Physicists have found that conducting a quantum research near a black hole can lead to deadly chaos. According to the researchers’ presentation at the American Physical Society meeting on April 17, 2023, the mere presence of a black hole can destroy all the quantum states of its surroundings.
This may have implications for the future theory of quantum gravity, which plans to bring together quantum mechanics and general relativity. Scientists are also trying to explain how mass works on a cosmic scale.
A team consisting of Princeton University theoretical physicists Gautam Satishchandran, Diane Danielson, and the University of Chicago’s Robert Wald tested this issue. The team imagined a man named Ellis conducting a double-slit style experiment in a lab orbiting a black hole. In this experiment, a scientist sends particles such as electrons or photons toward a pair of slits in opposition.
If one does not observe the particle’s progress, the interference pattern of the wave is seen on a screen on the other side of the barrier as if the particle had passed through both slits at once. However, if one observes the path of the particle, it will appear to skip one slit and pass through the other. At the same time it will completely break the quantum state of the particles in the two locations.
The team imagined a man named Bob sitting just inside the event horizon of a black hole, where even light cannot escape the black hole’s gravity. Bob may be able to continue the experiment despite extreme levels of disorder, and the laws of physics behave the same inside Horizon as they do outside. At the same time Alice realizes that Bob is there and the scientific experiment is messed up.