Abstract ‘Black Holes and the Edge of Physics’ delves into the mysteries of black holes, and shows how these enigmatic objects may transcend quantum physics. We begin with a review of how black holes form and eventually evaporate, resulting in the notorious problem of ‘information loss’. We show how pilot-wave theory could solve the problem by allowing information to escape at superluminal speeds. We describe an experiment that could test these and related ideas, involving astrophysical black holes in space. The chapter ends with an account of the life cycle of black holes and the role they may play in ‘reprocessing’ our quantum universe.
It has been argued that when black holes are treated as quantum systems there are implications at the horizon and not just the singularity. Infalling observers will meet a firewall of high energy quanta. We argue that the question of whether an observer falling into a black hole experiences a smooth horizon or a firewall is identical to the question of whether Schrödinger's cat is either in a definite state, alive or dead, or in a superposition of the two. Since experience with real macro-systems indicate the former, the black hole state vector is seen to describe a set of decoherent alternatives each with a smooth horizon and the entanglement puzzle is thereby side stepped.