THE DESTRUCTION OF INFORMATION
(Revised Aug., 2014 )
JOHN A. GOWAN
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The Destruction of Information
Is information destroyed in a black hole? This question is
debated in Leonard Susskind's recent book: "The Black Hole War"
(Little, Brown, and Co., 2008). From the overview of the "Tetrahedron
Model" and Noether's
principle of the conservation of symmetry, it appears that
information should be destroyed in a black hole. There are several
reasons to think so (contrary to the conclusions of Susskind's
book). First, on the premise that the universe begins as light,
devolves to matter, and finally evolves and resolves to light
again, conserving the original perfect symmetry of free
electromagnetic energy, information must be destroyed in any
physical process which returns matter (and the information which
matter contains) to light (because information is an asymmetric
state of energy). Such final symmetry-restoring (conserving)
reactions and processes include: 1) (actual) matter-antimatter
annihilations due to the electromagnetic force; 2) (hypothetical)
proton decay due to the strong and weak nuclear forces; 3)
(theoretical) "evaporation" of black holes due to "Hawking
radiation" (gravitational force); 4) (possible) "Big Crunch"
gravitational collapse of the cosmos. (See: "Symmetry
Principles of the Unified Field Theory".)
All four processes are driven by symmetry conservation acting
through the charges of the four forces of physics. The charges
of matter are the symmetry debts of light (Noether's
Theorem). Light is a perfectly symmetric form of energy,
containing no charges, no time dimension, no gravitational field,
and no information. Information is necessarily an asymmetric
form or configuration of energy, and hence must be destroyed with
charge when charges are annihilated and material energy forms are
returned to their original symmetric state, light (in obedience to
Noether's Theorem). If the universe begins with light (which
contains no information) and returns to light, then information
must be destroyed in the process of the final return to
(conservation of) symmetry. This is the long or generalized view
of information destruction during the process of symmetry
conservation as visualized in the "Tetrahedron
Model".
A somewhat more detailed view of these same (above) processes
takes note of the fact that even though a particle or a system is
swallowed by a black hole, the prior history of that particle or
system remains extant (except in the case of the "Big Crunch"). So
both positions in the "black hole information war" may be correct
- black holes do indeed destroy particular information systems,
but those systems and the information they contain nevertheless
survive (at least partially) in a real historical sense - if not
as actual records, then as light visible to distant observers,
and/or as influences and "karmic consequences" which propagate
endlessly in causal chains and dendritic repercussions throughout
spacetime.
This latter view is very similar to the "holographic boundary"
vision of information conservation as put forward in Susskind's
book. For example, light always travels in the "universal present
moment", which forms the spacetime boundary of our universe - the
outermost spatial line of the "Spacetime Map
of the Universe" (diagram). The boundary 2-D holographic
surface which contains all the information necessary to
reconstruct the "bulk" 3-D universe (including its historical
development) is apparently stored in the 2-D light waves which
propagate forever throughout the "universal present moment" of the
cosmos. Hence there is no need to "rescue" Quantum Mechanics from
a crisis caused by the destruction of information in black holes -
the information lives on anyway in the causal history of spacetime
and in the propagating light waves of the "universal present
moment" of spacetime. (See: "A Spacetime Map
of the Universe" (text).)
Reconstituting the original information from such historical
records or from propagating causal effects or light rays is
certainly no less improbable or challenging than decoding the
hidden messages in Hawking radiation, as Susskind suggests is
possible. Furthermore, if the holographic principle is true to the
model, then only a fragment of the original hologram is necessary
to reconstitute an image of the whole, and such fragments should
be abundantly present in the historical record. For example, we
have been able to reconstruct the age of the dinosaurs from
fossils, the evolutionary history of the cosmos from starlight,
and the ontogeny of humanity from DNA.
INFORMATION CONSERVATION
John A. Gowan
Sept., 2013
In his book The Black Hole War ( Back Bay Books,
Little, Brown and Co., 2008), Leonard Susskind maintains that
information cannot be destroyed - due to a theorem of
reversibility/causality in quantum mechanics. Although Susskind does
not distinguish between micro vs macro information states, in my
view the question of information conservation must distinguish
between primary (micro - quantum mechanical) and secondary (macro -
biological) forms of information. Primary forms, which are
preeminently atomic charges, are strictly conserved, whereas
secondary forms, built upon the foundation of atomic charges, and
consisting especially of bio-molecular information (such as
RNA/DNA), are not strictly conserved.
