Physicists from the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have developed a theoretical description of the behavior of matter inside black holes and have found a possible way to reconcile quantum physics and the theory of gravity, according to an article published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
“We used a holographic approach. It consists in the fact that a quantum two-dimensional system that “lives” on the border of a special curved 3D space, called the anti-de Sitter space, can be described inside it by classical gravitational physics. Thus, the three-dimensional space, together with everything that happens inside, plays the role of a hologram illustrating what is happening directly in our physical system,”said Mikhail Khramtsov from the Mathematical Institute, quoted by the press service of the Russian Science Foundation.
Regular and supermassive black holes have such a strong gravity that it cannot be overcome without exceeding the speed of light. No objects or radiation can escape from beyond the impact of the black hole, which is called the "event horizon".
What happens beyond the event horizon remains a mystery and a matter of controversy among physicists. Most scientists believe that, in principle, it is impossible to look inside a black hole and study its structure, as this will lead to extremely unpleasant consequences - in this case, it will be impossible to reconcile Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Nevertheless, black holes do exist, and their behavior must be described somehow. Relatively recently, scientists began to believe that black holes are actually not three-dimensional, but two-dimensional objects - a kind of space "holograms", where space shrinks closer to the edges and where an object thrown in a straight line returns to the point of flight.
This theory and the equations describing it were put forward in the late 1990s by two famous cosmologists - Juan Maldasena from Princeton University and Gerard 't Hooft from Utrecht University. According to some scientists, similar principles can describe the entire Universe as a whole - in other words, it is quite possible that we live inside a flat two-dimensional hologram.
Based on these principles, Khramtsov and his colleagues tried to explain why the very existence of black holes does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, as well as describe the quantum processes that are responsible for the transport of heat inside them, based on the theory of relativity and other classical laws of physics.
Calculations have shown that in a black hole a certain analogue of thermodynamic equilibrium can indeed be observed, as in the "normal" Universe. Scientists emphasize that this can be verified experimentally by colliding particles cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero.
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If such particles fall into magnetic traps, then when irradiated with a laser, they will behave in about the same way as matter in flat black holes. In particular, information about the appearance of new quantum bonds between particles will propagate inside the trap at a certain speed, and deviations from it will mean that the calculations of Russian physicists are not entirely correct.
As Khramtsov notes, the quark-gluon plasma arising inside the LHC or the RHIC collider in Brookhaven (USA) can be heated in a similar way, which allows using the same principles to describe its behavior and further study. According to him, in the near future, Russian physicists will try to find an answer to another important question related to black holes: is information lost when matter passes through the event horizon.