Escape from Black Hole – Wait do they even exist?

Stephen Hawking recently did an about face on an item that helped establish him as one of the world’s leading physicists. This argument all started back in 1974 when Hawking applied quantum physics to black holes and started a now 40 year plus debate.

The main argument involves the original idea that when a black hole dies it takes everything that is inside of it with it. Hawking is now changing his opinion and believes that black holes have horizons which would allow light and other items to escape. The “apparent horizons” of black holes can vary in their shape and this leaves the possibility of light escaping.

Hawking stated that the black hole theory, that what is inside a black hole is destroyed by the black hole is one of his biggest career mistakes. Hawking has agreed that this previously believed even horizon is now incompatible with quantum theory.  Instead he thinks black holes are more like a prison, briefly holding the contents of the black hole prisoner and eventually releasing them.

One of the main items that evolved an additional look by Hawking into this is an attempt to help solve the firewall paradox discovered by Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute.  . In a nut shell Polchinski’s team said that quantum theory results in an energetic firewall. This was a problem because while the firewall obeyed quantum physics it did not obey Einstein’s’ general theory of relativity.  

So Hawkings Theory basically says black holes now obey both, but that black holes don’t have an event horizon to catch fire. Hawking now says instead of this event horizon, they have an “apparent horizon” in which the light rays trying to escape would be suspended. Basically the light would be stuck on a treadmill and would only be able to reach as far as the event horizon.

This also calls into questions the singularity of a black hole. In theory a black hole is now just a super space prison that releases stuff much worse than when it came in.  However, this whole theory basically says you can escape from any point in a black hole.  Which opens a whole host of other problems.

However, given we have no true concept of what time and space really is and a black hole is a direct distortion of that then this is all in somewhat just another apparent horizon in this event horizon.