[21762] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Black Hole Encryption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Schear)
Tue Apr 4 21:46:02 2006
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Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2006 11:15:59 -0700
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Steve Schear <s.schear@comcast.net>
What happens to the quantum information ingested by a black hole? In 1997,=
=20
Thorne and Hawking argued that information swallowed by a black hole is=20
forever hidden, despite the fact that these dense objects do emit a=20
peculiar kind of radiation and eventually evaporate. Preskill countered=20
that for quantum mechanics to remain valid, the theory mandates that the=20
information has to be released from the evaporating black hole in some=20
fashion. Although Hawking conceded in 2004, the disagreement between=20
Preskill and Thorne still stands.
Smolin and Oppenheim now find that one of the main assertions made about=20
black holes may be flawed. It is often assumed that as the black hole=20
evaporates, all of the information gets stored in the remnant until the=20
very end, at which point the information is either released or else=20
disappears forever. Instead, Smolin and Oppenheim suggest that the=20
information is distributed among the quanta thatescape during evaporation,=
=20
but is encrypted and thus effectively locked away.
The catch is that it can only be accessed with the help of the quanta=20
released when the black hole disappears, in much the same way as a=20
cryptographic key unlocks a coded message. The result offers a link between=
=20
general relativity and quantum cryptography. =97 DV
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 081302 (2006).
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