This Physicist Discovered an Escape From Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox

For almost half a century, the paradox formulated around the black holes stood the test of time, despite the occasional ideas that seemed to have a good chance of disputing the theory. However, there’s a new generation of quantum physicists that are actively dismantling the said paradox. This effort is a group effort led by an MIT physicist. The collaborative work is both theoretical and experimental in nature, which was not possible to do just a few decades ago.

Key Takeaways:

Hawking’s calculations about black holes lead to conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Building on work by Don Page, Netta Engelhardt calculated entropy in a different way than Hawking had.
Engelhardt says the crux of the matter is that there are multiple quantum extremal surfaces in the problem.

“Engelhardt set her sights on quantum gravity when she was 9 years old. She moved to Boston from Israel that year with her family, and, not knowing any English, read every book in Hebrew she could find in her house.”