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Fat Abe · 10-02-2010, 06:27 PM

A book using very little complex math and a lot of analogies is David Susskind's The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. It deals with the paradox of information loss after an "object" has crossed the event horizon (boundary) of a black hole. Hawking once argued that such information would be lost to the universe in which the object pre-existed. Then he came up with an alternate theory. Additional coverage can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%...93Preskill_bet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_h...mation_paradox

It goes without saying that the problem may not be resolved for millenia, if ever. Some argue that crossing an event horizon is unobservable.

There are concepts of physics that are almost mystical in their realization. The mathematics behind them just leads from one paradox to another, which means that no theoretical description is complete. What we create is a byproduct of our own evolution and the physical limitations of our brains. How is it possible for the human mind to even hold a logically consistent thesis, when we can't even agree on global warming?

Happy reading.

10-02-2010, 06:27 PM	#9
Fat Abe Man Who Stares at Books Posts: 1,826 Karma: 10606722 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: 50th State, USA. Also, PA, NY, CA, and elsewhere. Device: All of the Above	A book using very little complex math and a lot of analogies is David Susskind's The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. It deals with the paradox of information loss after an "object" has crossed the event horizon (boundary) of a black hole. Hawking once argued that such information would be lost to the universe in which the object pre-existed. Then he came up with an alternate theory. Additional coverage can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%...93Preskill_bet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_h...mation_paradox It goes without saying that the problem may not be resolved for millenia, if ever. Some argue that crossing an event horizon is unobservable. There are concepts of physics that are almost mystical in their realization. The mathematics behind them just leads from one paradox to another, which means that no theoretical description is complete. What we create is a byproduct of our own evolution and the physical limitations of our brains. How is it possible for the human mind to even hold a logically consistent thesis, when we can't even agree on global warming? Happy reading.