Take the example of chopping up and burning a tree in your
fireplace. The tree is reduced to ashes, smoke, and hot gases, via
an exothermic, self-propagating, and one-way oxidizing chemical
reaction. This reaction cannot be reversed - the living tree and its
huge store of biological information cannot be reconstituted from
its oxidation products - the ashes, smoke, and hot gases. Hence this
type of elaborated biological "tree information" is destroyed beyond
any conceivable possibility of restitution by a commonplace chemical
reaction - we don't need to go to the extreme of throwing the tree
into a black hole to destroy its molecular biochemical information
content.
Surviving the fire are all the tree's atoms, their charges, masses,
and other permanently conserved parameters of the atomic, quantum
mechanical, and thermodynamic realm. The total energy of the tree is
conserved, while the entropy of the tree has gone from a very low
value to a very high value, releasing heat to the environment during
the transformation.
Nevertheless, biological information has its own means of
conservation, which is at a molecular level (and above), through
DNA, genes, seeds, and the whole mechanism of biological replication
and reproduction. Higher levels of biological organization also
involved with information conservation can be distinguished
(organisms, families, societies, species, ecosystems, etc.). (See: "The Information Pathway"
and "The Information
Ladder".) The tree burned in your fireplace has nevertheless
escaped complete destruction via the seeds it had previously
produced (and perhaps via root sprouts), and via the gene pool of
its species still extant in the forest and larger environment. It
has become obvious that certain genetic components of all living
organisms have persisted on this planet for billions of years,
despite the repeated destruction of the individual and ephemeral
carriers of this biological information. And yet this type of
conservation can only be characterized as a kind of dogged
persistence, not as "true" or "eternal" conservation, such as the
absolute conservation of charge, for example. Even a black hole
cannot destroy atomic charges, although it may help to gather and
neutralize them. A hierarchy of temporal conservation, on a scale of
absolute to ephemeral, might therefore read: energy/entropy ->
symmetry/charges -> atoms -> molecules/DNA/genes -> higher
biological organizational levels.
We can also distinguish these two types of information as primordial
vs evolved. Primordial information is what emerges with matter
from the Big Bang - as a consequence of the conversion of
all-symmetric light and space into asymmetric matter and time. These
primordial information forms are necessary to bring the universe
into existence, and (eventually) to see it out again. They include
the atomic charges of the 4 forces (electric, color, identity,
location) - which are all symmetry debts of
light, awaiting and demanding payment via antimatter
charge cancellation - whose purpose is to return the asymmetric
material system to its symmetric origin (light). Primordial
particles include the proton, neutron, electron, neutrino, and
various mesons (all serving as mass and charge carriers), and the
field vectors of the four forces. There are also antiparticles and
heavy versions ("flavors") of some particles. In addition, there are
quantized thermodynamic conservation parameters such as energy and
entropy, the spacetime dimensions, various physical constants,
coupling constants, gauges, particle masses, and many other free
parameters of the "Standard Model" of particle physics. (See: "Symmetry Groups of
Light" and "The
Particle Table").
Evolved information is created by nuclear, atomic, and molecular
combinations after the Big Bang, consisting mostly of the 92
elements of the periodic table and the hugely elaborate and
temporary structures of biology built upon them. Primordial
information is strictly, permanently, and perfectly conserved, but
evolved information is only partially, temporarily, and imperfectly
conserved. The purpose of the evolved information content of the
universe is evidently to allow the universe to know and explore
itself, and to develop new creative modes and new forms of beauty
(as in beautiful biological forms, including humans and their works
of art). Whereas the primordial information content is required for
the creation and the (eventual) annihilation of the universe, the
evolved information content is required only for the evolution of
life and humanity. Humans in turn have developed new forms of
information and methods for its conservation, such as language, art,
writing, printing, photography, libraries, museums, social
structures (schools, academies, universities, etc.), and most
recently the telegraph, radio, television, computers and the
internet, and other electronic, optical, magnetic, and chemical
forms of information creation, communication, processing, recording,
and storage - including vast scientific, military, political,
communication, and entertainment industries and infrastructures.
(See: "The Fractal
Organization of Nature".)
But all these secondary forms of information are ephemeral and
readily destroyed. They persist only through continual and
intentional replication and reproduction and "artificial" storage
devices. There is also a sense in which all information is
permanently stored in the historical domain, both directly in
spacetime and indirectly via causal chains. Nevertheless, this
historical information is also subject to entropic degradation
(aging, decay, dilution, dissipation).
