What a Wonderful World (31 page)

Authors: Marcus Chown

This is the key clue to resolving the black-hole information paradox. In 1997, string theorist Juan Maldacena of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study showed that it is in the horizon that the information that describes the star may be stored – as
microscopic
lumps and bumps. So, when the black hole radiates Hawking radiation from the vicinity of its horizon, the radiation has impressed on it information about the star, just as the radio waves from BBC Radio One have pop music impressed on them. So, when the black hole disappears, the song of the star is not lost at all. It is broadcast to the Universe as Hawking radiation. No information is ever lost.

But all this implies, incredibly, that a 2D surface – the horizon of a black hole – can store sufficient information to describe a 3D object – a star. This is exactly what the hologram on your credit card does.

This might seem an esoteric speculation about an esoteric type of celestial body. But, in the late 1990s, Leonard Susskind of Stanford University in California made a surprising and
mind-blowing
connection. The Universe, in common with a black hole, is surrounded by a horizon. It is a horizon in time rather than in space but it is a horizon none the less. So, reasoned Susskind,
he information that describes the 3D Universe might be stored in the horizon of the Universe.

What this means is open to a wide range of interpretations. A conservative interpretation is simply that the Universe contains a lot less information than we imagined, meaning that the Universe is more like a crudely drawn sketch than a fine oil painting. A more extreme interpretation is that the Universe is truly a hologram – a 2D object stored on the cosmic horizon that creates the illusion of a 3D Universe. So, either we are living on that 2D surface, believing we are 3D, or our Universe is some kind of 3D projection of that 2D surface. You and I and everyone else might be living in a giant hologram. Black holes, far from being esoteric celestial objects, have the most profound implications for you and your everyday life. Black holes are indeed masters of the Universe.

Notes

1
The first galaxies to form were actually relatively small. But, over the past 10 billion years or so, they have repeatedly merged and cannibalised each other, growing ever bigger until finally creating the galaxies we see around us today.

2
John Haines, ‘Little Cosmic Dust Poem’ (1983); http://tinyurl. com/crwo3y4.

3
Strictly speaking, the cosmic background radiation is brightest at a far-infrared wavelength of about 1 millimetre. Historically,
however
, it was first spotted at the easier-to-detect microwave
wavelength
of a few centimetres.

4
Strictly speaking, it is necessary to be at high altitude or in space to see the Universe glowing with the relic heat of the big bang. This is because water vapour in the atmosphere strongly absorbs the far infrared of the cosmic background radiation. At altitude, this water vapour is frozen out.

5
At one time there was a rival of the big bang. In 1948, Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold proposed that, although the
Universe
is expanding, new material continually pops into existence out of nothing to make new galaxies, so the Universe never gets more
dilute but always looks the same. The steady state was dealt a killer blow by the discovery that the distant, and therefore ancient Universe, looks very different from today, and by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation in 1965.

6
When hydrogen nuclei approach each other close enough, they come under the influence of the powerful nuclear force. Like pieces of shrapnel in an explosion in reverse, they begin to fall towards each other. Faster and faster they fall until, finally, they collide. By the time this happens, however, they have acquired a tremendous energy of motion, which they must somehow get rid off if they are to stick together rather than rebound outwards. The surplus energy might be lost in the form of a high-energy particle or gamma ray. The details are unimportant. The key thing is that the formation of a nucleus of helium out of hydrogen nuclei is accompanied by a loss of a large amount of energy. This is the ultimate origin of sunlight. See my
The Magic Furnace.

7
Absolute zero, equivalent to -273.15 °C, is the lowest possible temperature. Classical, or pre-quantum, physics predicts that, as the temperature falls, the jiggling of atoms gets ever more sluggish. At absolute zero, it stops altogether.

8
The cosmic background radiation broke free of matter about 379,000 years after the birth of the Universe. It had existed before but its photons could barely travel across space without being redirected, or scattered, by free electrons. About 379,000 years old, the Universe had cooled sufficiently for electrons to combine with atomic nuclei to make the first atoms. Without free electrons to hinder them, the photons of the fireball were suddenly free to travel across space unhindered. We detect them today as the cosmic background radiation. They have come directly to us from this epoch of last scattering.

9
The speed of light is the cosmic speed limit only in Einstein’s special theory of relativity of 1905. In his general theory of relativity of 1915, space can expand at any speed it likes. Evidence for this
faster-than
-light expansion comes from the size of the observable
Universe
. Although the Universe has existed for only 13.8 billion years, it is 84 billion light years across.

10
According to quantum theory, the vacuum is not empty. Far from it. Whereas in the everyday world the law of conservation of energy forbids energy being created from nothing, in the subatomic world, nature overlooks this edict. Energy can be conjured out of nothing,
as long as it is paid back quickly
. Think of a teenager who gets away with borrowing his dad’s car overnight as long he returns it to the garage the following morning before his dad notices its absence. In the same way, nature turns a blind eye to energy being conjured out of nothing as long as it is for only an ultra-short time. Consequently, the quantum vacuum, far from being empty, seethes with restless energy.

