• Question: Can anything escape the pull of a black hole?

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      Asked by Dr Sibley to John, Laura, Luke, Rob, Ruth on 15 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: John Fossey

        John Fossey answered on 15 Jun 2016:

        ? Past the event horizon – nOOOOoooo ?

      • Photo: Robert Williams

        Robert Williams answered on 15 Jun 2016:

        Hawking radiation

      • Photo: Laura Finney

        Laura Finney answered on 15 Jun 2016:

        Not even light can do this as the pull of gravity in a black hole is so huge so i don’t think so! Maybe one day we will figure something out.

      • Photo: Luke Williams

        Luke Williams answered on 16 Jun 2016:

        http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/science/stephen-hawking-black-holes.html?_r=0

        Stephen Hawking has suggested that it may actually be possible to escape a black hole. He has recently released a paper called Soft Hair on Black Holes (no, me neither, and I read the above newspaper article)

        I think the point that they are driving at is that if material falls into a black hole, then it is not possible to reverse time and then reconstruct that object because the information to tell the universe that the red truck is red, or indeed a truck, no longer exists. Apparently string theory says that this is impossible, so they have come up with some new equations to provide a potential answer as to how things might escape from a black hole.

        As it has recently been proven that black holes “die” by exploding, the belief – I think – is that all information is stored beyond the event horizon and then may be retrieved when the black hole explodes. Currently the information is in a non-usable form, but they… they’re working on that one.

        The whole field is somewhere ten miles above my head, so apologies for any inaccurate statements.

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