Information Loss : Blackholes and Brahman

Blackholes and wormholes are two of the most fascinating and most paradoxical objects that modern physics has discovered. Among other things, blackholes hint at the possibility of information loss, which is very difficult for most physicists to accept. In simple words, anything that goes inside a blackhole looses its identity and becomes part of a bigger reality. Wait! Does this not sound very familiar to the concept of Brahman in Indian philosophy? On deeper analysis, it turns out that there are striking similarities between blackholes and Brahman:

• Blackholes have an event horizon and nothing can escape from it (except Hawking radiation). Similarly, once the mind enters Nirvikalpa Samadhi, in usual cases it cannot come out of that state. The jivanmuktas and adhikarika purushas who can come out of Samadhi cannot explain that state since its beyond words. Similarly, although Hawking radiation can cross the event horizon and come out of the blackhole, it consists of just random fluctuations and does not carry any information about the inside of a blackhole.

• Like gravity and quantum mechanics are two important pillars of physics, Advaita and Dvaita are the two main schools of thought in Indian philosophy. Gravity is like Advaita and quantum mechanics is like Dvaita. 

• In gravity, there is no concept of force and mass is treated as equivalent to energy. In Advaita, Atman is same as Brahman. 

• In quantum mechanics, there is a strong difference between observer and the observed. In Dvaita, there is a clear difference between jiva and Brahman. 

• No philosopher has been able to resolve the conflict between Advaita and Dvaita. Calling Dvaita a lower truth is not a logical conclusion and is used by some philosophers just as a means to pacify the two sides. Similarly, it is possible that physicists may never be able to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics. 

• Like they show in the movie Interstellar, it is believed that the conflict between gravity and quantum mechanics might get solved if a probe could be sent inside the blackhole such it can transmit information about its inside to our world. However, it is important to note that although the jivanmuktas can come out of the state of samadhi, they cannot describe its nature since its beyond the realm of thought (and hence, cannot be expressed through language). Hawking radiation seems to be a close analogue of the concept of jivanmukta. Although this radiation can leak out of the blackhole, it contains no information about its inside. Thus, its possible that the conflict between gravity and quantum mechanics will never get resolved. 

Let us get back to the idea of information loss. After Hawking proposed his idea of blackhole radiation (with information loss), many physicists were not able to accept it since conservation of information is at the heart of quantum mechanics. There was a long debate on this issue and eventually Hawking changed his view. However, this does not mean that the debate has been settled. It is still not clear if conservation of information is a fundamental law of the universe!

Hawking radiation is not the only phenomenon that entails information loss. Classical mechanics, which is completely deterministic, also has information loss in systems which are chaotic. In simple terms, a chaotic system is one in which the final result is very sensitive to initial conditions. Though the equation that describes such systems is deterministic, it is not possible to obtain analytical solutions. This is not just because these equations are difficult to solve. Actually, there are mathematical theorems that prove their analytical unsolvability. We could solve them numerically but any computer has finite precision due to which small rounding off errors grow exponentially fast and all that makes sense are only averages. An individual particle trajectory has no meaning in a chaotic system. A very big challenge in physics is to understand the dynamics of the underlying quantum mechanics of such chaotic systems. This field of research is known as quantum chaos. 

Thus, the big question is this : Is 'conservation of information' a fundamental law of the universe? Or is information loss an inevitable reality? Though Hawking has conceded the bet, I hope there are physicists who are still not convinced!