11
According to Einstein’s equations of gravity, the source of gravity is
u
+ 3
P
, where
u
is energy density and
P
is the pressure. Usually, the second term is ignored because, in normal circumstances, the pressure of matter – due to its microscopic components buzzing about – is negligible compared with the energy density of matter. But it is always possible that there exists some hitherto unknown type of material in which the pressure is not negligible. And, if the pressure
P
is negative and less than –
u
/3, this reverses the sign of
u
+ 3
P
, making gravity
repulsive
– that is, gravity
blows
rather than sucks
. This is the case with the inflationary, false, vacuum.
Incidentally
, negative pressure means that, instead of pushing outwards, the vacuum is trying to shrink everywhere. Yet, bizarrely, it has
repulsive
gravity, and inflates. The reason for this is that the pressure has no direct effect. Every chunk of shrinking vacuum is surrounded by other chunks of shrinking vacuum so, overall, the negative pressure cancels out. Instead, the negative pressure has an indirect effect entirely through Einstein’s equations, which endow it with repulsive gravity.

12
This is typical of anything quantum. Its behaviour – for instance, whether it decays – is totally random, totally unpredictable. The Universe was a quantum object in its first split second of existence because it was
smaller than an atom.

13
To be fair, nobody has yet managed to unite quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity. A quantum theory of gravity, for all
we know, may predict the
exact
energy density observed for the dark energy. Uniting quantum theory – a theory of the very small – and the general theory of relativity – a theory of the very big – is essential to understanding the birth of the Universe. After all, at that time, something very big was also very small.

14
The clumping together of matter to form galaxies could begin only when the fireball had cooled enough for electrons to combine with nuclei to form the Universe ’s first atoms. The reason is that free electrons interact strongly with, or scatter, photons, and there were about 10 billion for every electron in the big-bang fireball. They blasted apart any matter trying to clump together under gravity. Once electrons were mopped up by atoms, however, gravity gained control of the Universe. The time when galaxies began to form, about 379,000 years after the birth of the Universe, is known as the epoch of last scattering. Priceless information about this period is imprinted on the cosmic background radiation.

15
The evidence for dark matter also comes from within galaxies. The stars in the outer regions of spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way, for instance, are orbiting
too fast
. Like children on a speeded-up roundabout, they should fly off into intergalactic space. The reason they do not, astronomers maintain, is that they are in the grip of the gravity of a huge mass of dark matter. This dark matter, which greatly outweighs the visible stars, is believed to form a spherical halo in which is embedded the flattened disc of the spiral galaxy.

16
Earlier, it was mentioned that a crucial piece of evidence for the big bang is that 25 per cent of the mass of the Universe is helium. That is 25 per cent of the
ordinary matter.

17
See ‘The Holes in the Sky’, Chapter 6 of my book
The Universe Next Door.

18
Cosmological parameters such as the age and expansion rate of the Universe were once very badly known. Everything changed with the launch in 2001 of NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe to observe the afterglow of the big bang. It ushered in the age of precision cosmology.

19
Apologies for using the image of a bubble in two different contexts.
Each bubble that forms in the inflationary vacuum actually contains an
infinite
number of big-bang regions (smaller bubbles), each like our observable Universe. If you are wondering how something can be bounded yet infinite, it is because the inflationary vacuum is expanding so incredibly fast that, to observers inside the bubble, the boundary is
unreachable
. Effectively, therefore, the bubble is infinite.

20
Arthur C. Clarke, ‘The Wall of Darkness’,
The Other Side of the Sky.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to the following people who helped me directly, inspired me or simply encouraged me during the writing of this book: Karen, Neil Belton, Felicity Bryan, Manjit Kumar, Tim Harford, Ha-Joon Chang, Steve Russell, Reggie Kibbel, Lawrence Schulman, Nick Lane, Sue Bowler, Alex Holroyd, Chris Stringer, Steve Jones, Joanne Manaster, Adam Rutherford, Andy Coghlan, Carl Zimmer, Adrian Washbourne, John King, Chris Scarre, Brian May, Julian Loose, John Grindrod, Brian Chilver, Jose Tate, Karen Gunnell, Patrick O’Halloran, Jeremy Webb, Henry Volans, Simon Singh, Sarah Savitt, Tania Monteiro, Michele Topham, Valerie Jamieson, Roger Highfield, Alom Shaha, Peter Serafinowicz, Stuart Clark, Miles Poynton, Stephen Page, Silvia Novak, Jill Burrows.

PERMISSIONS

Extract from ‘The Hollow Men’ taken from
Collected Poems 1909–1962
© Estate of T. S. Eliot and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

Extract from ‘Annus Mirabilis’ taken from
High Windows
© Estate of Philip Larkin and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

Extract from
Hapgood
© Tom Stoppard and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers would be pleased to rectify at the earliest opportunity any omissions or errors brought to their notice.

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