Stephen Hawking showed in the 1970s that black holes are not completely black. They slowly emit radiation and shrink over time, eventually disappearing. However, there was a problem with this explanation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If a black hole evaporates completely, what happens to all the information about the matter it swallowed? Quantum physics says information can never be destroyed, yet black holes seem to do exactly that. This contradiction is famously known as the black hole information paradox<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe black hole information paradox represents one of the most significant challenges in modern theoretical physics, raising questions about the compatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity,\u201d the study authors note.<\/p>\n Now, a new study offers a way out of this problem. It suggests that black holes never fully vanish. Instead, they leave behind tiny, stable remnants that store information\u2014and surprisingly, the same idea may also explain how fundamental particles get their mass.<\/p>\n A twisting spacetime and a force that halts the end of a black hole<\/p>\n To solve this paradox, the researchers moved beyond the usual picture of gravity. In standard general relativity, spacetime can bend under the influence of mass and energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the theory used in this study, called Einstein\u2013Cartan theory, allows spacetime to do more than just bend\u2014it can also twist. This twisting, known as torsion, becomes important at extremely small scales and very high densities.<\/p>\n The team explored this idea in a universe with seven dimensions, instead of the four we experience. They used a special mathematical structure called a G2-manifold with torsion, which provides a consistent way to describe how these extra dimensions behave. While this sounds abstract, the physical consequence is surprisingly clear.<\/p>\n As matter collapses inside a black hole<\/a> and densities rise toward the Planck scale, the torsion of spacetime begins to generate a repulsive effect. This force pushes outward, counteracting the inward pull of gravity. \u201cThe existence of a repulsive force at Planckian densities dynamically halts the final stage of Hawking evaporation,\u201d the study authors said.<\/p>\n Instead of collapsing indefinitely or evaporating completely through Hawking radiation, the black hole reaches a stable state. \u201cThis leads to the formation of a stable remnant with a predicted mass of approximately 9\u00d710\u207b\u2074\u00b9 kg,\u201d the study authors added.<\/p>\n This changes the fate of black holes entirely. If they do not vanish, then the information they contain does not need to disappear either.<\/p>\n A 7-dimensional memory hidden in black hole remnants<\/p>\n The next question is where the information actually resides. According to the study, it is encoded in the internal structure of the remnant through what physicists call quasi-normal modes. These are the natural patterns of vibration of the object, similar to how a bell rings after being struck.<\/p>\n In this model, those vibrations occur in the torsion field within the remnant\u2019s geometry. Each vibration pattern can carry quantum information, effectively turning the remnant into a storage system.\u00a0<\/p>\n The main idea here is that all the information that fell into the original black hole becomes<\/a> trapped and encoded in these long-lived oscillations. The scale of this storage is also enormous. For instance, a remnant formed from a black hole with the mass of our Sun could store about 1.515 \u00d7 10\u2077\u2077 qubits of information.\u00a0<\/p>\n This matches the amount needed to preserve everything that would otherwise be lost during evaporation, \u201cpreventing the complete disappearance of the black hole, and thus resolving the paradox without violating fundamental principles of physics,\u201d the study authors said.<\/p>\n These findings are eye-opening as they connect black hole physics to particle physics. When the researchers reduced their seven-dimensional model down to four dimensions\u2014the universe we observe\u2014they found that the same torsion field naturally produces an energy scale of about 246 GeV.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the exact scale associated with the Higgs field<\/a>, which is responsible for giving mass to fundamental particles. In simple terms, the same geometric feature that prevents black holes from disappearing also explains why particles have mass.\u00a0<\/p>\n A theory beyond experiments\u2014for now, but not beyond reach<\/p>\n One reason extra dimensions have not been observed is that the energy required to probe them is far beyond current technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n For instance, the study predicts that particles linked to these dimensions would have masses around 8.6 \u00d7 10\u00b9\u2075 GeV, which is millions of times higher than what the Large Hadron Collider can achieve. This makes direct detection impossible for now.<\/p>\n