The Black Hole Information Paradox:
A Resolution on the Horizon?
Can information escape from a black hole? General Relativity, which describes the behavior of black holes, and quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of information, do not agree on the answer. This disagreement is the essence of the famous 45-year-old Black Hole Information Paradox. Understanding the resolution of this problem is a central pillar in the quest for quantum gravity, a theory that describes the universe at the smallest scales by unifying General Relativity and quantum mechanics. In the past year, there has been an unprecedented amount of progress towards a resolution. I will describe the origin of the paradox and the current status in light of the new developments.
Netta Engelhardt grew up in Jerusalem, Israel and Boston, MA. She received her BSc in physics and mathematics from Brandeis University and her PhD in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and a member of the Princeton Gravity Initiative prior to joining the physics faculty at MIT in July 2019.
Professor Engelhardt works on gravitational aspects of quantum gravity with an emphasis on string theory. Her research focuses on understanding the predictions of quantum gravity in the vicinity of gravitational singularities. These include phenomena such as the thermodynamic behavior of black holes as well as cosmic censorship, the hypothesis that singularities are always hidden behind event horizons. She approaches these problems from the perspective of semiclassical gravity, leveraging insights from the interplay between gravity and quantum information via gauge/gravity duality.
Introducer and Co-host: Hong Liu, MIT
