A new study strongly suggests black holes are simply two-dimensional surfaces projected in 3D just like a hologram and aren't the ginormous bubble shaped monsters that suck-in everything, including light. Think of black holes as being as flat as a sheet of paper and you get the picture.

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The study by a team from the Max Planck Institute for Theoretical Physics in Germany led by physicist Dr. Daniele Pranzetti argues black holes are holograms based on a new calculation of their entropy (or the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system). The team says their calculations support the possibility black holes are nothing but optical illusions.

The math of the "holograph hypothesis" holds the Universe needs just two dimensions for the laws of physics and gravity to work as indeed they do. For observers on the Earth, however, the physical Universe appears as a three-dimensional image of two dimensional processes projected across a huge cosmic horizon.

One of the great arguments in physics is what happens to matter sucked into a black hole. To say a black hole completely destroys matter violates the law of conservation of mass that implies mass can neither be created nor destroyed, only rearranged in space or changed in form. The problem is no one knows for certain what happens inside a black hole -- if a black hole has an "inside."

Physicists contend that the reason we can't figure out what happens to matter once it enters the event horizon and into a black hole is because there's really no inside in a black hole. Instead, everything that passes the event horizon or edge of the black hole is trapped in the gravitational fluctuations on the surface of the black hole.

Trapped matter just floats around on the surface of the black hole. It isn't swallowed-up and torn to pieces or hurtled into another Universe. In other words, a black hole is as flat as a sheet of paper.

"We were able to use a more complete and richer model compared with what's done in the past ... and obtain a far more realistic and robust result," said Dr. Pranzetti. "This allowed us to resolve several ambiguities afflicting previous calculations."

The researchers concentrated on the black hole's entropy. It's widely held by scientists that black holes must have entropy or their existence would violate the second law of thermodynamics. There has been no agreement, however, about the origin of this entropy or how to calculate its value.

To solve this, Dr. Pranzetti and his team used a theoretical approach called Loop Quantum Gravity to explain a concept known in theoretical physics as quantum gravity.

Quantum gravity describes the force of gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It posits the fabric of spacetime consists of quanta, which are the atoms of spacetime. A photon, for example, is a single quantum of visible light. A collection of quanta are known as condensates.

What the Max Planck team found was that a black hole consisting of condensates would have all the same properties, and their collective behavior and gravitational impacts could be determined, by studying the properties of just one quanta.

"Just as fluids at our scale appear as continuous materials despite their consisting of a huge number of atoms, similarly, in quantum gravity, the fundamental constituent atoms of space form a sort of fluid, that is continuous spacetime," said the team.

"A continuous and homogenous geometry (like that of a spherically symmetric black hole) can ... be described as a condensate."

Dr. Pranzetti and his team now have a concrete model that proves the 3D nature of black holes might indeed be an illusion. All the information of a black hole can theoretically be contained on a two-dimensional surface with no need for an actual hole or an inside. 

TagsBlack Holes, Max Planck Institute for Theoretical Physics, entropy, holograms, 3D, Dr. Daniele Pranzetti