The Black Hole War (2008) by Leonard Susskind


The Black Hole War (2008) by Leonard Susskind

This book is part “black hole physics” crash-course, and part Susskind’s personal story of proving his stance on the most contentious black hole debate of the 1990s-2000s. A large contingent of the physics community, led by Stephen Hawking, believed that information drawn into a black hole was lost forever - vanished from existence. But Susskind, seeing that such a claim would upend the fundamental law of conservation of mass and energy, couldn’t accept it.

Wildly enough, in his pursuit to disprove information loss in black holes, Susskind formulated two other theories which are an arguably greater upheaval of the way we view the world and its phenomena…

First is “black hole complementarity”, which goes beyond Einstein’s special relativity conclusion that the timing of an event is different relative to the observer - and states that, in the case of information passing the horizon of a black hole (the point where nothing can escape its gravitational pull), the event itself is different relative to the observer. Falling past the horizon in tandem with a piece of matter would have no observable effect, while an observer outside of the horizon would see the matter assaulted by the infinitely high temperature of the horizon and spread across its entirety.

Second is the “holographic principle”, which claims that all 3-dimensional information in a given space is merely a projection of that information, stored in a 2-dimensional form at that space’s outer boundary. And if I understand correctly, this implies that all information sucked into a black hole, rather than being lost, is stored in the horizon bounding it.

Hawking eventually conceded to Susskind’s side of the debate, with the understanding that information in a black hole still exists as part of the radiation emitted from its horizon. Funny enough, this radiation that contributed to the case against information-loss was Hawking’s own discovery from before the “black hole war” began, and bears his name: “Hawking radiation”.

I appreciate Susskind’s writing here, not only for his engaging personal storytelling, but for his largely-successful attempt at presenting technical physics in a framework that regular people like me can (mostly) understand. Although - reading this book has left me fairly dissatisfied with the state of modern physics, because the “proof” behind theories explaining black holes and quantum phenomena ( like string theory) lie outside the possibility of practical testing. All of the math and conclusions drawn from these theories seem to be based on proportional frameworks, or even worse - resolved in theoretical environments fundamentally different from the real world (even the defining blow in the “black hole war” was founded on mathematics in “anti de Sitter space”, a type of space that doesn’t even reflect the world we live in). Nonetheless, I’m fascinated by the progression of quantum physics and its march toward understanding the universe, even if it means rewiring what we know about how events work, space-time, and the existence of information altogether.

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