Introduction To Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution, An: The Holographic Universe

It is a difficult text, with a lot of math, but it is thorough and interesting. A 2004 book, but not too dated.

OK - I bought this book so I could see the real math of black holes. I got tired of reading about the math of black holes, of someone else doing the interpretation and telling me about the math. So, I bought this book. It is pretty much all math. And while I have had Calculus I, II, II, and Differential Equations (25 years ago) the math of black holes requires more than that. More than my linear algebra, too. There are words, to be clear. I understand most of the words. But this is really a textbook for people with deep math backgrounds, not really for a layperson. If you have watched such shows as "The Elegant Universe" or "COSMOS" and ever thought, "I wonder what the math looks like," buy this book and leave it out on your coffee table. Friends will pick it up and be amazed you appear to understand such heady science.

This is a real path-breaking study by one of the founders of String Theory and author of "Black Hole Wars," a more historical narrative detailing the debate with Stephen Hawkings about whether information is lost in black holes. This book, in contrast, is less conversational and more like a thin text packed with intellectual diamnods. It is brief and action packed with formulas and simple explanations, a great balance of theory and narrative which very succinctly covers the topics of black holes and how they are described by string theory.Not like the usual book which is fluffy with no mathematical details, or a heavy textbook that is impossible to follow. The math is light but challenging for a non-physicist. Cool book and very informative. Cutting edge.TS