The black hole "event horizon" has been described by Bekenstein,
Hawking, and Susskind as a sort of 2-Dimensional skin or membrane
covering the black hole, which is visualized as a seamlessly
conjoined surface of Plank-sized units of pixelated
(quantized) spacetime, representing and encoding the entropy content
of the energy contained within the back hole. (See: Jacob D.
Bekenstein: "Information in the Holographic Universe" Scientific
American Aug. 2003 p. 58 - 65.)
In our view these entropy pixels are purely temporal in character,
their spatial component having been squeezed out by gravity. The
event horizon is an ultimate boundary between the domain and metric
of space and light, and the domain and metric of time and matter. It
is defined as the spacetime layer surrounding the black hole where g
= c, where the local acceleration of spacetime due to gravity equals
the electromagnetic constant "c". Nothing can escape from within
this time curtain since nothing can exceed velocity c. Time stands
still at the event horizon - seconds become infinitely long - while
distance shrinks to nothing in the direction of motion. Hence at "g
= c", matter becomes two-dimensional and this ultimate temporal
metric created by gravity for matter is analogous to the ultimate
spatial metric created by electromagnetism for light: in both cases
all energy forms move at velocity c, are two-dimensional, and their
clocks are stopped. It therefore appears that the ultimate goal
of matter's gravitational field is to create for itself (bound
electromagnetic energy), a symmetric energy state and temporal
metric which is the analog of the symmetric energy state and
spatial metric that light (free electromagnetic energy) creates
for itself.
At the black hole's central "singularity", my presumption is
that everything and anything is reduced to photons of light via
proton decay and the mutual annihilation of all charges and
anti-charges gathered by the universally attractive and irresistible
gravitational force. A black hole may be filled with nothing but
gravitationally bound light, standing in fair comparison to a
superconducting medium in which photons acquire mass. What emerges
from black holes, either by quantum ''tunneling" of the light
trapped inside, or by "Hawking radiation" extracted from virtual
particles outside, is hopelessly scrambled light, which codes only
for the gravitational and temporal entropy of the mass energy
contained within. No details of the in-falling matter beyond the
barest thermodynamic information (energy/entropy) can be deduced
from this raw output, which is but a meager payment on the
gravitational symmetry debt of the confined energy.
The black hole is the final gravitational mechanism for paying
matter's "location" symmetry debt - the primordial symmetry debt
acquired by matter when immobile "local" mass (bound electromagnetic
energy) was created from the free electromagnetic energy of
"non-local" light with "intrinsic motion c". The "location" charge
of matter thus represents and codes for matter's asymmetric,
concentrated distribution in space vs the perfectly symmetric
distribution of the light-energy from which it was created. By Noether's theorem,
such continuous symmetries of light must be conserved, hence the
gravitational "location" charge carried by every form of massive
"local" (immobile) bound energy. Note that the gravitational charge
identifies the exact spacetime location, quantity, and density of
the offending concentration of immobile - and hence asymmetrically
distributed - mass-energy.
The early stages of "location" symmetry debt repayment by
gravitation are seen in stars like our Sun where bound
electromagnetic energy is converted back to light; not only the
Sun's mass, but also its associated gravitational field is reduced,
as we should expect upon payment of any debt. Later stages of
repayment are seen in supernovas and quasars, and the final (and
complete) stage of repayment is seen in black holes via "Hawking
radiation". Since freely moving
light produces no gravitational field, the total conversion of
the black hole to light via Hawking radiation vanishes both the
black hole's mass and its associated gravitational field, completely
repaying bound energy's distributional symmetry debt and cancelling
its "location" charge.
We also see in the black hole the temporal, gravitational metric
completely replacing the spatial, light metric and creating its own
version of an "ideal" symmetric energy state in which all energy
forms are massless and move at velocity c. The black hole reduces
matter to light both inside and outside the event horizon, and
establishes an internal metric and domain in which all energy forms
are effectively massless and move at c (g = c). Once g = c there is
probably no further acceleration inside the hole - with time
standing still, what would be the point or the mechanism?
