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> Information, they now say with confidence, does escape a black hole. If you jump into one, you will not be gone for good. Particle by particle, the informatio

• macspoofing 6y ago
  Maybe not. From the article: "But the new calculations, though inspired by string theory, stand on their own, with nary a string in sight. Information gets out through the workings of gravity itself — just ordinary gravity with a single layer of quantum effects...Over the past two years, physicists have shown that the entanglement entropy of black holes really does follow the Page curve, indicating that information gets out. They did the analysis in stages. First, they showed how it would work using insights from string theory. Then, in papers published last fall, researchers cut the tether to string theory altogether." Sounds like there is no dependency on string theory.
  • tines 6y ago
    I took that to mean that they don't use string theory to prove anything per se. But it sounds like they got "insights" from string theory, which seems like it was useful for once? IANAP.
    • ojnabieoot 6y ago
      I am a mathematician with some physics background and have been skimming this article: they took mathematical inspiration from string theory in terms of how they formulated the path integrals, but the physical concept of a string doesn’t actually appear. So string theory provided analytic tools but didn’t actually provide physics.
• andrewflnr 6y ago
  Not in a useful sense, it just matched with another theory. The problem with string theory remains that we can't actually measure any of its predictions.
• immmmmm 6y ago
  I'm a former string theorist and no, it didn't produce a prediction here. The problem with getting predictions out of ST is that you need to find a vacuum (ground state) with 3 macroscopic space dimensions and no scalar fields (except for a Higgs). It is historically done by keeping some supersymmetry (for instance using Calaby Yau Manifolds) to keep the problem mathematically tractable. It is then a problem because no supersymmetry was found at CERN where it should have been (in some models) with this particular Higgs mass. This however doesn't mean that the theory has nothing to say. For instance AdS/CFT from which this paper uses inspiration was discovered using ST, but is believed to be more general. Also, i can tell you after working 4 years in the field: I think string theory (theories is more exact, there are at least 6) is incomplete: the part we understand is just a sector of a bigger theory where things are nice and geometric. For instance: many people say you cannot get flat vacuum in ST, this is incorrect some perfectly sound ST's have Minkowskian vacuum. Now for the hatred of some people against it (including many on this forum): some physicists in the field had big promises that were not kept, and that was a big mistake of them exposing their half-baked models to the public as it was The Solution. ST on Calaby Yau is indeed not the solution. On the other hand people like Lee Smolin and Sabine have overreacted (many times with bad arguments, and i respect their work and some of their criticism but it's not like they have perfect models themselves..) to this and the result ugly: An open war and a beautiful field of physics which is now destroyed by personal egos, collapsing funding and no hope for permanent postions. Let's be honest, no one understands a thing at this organised mess we call Nature. Not even Witten. In the end, be it MOND, ST, LQG, etc, etc they are just models, some models have no implementation in the real world but might be useful to improve our understanding of the world, this is how Physics works. It is very sad that people now think of ST vs LQG like one should choose her/his religion, i find them both beautiful theories personally. It's for a reason i left the field i can tell you. Anyway: Nice result <3
  • im3w1l 6y ago
    Really appreciate this no-nonsense explainer.