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An information paradox is a paradox about information. Such paradoxes include:
- Arrow's information paradox — the difficulty of selling information when describing the nature of the information to the buyer would, in itself, communicate the essential information.
- Black hole information paradox — information may be lost when a black hole evaporates but this would violate the principles of quantum mechanics.
One of the important aspects of the thermodynamics of black holes relates to the black hole information paradox. This paradox may well have a solution in string theory, either in the string theory analyses described in the previous section or in the holographic principle.
Hawking had said that if an object falls into a black hole, the only information that is retained are the quantum mechanical properties of mass, spin, and charge. All other information was stripped away.
The problem with this is that quantum mechanics is built on the idea that information can’t be lost. If information can be lost, then quantum mechanics isn’t a secure theoretical structure. Hawking, as a relativist, was more concerned with maintaining the theoretical structure of general relativity, so he was okay with the information being lost if it had to be.
Another way to approach the problem of black hole information loss is through the holographic principle of Leonard Susskind and Gerard ’t Hooft, or the related AdS/CFT correspondence developed by Juan Maldacena. If these principles hold for black holes, it may be possible that all the information within the black hole is also encoded in some form on the surface area of the black hole.
Still one other approach is to look at the potential multiverse. It’s possible that the information that enters a black hole is, in some way, passed from this universe into a parallel universe.
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