No wonder black holes are so slow to evaporate - what
conservation incentive does this ideal temporal state have for
changing? Gravity has been driving toward the black hole "ideal
temporal state" since the beginning, creating a metric of bound
electromagnetic energy (as gauged by "G") which is the equivalent of
the metric of free electromagnetic energy (as gauged by "c"). One
difference is that the "drive" of temporal entropy, being one-way
(due to causality), is less symmetric than the "drive" of spatial
entropy, which is "all-way". Hence "Hawking radiation" is ultimately
obedient to Noether's Theorem: even the symmetry of light's entropy
drive is conserved.
At the event horizon, all spacetime pixels have been converted to
purely temporal pixels. (The frequency or temporal component of the
electromagnetic wave completely replaces the wavelength or spatial
component.) This temporal component has intrinsic one-way motion
into the historic domain (at right angles to all spatial
dimensions), producing the flow of the gravitational field as it
drags space along with it. Space self-annihilates at the point-like
entrance to the time line, producing a metrically equivalent
temporal residue which repeats the self-feeding process. Gravity
is the spatial consequence of the intrinsic motion of time.
(See: "The
Conversion of Space to Time"; "A Description of
Gravity"; "A
Rationale for Gravity"; "The Double
Conservation Role of Gravity"; "Introduction to the
Gravity Papers"; "Why There are
Three Spatial Dimensions".)
I list below a hierarchy of effects
in the inexorable march of gravity toward the black hole. At first,
there is only the production of spherical astronomical bodies, like
the Earth and Moon. Crystalline forces producing angular shapes have
been overcome by the simple gravitational weight of accumulating
matter. Elliptical astronomical orbits are also formed in free
space, as in our solar system, and great galactic systems are
produced from gravitationally condensing primordial gas clouds
(perhaps including "dark matter" consisting of a heavy leptoquark
neutrino). Next, with sufficient mass accumulation, nuclear
fusion begins in stars - the first stage of actually "paying down
the principle" of the gravitational symmetry debt of matter through
the nucleosynthetic conversion of mass (bound electromagnetic
energy) to light (free electromagnetic energy) - reducing the star's
total gravitational field in the process. In lesser objects (such as
the Earth and its moon), the gravitational field is so weak it can
only pay the "entropy interest" on matter's distributional symmetry
debt (that is: despite the continual action of gravity, none of
Earth's mass is actually converted to light, so the Earth's
gravitational field and symmetry debt remains unaffected -
analogously to the null effect of an interest payment on the
principle of a monetary debt).
In stars, gravity is strong enough to overcome the electrical
repulsion between protons, allowing fusion to take place, producing
helium as the first step along the nucleosynthetic pathway toward
the 92 elements of the Periodic Table. When stars the size of our
Sun burn up their nuclear fuel and die, they leave behind a "white
dwarf" cinder, a condensed matter remnant or core in which gravity
is so strong that it has crushed the electron shells of atoms into
an electron gas. Stars heavier than our Sun may produce a supernova
explosion and leave behind a neutron star, essentially a
stellar-mass atomic nucleus, in which gravity is so strong that
electrons are forced into protons to produce neutrons. Still heavier
stars produce even greater supernovas which leave behind black holes
- in which gravity is so strong that the spacetime metric itself is
crushed and becomes a purely temporal metric, apparently contain no
space at all.
Super-massive black holes also form at the center of (all?)
galaxies, producing quasars which convert mass to light even more
efficiently than fusion reactions. We observe the relentless
takeover by gravity of every binding function of the electromagnetic
force, beginning with the crystal lattice of planets, proceeding to
the electron shells of stars, thence to the nuclear structure, and
finally and completely to the spacetime metric and entropic
conservation domain of light itself - space. In the final stage
gravity achieves a temporal metric which is apparently the symmetric
equivalent of light's spatial metric, in which massive matter moves
at velocity c, clocks stop, and meter sticks shrink to nothing in
the direction of motion. Of course, to the outside spatial universe,
the black hole still represents a grossly asymmetric concentration
of undistributed mass-energy, even though internally it has achieved
a satisfactory symmetric energy state in terms of its temporal
metric. Only the one-way entropy drive of time remains to remind us
that the black hole is a less symmetric state of energy than the
light from which it was ultimately derived.
The recently observed "acceleration" of the universe is the
consequence of the reduction of the total gravitational energy of
the universe by the conversion of mass to light by the major
astrophysical phenomena - stars, quasars, supernovas. (It is also
possible that the conversion of the evidently very abundant "dark
matter" to light or simply to lesser forms of bound energy may
contribute to the ongoing relaxation of the cosmic gravitational
grip.)
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