From _our_ perspective of the outside world, things that 'fall into' the black hole _never get there_, because time just gets slower & slower (GR time dilation) until at the horizon itself time stops. So all of the _information_ that 'fell into' the black hole still resides in our universe, except that from our perspective it is now painted on the _surface_ of the black hole. This is one way to see Bekenstein's argument that the information 'content' of a black hole is proportional to its surface area. --- BTW, I was watching a lecture at UCSB's KITP where the claim was made that particles that 'fall into' a black hole 'release' an amount of energy equal to their gravitational potential energy, which can be ~ 50% of their _rest mass_. I haven't done the calculations, but if we can attribute the 'rest mass' of a particle to its _potential energy_ as a result of being pulled out of a black hole, who needs Higgs Bosons to give us rest mass ? So we get all of our mass from the potential energy from being separated from every other mass in the universe? Mach was right, after all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach's_principle At 04:38 PM 8/13/2013, Warren D Smith wrote:
in NY Times today, graphic is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/13/science/0813-sci-blackhole.htm...
does my (already discussed) quantum decoherence picture already resolve this paradox? Needs thought...