information matters

I watched a pretty cool documentary on iplayer about Stephen Hawking and one of his more controversial theories, found here.

Its mainly to do with a theory called the Information Paradox he made over 30 years ago about intrinsic information in matter, that when matter is taken in to a black hole, the information is lost - i.e no data can be retrieved, that matter is destroyed. Say for example if you smashed a chocolate egg even into millions of little pieces, you could (with time and an eye for pedantry) collect all the pieces and put it together again, to make the chocolate egg good as new. Not so with matter going into a black hole, so goes the theory, the matter just disappears. Its highly controversial and physicists have clamoured over proving him wrong. Why? Well, here's some of the implications if the theory was true, in Hawking's own words:

"Scientists usually assume there is a unique correspondence between the past and the future, cause and effect. But if information is lost, this is not the case. one wouldn't be able to predict the future with certainty, and one couldn't be sure what happened in the past."

In the end, scientists disregarded this paradox in favour of other more plausible explanations, and indeed Hawking conceded to say that he thought he was wrong too. However, I'm quite intrigued by what he said about loss of information - and it's implications.

"one couldn't be sure what happened in the past."

If matter information was lost, then there would be matter information that scientists would not be able to study, hence closing the door for being able to study everything about the universe, therefore giving a limit to the amount that we can study about the universe. Like if I was to read a book while the author was tipp-exing bits out just as you were reading it. We'd get bits of glorious understanding even if we had a whole page that was not tampered with, but unable to see the whole picture that the original book would give.

"one wouldn't be able to predict the future with certainty"

Equally the lack of information would hit hard on the end-time fire and brimstone zealots, who would as a result would not be able to predict an end time event based on the things that have already occurred, as we have not seen the full picture of the things that have already occurred, what with some of the information relating to the past being lost to black holes. You could even say that the most scientifically plausible origin of the universe, the big bang (one of Hawking's ideas) comes into question itself. Without the full information available before the black holes in the universe started taking them away, the start event of the universe could look a lot different than with the cue cards we've been given. It's difficult to understand just how much matter information could have been lost between a universe start event and the present time. What if it was over half, or even more, and our universe is a dead husk compared to many many years ago? Or, what if the amount is so minimal that we have the picture of the universe like a 1000 piece puzzle with only one piece missing?

Either way, all these 'ifs' come from the perspective of matter information being lost, which, as I have mentioned, is not accepted in scientific circles as a viable way to approach black hole physics. But I am glad that a product of Stephen Hawking's thinking has provided a backdrop for discussion into a potential limit to human scientist discovery and a dent to Christian know-it-all pride, all in one fell swoop.