… apply the theory of the holographic principle to black holes. In other words, the holographic principle allows us to describe gravity using a language that does not contain gravity, thus avoiding friction with quantum mechanics. This revolutionary and somewhat counterintuitive principle proposes that the behavior of gravity in a given region of space can alternatively be described in terms of a different system, which lives only along the edge of that region and therefore in a one less dimension.Īnd, more importantly, in this alternative description (called holographic) gravity does not appear explicitly. To study black holes, the two authors of the research, Francesco Benini (SISSA Professor, ICTP scientific consultant and INFN researcher) and Paolo Milan (SISSA and INFN researcher), used an idea almost 30 years old, but still surprising, called the holographic principle.
The holographic principle applied to black holes According to the other, as claimed by Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking, they would be “the most complex existing systems” because they would be characterized by an enormous “entropy,” which measures the complexity of a system, and consequently would have a lot of information inside them. According to the first theory, they would be simple bodies without information. They are, for example, excellent representatives of the great difficulties of theoretical physics in putting together the principles of Einstein’s general theory of relativity with those of quantum physics when it comes to gravity. The study comes from the SISSA, and from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics ( ICTP) and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics ( INFN), all based in Italy.įor scientists, black holes are a big question mark for many reasons. The study which demonstrates it, and which unites two discordant theories, has recently been published in Physical Review X. In short, black holes “appear” as three dimensional, just like holograms. This idea aligns with Einstein’s theory of relativity, which describes black holes as three dimensional, simple, spherical, and smooth, as they appear in that famous image. In this way, these cosmic bodies, as affirmed by quantum theories, could be incredibly complex and concentrate an enormous amount of information inside themselves, as the largest hard disk that exists in nature, in two dimensions. Yet, according to new research by scientists in Italy, black holes could be like a hologram, where all the information is amassed in a two-dimensional surface able to reproduce a three-dimensional image. We all remember that incredible image of a black hole that traveled around the world about a year ago. Reprinted from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy.
Image via the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. This long-sought image provided the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opened a new window onto the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity. Who could forget this image? It’s the first direct image of a black hole, in the galaxy M87, released in April 2019.
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