
The theory combines Steve Hawking's radiation theory with quantum theory’s fundamental law that no information ever disappears from the universe.
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton upholds she managed to merge two apparently contradicting theories, Einstein's theory of gravity and a fundamental law of quantum theory.
While Einstein's theory forecasts the formation of black holes, the quantum theory law states that no information from the universe can ever disappear, in an attempt to resolve the so-called ‘information law paradox.’
“I'm still not over the shock,” said Mersini-Houghton. Until now, contemporary science generally believed that a black hole forms from a massive star that collapses under its own gravity into a solitary spot in space;astronomers call this the singularity, surrounded by the event horizon that neither light nor energy could escape from. Three decades ago renowned physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes could emit radiation. Hawking’s hypothesis, made in 1974, was based on quantum mechanics.
Mersini-Houghton agrees with Hawking on the radiation being given off by a collapsed star for a certain period of time, yet she insists that by emitting radiation, the star also loses too much of its mass right to the point when formation of a singularity – and a black hole –in essence, is impossible.
The academic suggests that the dying stars do not fall inward, but “probably blow up.”
“Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories — Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics — for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony,” Mersini-Houghton said in the statement. “And that's a big deal.”
Mersini-Houghton’s conclusions have already been severely criticized by William Unruh, a theoretical physicist from the University of British Columbia.
“Attempts like this to show that black holes never form have a very long history, and this is only the latest. They all misunderstand Hawking radiation, and assume that matter behaves in ways that are completely implausible,” he claimed.