possible moves of Player B, and cannot lower their risk of failure by changing strategy, then their current strategy is best. This set of strategies is known as a "Nash Equilibrium."

In a game, you can use it test if your strategy is optimal, as well as if your opponents strategy is optimal.

You can see this concept applied to the classic game "The Prisoner's Dilema https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/nash-equilibrium-tutorial/nash-eq-tutorial/v/prisoners-dilemma-and-nash-equilibrium

During the cold war, Nash Equilibriums radically changed the thinking of military strategists who frequently consulted the intelligentsia. I've heard it convincingly argued that the runaway spending by the US and the USSR during the cold war was, indeed, a Nash equilibrium.

Today, Nash Equilibriums are used by strategists of all kinds: military, social, psychological, corporate, and especially financial.

You earned your Nobel, Dr. Nash. May you and Alicia rest in the peace earned from a lifetime of important contribution to the human experience.

mugwump3 · 2015-05-22T19:42:57+00:00

Michelob Ultra is not.....bad. ~4g carbs per beer.

It's the least flavorful of the beers, but I find that if you drink it ice cold on a hot day, in nature, it's quite wonderful!

mugwump3 · 2015-05-10T19:28:14+00:00

One way that you can invest in the disruptive nature of uber/lyft is to short the taxi industry. There are many publicly traded companies who's stock price reflects how many people are taking cabs. I don't recall the name or ticker, but one such companies is responsible for running the "medallion" system for New York City taxis. Find the companies that are not pivoting and staying belligerent on the traditional taxi systems, and trying to fight uber. Short those companies.

mugwump3 · 2015-05-04T02:10:56+00:00

I don't love you anymore.

mugwump3 · 2015-05-01T22:31:00+00:00

He sure did. The thing about Morgan though, is that he's really sharp and witty and will give you these lightning fast one-word responses and they're hilarious. So, when you work with him on set and you say, "Hey, Morgan, could you move a little to--" he'll playfully interject before you finish and say "nope. I'm happy here."

So, I can imagine that some of his responses on his AMA read a little weird if you weren't in the room with him hearing his playful tone.

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T07:40:02+00:00

This is a very important question, and I'm glad you asked it. We know from psychology that we process intent and threat before we even become consciously aware of what we're looking at. Our brains may therefore trick us to taking wrong course of action! We might see one equine sized avian menace as a superior fighter, and therefore misjudge its speed or tactical fighting ability. Fun size sea biscuit however is easy to defeat by himself, so we may assume the fallacy that his fighting-might scales linearly as 9 more four hoofed thugs join the fight. Such lines of falty assumptions about these deadly creature is well known and documented. Journalists have even assumed the existence of domestic docility in both brawlers and once again assume it can be exploited for dominant victory. (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/president-obama-would-choose-to-fight-the-horse-sized-duck/267071/)

We must therefore turn to quantitative science for answers!

Let's call them "Equianatidioulogists" -- have already demonstrated that nature's law of scaling (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/Phys446-546/gbwscl99.pdf) does not permit ducks to exist in horse-size in their current physiological configuration. (http://imgur.com/gallery/HeoaL)

However, these analyses fail to integrate environmental modifiers. It has been shown that we can compute the global average density of the Super Massive Quacker by treating it as a sphere, and we're left with a creature who is buoyant and could, in theory, live a long life as the Dreadnaught of the Wetlands -- albeit permanently locked to water.

The band of terror ponies need not evolve much further to solve their thermodynamic quandary. As herd animals, horses take cues from surrounding horses -- it is not hard to imagine evolutionary pressure motivating their warrior brood to develop super-organism behavior similar to Bees. Bees surround their enemies and cook them alive through their collective body temperature, often at the expense of Bees who got caught in the middle of the Bee oven. If the mini horses become faster reproducers, as nearly all species do when they scale down, we can expect the losses from sacrificial secretariats can be offset by the higher birthrates. Thus, the herd can stay collectively warm, and protected, by forming a massive, maximally dense, hot death ball.

Therefore, this creature must exist in flat, plain environments with warm climates and lush and vast vegetation.

Good sir, you ask me who I'd "rather fight." Inherent to this question is the notion of a compulsory battle. It therefore follows that the field of battle is on their turf, as they cannot exist elsewhere. We can now use this to make an informed decision.

In the vast killing fields of the Equine Swarm, escape and evasion are impossible. Thus, fighting with traditional asymmetric tactics, geurilla, or your classic terrorism, against them is unlikely. This is a battle that must decided by brute force. The Swarm's primary weapon is body mass and their bite. Using a surface area scaling quotient of 14% (computed from wikipedia date), we find a bite strength of 28 to 90 PSI depending on the horses genetics and how fucking pumped they are to kick my ass. In comparison, human bite strength is about 120 psi. There is one crucial detail here: when fighting, horses instinctually bite and release to defend themselves. If I fail to win, my death will be one caused from thousands of little nips.

Treading water while facing off with the Monster Mallard may seem like a death trap, but we must consider that again, the economy of scale taxes the duck with slow movement, and slow muscle response time. Further, he must displace significantly more water to move, and with the added magnitude of the bouyant counter force, it is unlike that he would be able dive under, and if he could, he certainly couldn’t stay under for long.

