Expert: Steve Nelson - 9/26/2008

Question
As a layman, Stephen Hawking's concession regarding the black hole information loss problem was paraphrased for me on TLC (imagine that...).

My question arises from the way they framed his assertion.  Their interpretation, in my own words:

Given a multiplicity of universes, information may indeed be lost when something falls into a black hole in our universe, but, since there is another universe like ours in which a black hole does *not* exist in the same location, the information, across universes, is preserved.

Is their interpretation correct?

If so, it sounds patently ridiculous.  

As a reduction ad absurdum: could I not say that since there are, in places, black holes in our universe where information is locally lost and yet there are analog universes in which no analogous black holes exist and information is thus preserved, that the net result is a cancellation: i.e. there is no information to lose!  Reality is a purely local phenomenon... :)

Please disabuse me of my own logical errors or (as likely, I think) reliance on mainstream TV for accurate summations of scholarly work.

Thanks so much.  This has been bugging me for some time.

David Donaldson
donaldsd@comcast.net


Answer
Alternate universes are purely speculative.  There's no experimental evidence to support them and currently no real need for them in theory.  Fun speculation, but speculation all the same.  Also, notion that information is preserved just because it's preserved in one universe...it's still gone in the other one.