Information Cannot Disappear Permanently....

The findings, reported in the 20 May issue of Physical Review Letters, are good news for quantum mechanics, because they support the idea that information cannot disappear permanently. But, by calling singularities into question, they spell trouble for relativity. If black holes are not singularities, then the continuum of spacetime described by Einstein must be only an approximation, says Ashtekar. That's not necessarily a bad thing. "[It] opens the door to a lot of new explorations," Ashtekar says. "They may lead to physics beyond Einstein."

The team's work is particularly fascinating because it provides a mathematical basis for actually looking into black holes, says astronomer Kimberly Weaver of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Black holes are such mysteries that this may be the only way we're going to be able to know what's going on inside them," she says. Weaver says astronomers will be looking for evidence that black holes evaporate. If so, "we might be able to see information coming out, and that would be really exciting."

Read more..