The Black Hole Information Paradox - Yet to be Solved?

**Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Information Paradox: Explained**

 Is it possible to retrieve the data trapped in a black hole?

Or is the information lost forever?

Black holes are definitely overrated!! And I'm not just talking about its hype in sci-fi movies. They really "shine" in every aspect of science. 

From singularities in math to its analogy with the thermodynamic laws to its role in the Grand Unification of physics, black holes are literally the Holy Grail of physics - which is why they're never out of business.

One such great yet an astonishing feature of black holes are that they are like a cosmic database - everything that falls into black holes gets stored (trapped, is the right word) in it, at least that's what we think. 

But what about the information or data that was linked with the infalling matter? Is all the information which is trapped in a black hole lost forever? For the past five decades or so, physicists have been trying to resolve this paradox, which again, revolves around the weird behaviour of black holes.

Every matter has a unique set of information that's linked with it. This information gives an idea of that substance's physical and chemical features, like a pre-designed code that carries the information on how particles or atoms aligned themselves to form that particular object. 

For example, let's take a piece of paper and burn it down to ashes. Initially, the paper was composed of elementary particles which were aligned in a particular structure. But after burning it down, it transformed into ashes, which is again composed of the same elementary particles but aligned in a different structure. 

So if you think about it, though every matter (including us) in the universe seem to dramatically differ from each other, they're all elementarily composed of the same sub-atomic particles (electrons, quarks etc.). What makes them different is the information regarding how they are structured or designed to exist in the universe.

However, in a black hole, the matter gets torn apart due to its extreme gravitational force and gets swallowed up in its most elementary form. The information gets destroyed as it gets past the event horizon. Again, we know that black holes radiate particles from their event horizon, known famously as Hawking Radiation, where black holes tend to lose their mass as they give out radiation. 

But then again, the particles they radiate are completely random and elementary, giving no trace of their information at all.

 In this way, when black holes finally evaporate away through all the radiation it gives out, the information stored in it, vanishes forever along with the black hole, thereby leaving no trace of what actually the black hole was composed of at all. 

  But according to quantum mechanical principles, information cannot be destroyed. So, what happens to the information of all the infalling matter? 

Some theories suggest that the information is actually encoded within Hawking Radiation, encoded in a way we yet have to understand, probably which includes quantum entanglement.

 Another possibility is that all the information which is trapped inside a black hole is preserved in another universe, which is connected to the black hole.  

One of the most famous and accepted theories is the Holographic Principle - which suggests that the quantum information of the infalling matter is actually stored in the event horizon of the black hole itself, and as more matter falls in, the surface area of the event horizon increases so that it can store the incoming information on its surface. This surface (of the event horizon) is projected as a 2-D representation of our universe, just like a hologram, filled with encoded information of our 3-D reality, which is related to string theory.

Some scientists believe that this paradox can be solved with the engineering of the Grand Unified Theory in physics, the combination of general relativity with quantum mechanics, which is not far from our reach. 

Also read how time warp occurs in black holes