"Black Holes, Information and the String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe"Lenny and I worked together with Johnny Glogower on quantum phase and time operators at Cornell in 1964 .Lenny's densely mathematical book is not a popular book. It is incomprehensible to the general reader and it is not easy going for the professional theoretical physicist not in the sub-field. However, it has moments of great clarity and if it is wrong, as George Chapline thinks, it is brilliantly wrong. Certainly pieces of Lenny's thesis will survive. So, to really see what the book is about, it's best to read the end of the book first and then go back to the beginning. Lenny emphasizes the key role on nonlocality (e.g. nonlocality of gravity energy?) in black hole complementarity."In order to reconcile the equivalence principle with the rules of quantum mechanics the rules of locality must be massively modified."I like the idea of the blackhole as a string since I already published in 1974 the explanation of the Regge slope alpha' (for strings)J ~ alpha'E^2alpha' ~ (1Gev)^-2as rotating Kerr black hole Wheeler "micro with effective strong gravity G* ~ 10^40G in Herbert Frohlich's "Collective Phenomena". Indeed, that's why Abdus Salam invited me to ICTP Trieste, Italy 1973-74 (e.g. contact Jagdish Mehra).What will survive is the IR/UV duality. What about LIF/LNIF complementarity? Intriguing. What is completely missing in Lenny's theory is Vacuum ODLRO. For example, Lenny never considers a Bose-Einstein condensate in the vacuum in which there is a macroscopic eigenvalue of the first reduced density matrix. All eigenvalues must be less than 1 in Lenny's theory. Second, Lenny used a positive energy density to derive some of his key results when in fact negative zero point energy density would describe dark matter. Third, Lenny's ADS model has the wrong sign of the actually observed small post-inflation cosmological constant. How fatal this is I do not know yet. Perhaps he analytically continues to the DS model? That is ADS is "dark matter" with negative zero point energy density and positive pressure. DS is "dark energy" with positive zero point energy density and negative pressure. Furthermore, Lenny's equation for p the power of t in the FRW scale factor a(t) ~ t^p breaks down in the most important case, i.e. p -> infinity when w -> -1, which is the case for zero point energy. One nice idea is that the D3 brane of M-theory is the kind of 3+1 space-time we live in with the 6 extra space-time dimensions as "scalar fields". This fits well with Gennady Shipov's torsion field theory extension of 1915 GR. Indeed, if we interpret these scalar fields as vacuum ODLRO Higgs-Goldstone fields associated with the local gauging of the Lorentz group O(1,3) then the vacuum order parameter space is SU(2)xSU(2) consistent with the Hedgehog anomaly centered at Sun seen in the TWO NASA Pioneer Space Probes where a_g = - cH(t). All stars may have this property, i.e. part of stellar formation? Maybe even galaxies have it? That is vacuum ODLRO topological defects as seeds for early galaxy formation explaining galactic halos as well?He opens up with the math of black holes in different coordinate representations. But you need to remember (or look up) your high school logarithms and the trigonometry formula for the tangent of the half-angle to show from eqs (1.1.2) to (1.1.4) that a signal from the black hole surface horizon never reaches the distant observers. The Penrose diagram makes that instantly obvious of course.Comment 1Lenny: "The paradox was discovered by Jacob Bekenstein and turned into a serious crisis by Stephen Hawking. ... Bekenstein realized that if the second law of thermodynamics was not to be violated in the presence of a black hole, the black hole must possess an intrinsic entropy. ... How and why a classical solution of field equations should be endowed with thermodynamical attributes has remained obscure."Jack: The black hole is a property of Einstein's vacuum equationRuv = 0However, this equation is a c-number emergent field theory from vacuum ODLRO. George Chapline, Jr and I have both arrived at this general idea quite independently. Let the vacuum ODLRO order parameter bepsi = |psi|e^iargpsisuppress internal symmetry indices, but think of SU(2)hypercharge that has a neutral VEV in the standard model (evidence from NASA Pioneer anomaly a_g = -cH(t) as a hedgehog topological defect centered at Sun).Let the Einstein-Cartan 1-form bee = 1 + BMy ansatz isB = (hG/c^3)^1/2d(argtheta)with "string" branch cuts in argthetaTherefore, there is no gravity and inertia when h -> 0 and c -> infinity even when G =/= 0. There is still some residual "normal fluid" fluctuations around the stiff vacuum order parameter psi that obeys the rules of micro-quantum theory as given by Lenny. The ratio of normal to superfluid obviously has a temperature parameter T. Therefore, Lenny's question is answered.Comment 2Lenny: "Eventually the black hole must completely evaporate. Hawking then raised the question of what becomes of the quantum correlations between matter outside the black hole and matter that disappears behind the horizon. ... Hawking then made arguments that there is no way, consistent with causality, for the correlations to be carried by the outgoing evaporation products."Jack: So much the worse for causality, which here means no space-like influences outside the local light cones. Bell's theorem shows that such space-like influences are needed and they are locally random in micro-quantum theory consistent with the blackbody radiation.Lenny: "Thus, according to Hawking, the existence of black holes inevitably causes a loss of quantum coherence and breakdown of one of the basic principles of quantum mechanics - the evolution of pure states into pure states."Jack: So much the worse for micro-quantum mechanics. It's time to slaughter that Sacred Cow. Global special relativity of 1905 is violated by the necessity of gravity and inertia in local general relativity of 1915 where it is relegated to a purely local tangent space by the equivalence principle. In the same way micro-quantum mechanics is not complete, but merely corresponds to nonlocally entangled small fluctuations about the stiff macro-quantum vacuum ODLRO coherent order parameter that provides the local fabric of space-time viaB = (hG/c^3)^1/2d(argVacuum ODLRO).Lenny: "Hawking further argued that once the loss of quantum coherence is permitted in black hole evaporation, it becomes compulsory in all processes involving the Planck scale. The world would behave as if it were in a noisy environment which continuously leads to a loss of coherence. The trouble with this is that there is no known way to destroy coherence without at the same time violating energy conservation by heating the world."Jack: I need to see the math of the above argument. Why does not the expansion of the universe cool down this alleged heating effect? Also total energy is not necessarily conserved in curved space-time because of the breakdown of time translation symmetry. Presumably the book will explain this argument in more detail. Lenny wants to hold on to micro-quantum unitarity at all costs and I think this is the basic error in his thesis, but I could be wrong. The macro-quantum vacuum ODLRO order parameter does not obey a unitary time evolution. You cannot think of |psi|^2 as a Born quantum probability density like you can for micro-quantum wave functions.Indeed the space integral of |psi(x)|^2 need not be a constant of the motion at all. For example, you have a pot of superfluid helium at almost T = 0 at t = 0 and then you slowly heat it. As you heat the superfluid it turns to normal fluid completely disappearing at the lambda point. In the case of vacuum ODLRO the "normal fluid" is the dark energy!Comment 3Lenny's Chapter 1 implicitly clearly shows why Hal Puthoff's PV alternative to the black hole is not a useful theory for metric engineering the fabric of space-time to reach the stars and other galaxies in a short time through wormholes held open by dark energy. Hal uses isotropic coordinates inside the event horizon where they are not appropriate. He says he can do that because his exponential metric does not have an event horizon. But in that case his solution does not obey Einstein's vacuum GR equation Ruv = 0. Therefore, PV theory conflicts with GR. Indeed, PV theory is not consistent with Diff(4) tensors and therefore, it violates the equivalence principle. In spite of that Hal Puthoff claims he is not offering a theory different from GR but only an "engineer's" way to do it. This, of course, is self-contradictory. Note that in George Chapline's "dark star" theory there is dark energy behind the event horizon, i.e. not Ruv = 0, but the same equation I useGuv + /\zpfguv = 0We do seem to need Gennady Shipov's torsion field beyond 1915 GR to allow/\zpf^,v =/= 0 at the event horizon boundary because the Bianchi identities without torsion demand /\zpf^,v = 0.Jack Sarfatti

If you're into reading about physics but don't have the maths to back it up, this isn't the book for you. This "introduction" is probably aimed at university physics students. I am without a university physics education and am finding the book almost as hard as reading a Japanese newspaper. As with reading a Japanese newspaper, the pictures help a lot. I don't feel I'm getting enough to "rate" the book, but I can warn others as innumerate as myself.Update: I've made it ~halfway through. There's a great deal of uncertainty as to what I'm actually understanding as opposed to what I'm just filling-in with intuitive fictions. But I can live with that (as we all must at some point).

The item is perfect

This is an excellent book which is not a textbook nor is it a popular book. I would put it at advanced undergraduate/first year graduate level. What is required is a good undergraduate education in physics, basic familiarity with quantum mechanics, relativity (special and general), and being comfortable with statistical mechanics and statistical arguments. An acquaintance with some aspects though certainly not complete mastery of quantum field theory would also be extremely helpful. But this short book really introduces many of the conceptual advances in theoretical physics that have occurred in the last four decades. Of course it will need to be updated soon to capture recent developments especially the "firewall" controversy.

Its susskind ... What more can i say! Topics are detailed, covered well. If you looking for a mathematical review ... Go for it!If you want to learn string theory and are still taking calculus ... Find another book or this will sit on your shelf for a few more years.