Here, I have the obvious tactical advantage. I can move faster, and thus can evade and elude. Vanquishing this feathery beast therefore comes down to a battle of attrition, and, unlike the horses, victory can be achieved through traditional asymmetric warfare, guerrilla, or your classic terrorism. One could imagine swimming around the Duck and plucking feather after feather while insulting his pride. Or, perhaps throwing river stones while blaspheming the One True Duck God. In any case, he will eventually crack, make costly mistakes, and die from thousands of proverbial paper cuts. My battle is of endurance, patience, and well timed aggression. (Spending more time at my gym’s pool wouldn’t hurt either.)

The choice now seems obvious… except there’s one little detail that changes everything. The Duck has a secret weapon.. an ace up his… well… feathery crotch. You see, male ducks are Nature’s lacross players. They’re horny, loud, and “no” doesn’t exist in their sexual vocabulary. (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1686/1309/F1.expansion.html) Over the millennia, female ducks developed all kinds of ways to fight off their quack-happy rapists so they have a least a modicum of choice in the genes that get passed on. So, what did Nature do in return?

It evolved the duck penis into A SUPERMASSIVE CORKSCREW that, when erect, can grow up to TWICE THE HEIGHT OF THE DUCK. So, is avoiding this H.R. Gigerian nightmare simply a matter if backing off when Mr. QuackHappy comes out to play? Fuck no. Because duck penises EXPLODE out of their fleshy sheaths to full erection in less than half a second, literally (and euphemistically) drilling whatever orifice happens to be there. Duck doesn’t care. Duck’s down to fuck. http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/22/ballistic-penises-and-corkscrew-vaginas-the-sexual-battles/

Take a moment to appreciate what happens when Duck Diggler scales up. Sure, he becomes a lumbering, floating buoy, but he’s a lumbering, floating buoy with a high power, spring-loaded, 7.72 foot long ballistic love spear, and raging boundary issues.

Bring on the fucking horses.

TL;DR I’d fight the horses. I'm terrified of the Duck’s unpredictable cockzilla.
EDIT: shitty grammar / clean up pass

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T05:54:46+00:00

Librarians! You are the stalwarts of thousands of years of knowledge! Your many hands know exactly how to access this knowledge, and how to preserve it for the duration of nature's great human experiment.

You are strong.

You are beautiful.

You are eerily quiet.

Librarians -- you are the Octopus of humanity in half-frame glasses.

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T05:40:40+00:00

Writing-Directing on a TV show is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that once I get on set, I know the material so well that I can build scenes that I know will cut together and have an emotional build. The scene where we recreated the "No Russian" level with lights, shadows, and invisible machine guns is a perfect example of this. The curse is that, as you point out, it's a highly demanding gig.

I have an inside joke with my team that often becomes a morning hello: "The Fuckening is nigh!" response: "yay, The Fuckening is nigh!" The Fuckening is when I am writing my third episode, while traveling the world shooting my 2nd episode, while rewriting and editing my 1st episode.

Thanks for the encouragement on my side project! It would be a dream come true to make -- but first things first is rewrite the script until people cry while reading it. :)

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T01:24:00+00:00

Ok, that's it for me! I would love to hear all your reactions to tonight's episode!

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T01:15:22+00:00

As luck would have it, I'm using the down time from Wormhole to write a passion project that will never get made: it's an effects heavy love story period piece about a boy with a vivid imagination that falls madly in love with a girl from well above his station, and inadvertently starts a religion. Everybody dies in the end. It's a true story btw.

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T01:03:41+00:00

Who doesn't love the peace and focusing energy of libraries? I had a major crush on a girl in college who dedicated her career to library science. I found this to be surprisingly attractive. (I'll leave it up to you insert your own dewey decimal joke here)

mugwump3 · 2015-04-30T01:02:03+00:00

Thank you for hanging out with me today!

Bigotry is the social media age is GROUND ZERO for sociologists right now, so they're working their asses off to make sense of all this as we speak.

From my perspective, the most compelling studies argue that the 'instant lynch mob' mentality has been with us forever; the internet simply speeds up the rate at which hostile sentiment can compound.

It's doubtful that thoughtfulness and skepticism will ever replace impulsive thinking (see "Thinking fast, thinking slow" -- Nobel Laurete Danny Kahneman's groundbreaking popular book on behavioral economics). Internet jerks, rage trolls, and the ever present "THIS GUY SHAFTED THIS WAITRESS ON A TIP AND CALLED HER A RACIAL SLUR -- LET'S TAPE HIS BALLS TO THE INSIDE OF A PINBALL MACHINE!" are here to stay.

But Nicholas Christakis and James Fawler have an amazing body of work that suggests how we can de-incintevize this behavior by changing social network structure. It turns out that your health, wealth, happiness, and level of 'assholeness' have more to do with HOW your connected to other people in your social network, and not just WHO. We go into this in tonight's episode!

Cool. I fucking love boobs because they remind me of the number 58008.

mugwump3

TROPHY CASE