Black Holes a Go Go
I was playing a game of Go with my friend Prof C the other day. He's a former EE professor who made it fairly big in the PC boom days of the 80's, cashed out in the early 90's, and quit to pursue other interests, which, as it turned out, were deep water sailing and busty blondes half his age. After a series of costly and painful mishaps involving each took a big piece of his cash stash, he figuratively adopted the Oddesyian solution of walking inland with an oar on his shoulder until somebody asked "What's that?" Which is how he wound up in arid and mostly blonde free Nuevo Mexico, playing the ancient oriental board game with your humble servant. He's got an exquisite 10-inch thick kaya board and top grade slate and clamshell stones in a cherrywood bowl, so I guess he isn't quite poor yet.
As usual, he had black, adopted a san-ren-sei strategy and immediately went on the offensive. When the position got tense, he pondered a while and then said: "Hey physics boy, I've got a question about your black holes. Suppose you made a little one, small enough so it would evaporate in about a day, you know, like your guy Hawking said."
"That's not so easy," I said.
"Just assume it, OK. Now the outside observer should see the black hole evaporate over about a day. In the intense gravity near the horizon, time would slow to a comparative standstill. A hypothetical observer there would see your day flash by in an instant. You would both agree that the black hole had meanwhile evaporated. So this black hole wouldn't really ever have existed! Why should even your big one be any different over the long run?"
With that, he took a black slate stone between forefinger and middle and thwacked it down right in the center of my biggest moyo. I love that sound of slate on kaya.
I thought a long time and finally said: "Maybe you should ask Lubos. He's worried about the where to find the next Superstring Revolution and about observers falling into black holes."
I figured I could kill his invading stone, but decided it might be better to just chase it long enough to build up a good attack on his other side.
As usual, he had black, adopted a san-ren-sei strategy and immediately went on the offensive. When the position got tense, he pondered a while and then said: "Hey physics boy, I've got a question about your black holes. Suppose you made a little one, small enough so it would evaporate in about a day, you know, like your guy Hawking said."
"That's not so easy," I said.
"Just assume it, OK. Now the outside observer should see the black hole evaporate over about a day. In the intense gravity near the horizon, time would slow to a comparative standstill. A hypothetical observer there would see your day flash by in an instant. You would both agree that the black hole had meanwhile evaporated. So this black hole wouldn't really ever have existed! Why should even your big one be any different over the long run?"
With that, he took a black slate stone between forefinger and middle and thwacked it down right in the center of my biggest moyo. I love that sound of slate on kaya.
I thought a long time and finally said: "Maybe you should ask Lubos. He's worried about the where to find the next Superstring Revolution and about observers falling into black holes."
I figured I could kill his invading stone, but decided it might be better to just chase it long enough to build up a good attack on his other side.
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