Black holes present a very interesting dilemma to physicists. On the inside is matter of some sort which must be in some configuration, but because gravity is so strong we cannot glean any information about the internal state. However, this also presents a couple of problems: If a black hole has no internal states, then dropping a box of gas into the black hole should result in a net decrease in the entropy of the universe—violating the second law of thermodynamics. If the black hole does have internal states and thus entropy, these cannot be seen from the outside since general relativity demands that the horizon be smooth. Yet we also know that black holes glow (called Hawking radiation) due to particles being produced in pairs at the event horizon. One particle with negative energy falls into the hole, the other with positive energy is radiated away from the hole. Thus the amount of matter in the hole goes down and energy is conserved. These particles are entangled (i.e., their quantum states are inextricably linked) yet as the black hole decays away to nothing the radiation is, in the end, entangled with … nothing. This, combined with the smooth event horizon is paradoxical since we know that quantum mechanics conserves information, yet here information appears to be destroyed. Whenever paradoxes arise in physics it indicates we don’t know something, and in this case that is probably quantum gravity. The reason Hawking and others have been able to predict so much about black holes is that everything happens on the event horizon, where the curvature of space is small and quantum gravity is expected to be irrelevant.
Enter string theory, which tells us that the scale for which quantum gravity becomes important increases with the number of interacting quanta (quanta in this case can be thought of as energy per particle in the black hole). Since the number of particles and their energy is all quite large, then we might expect quantum gravity to be extremely relevant at the event horizon. If quantum gravity is important, it can no longer be assumed that the prediction of a smooth event horizon will hold. Thus the event horizon should reflect the inner structure of the black hole becoming a sort of fuzzy ball. The entropy problem is also solved since strings can take on many more different conformations given an extra dollop of energy.
So what is the significance of this? Firstly, the detailed calculations of the radiation emitted by a black hole using string theory, which relies on the internal structure of the black hole, agree with the classical result predicted by Hawking. Secondly it points to a way to resolve the information paradox and perhaps a way to measure the internal properties of black holes (to see beyond the event horizon so to speak).
If you say so—but I really don’t think so. I can see any number of holes in these mesmerizing paragraphs through which giant elephants might walk, and with ease. Yet in order to find this or any other subject interesting, it seems that we must incessantly grant. We must go about the internet and through the papers we read extending the benefit of the doubt, suspending disbelief, at least for a time. This fellow seems to know what he’s talking about, he’s on Ars (so the backchatter goes) … and I wonder if this isn’t the real exhaustion of information overload, these constant little decisions that for most of us, thank god, lie well beneath the surface of everyday thought.
For granting is not an activity of the intellect, but falls instead under the greater heading of intuition. The vast mind beyond that with which we actively think, and for which we are, or ought to be, eternally grateful. There must be thousands such transactions, in a day, an hour; it’s exhausting just to contemplate. Two things then follow: not only are we saved from inundation by the trivial, this mind that sees all, absorbs all, doesn’t miss a trick—and interacts with the world far more than we can ever know— is a greater intelligence within us, a more reliable body of knowledge, and that is more than most can bear. Unless you’ve experimented with your intuition, or been forced to rely upon it. Not but what it happens to everyone, but the experience is most oft shoved aside, suppressed in favor of that holy grail, the rational mind: I must be in control.
Which is of course why the general run of person can be so boring, but I digress. To find the world interesting, I am proposing, is a matter of risk. The willingness to suspend judgement whilst at the same time exercising high-level discernment—you’re right, these are opposing tensions. It is interesting to think about the ways the two aspects of mind—the controlling, rational, cautious, conservative mind, and the other, more open, more suggestible, embracing and interactive mind—reflect, in a general way, the differences between the male and female thinking, male and female mind. Paradigmatic differences, which is to say, I know I am from Venus, so you have fucking got to be from Mars.
Paradigms which cut right to the heart of the moment-to-moment, largely unexamined assumptions on which we base our lives. I hope I need not spell out which frame of mind is more apt to result in unhappy turns in the lives of others. There’s no big mystery why the gender that mothers the offspring has a brain that’s been biologically stocked with estrogen and the propensity to produce oxytocin at the drop of a hat. Which is to say, the qualities of estrogen-mind are those which favor the thriving of the species, as well as providing a richer, more amusing stream of experience for its owner.
Next I will be saying that women, as intuitive people, are smarter than men—which, in the global sense, we are. It is also no surprise that the kind of intelligence which narrows down, provides drive and uber focus, is the gender that not only must win but conceives (no pun intended) in the first place of life as contest, and that there are only two human positions: lose or win. A more loosely held, wider, deeper, receptive intelligence, doesn’t have time, frankly, for dwelling on the pissy; the complexity of being sensitive to the needs of the young without also losing one’s sense of self, of having a separate existence, is a horribly unchoreographed dance that each woman must invent anew. Nor may she stop the dance, for years to come. Who could possibly raise a healthy child who had not some vital measure of this discipline, this supple grace?
No wonder many women would prefer to work, to have a career. Being a mindful parent is, bar none, the toughest thing you’ll ever do, there are no distinct lines between you and your child; the two of you must make them—and only one of you gets to pitch fits and be adorable despite. A man, I think, makes up his identity in ways—well, in ways I can’t imagine. One hopes his ego is also tossed about, and that he comes out of fatherhood a better man. But is he called upon to remake himself, many times, and from scratch? And would his zero-sum thinking be of any help?
I tend to believe every other accomplishment stinks, if you’ve got fucked up kids; that it is a sorrow and a nuisance and a reflection of who you are that never goes away. No wonder some people cut off contact with their children. How often, after all, does the sinner want to live with the evidence of his or her sins. Failure is a stinging thing, the only way to survive it is to use the information to grow … but I digress again.
Such a weak, feminine mind: I can’t make a rational, scholarly, linear case for a goddamn thing. What I am supposed to suffer, and in silence (yeah, right) is that in nearly every single case, I am more intelligent than the guy in charge. Okay, not a big stretch, but still. Nor am I alone in this.
If the alternative, however, is that women become more like men—which is one way to view th
e progress of the past thirty years, since we first dreamt our tiny feminist dreams—I don’t know, looks like just one more maladaptation, another in the long list of ways women cripple themselves in order to compete. Speaking of Jimmy Choo’s. But who’s counting.
I expect we don’t know what to do with our power, with all that we have. I, for one, contain so many fuckin’ multitudes it ain’t funny. Where’s the help for girls with that? It’s terribly hard to quantify the floating intelligence of the right brained, global, intuiting mind, never mind make a case for the space and time it needs to learn itself, to do its thing, never mind gain respect. It’s like trying to put grace in a box. Package it and sell it.
So talk to me about the elephants. Hey, it’s a Quantum Electro Dynamic world. Drop on by.
