Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order | Quanta Magazine

Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order | Quanta Magazine

An electrifying discovery about black holes The physics of black holes has led to the discovery of a basic link between entropy and energy. The idea began when theoreticians spotted a paradox about Hawking radiation, Stephen Hawking’s calculation that black holes must lose mass over an extremely long time. But if a black hole is even slightly electrically charged, after shrinking for eons it will get to a point at which its electric charge is extremely concentrated — which should prevent it from shrinking further, and perhaps even lead it to split into two smaller black holes. While studying this problem, theoretical physicists stumbled on a formula linking any object’s energy to its entropy — a measure of the number of ways an object’s parts can be rearranged without changing its state. Co-author Garrett Goon says that with the latest calculations, black holes give us hints about the nature of quantum gravity. “But maybe even more interesting, you’re learning something about more everyday stuff.” Quanta | 12 min readSource: Physical Review Letters paper