The black hole breakout

Finding out that computer science is not just about technology

Our latest research centres around physics, quantum mechanics and black holes. Did you know that computer science could potentially revolutionise physics? Read on to find out how.

What is Quantum Computing?

Quantum computing is one of the most exciting developments in computer science in recent times. Based on quantum mechanics, it can perform computations that cannot be effectively implemented on the kind of classical computer with which you will be familiar.

If you think about information as being part of the physical world, the physical properties of it determine what you can with computing. Your computer will see bits of information as 0 or 1, but quantum mechanics does not see things as simply - and this opens the door for quantum computing.

Quantum computing takes advantage of superpositions, which means a bit (represented by 0 or 1 in a conventional computer) becomes a qubit (a quantum bit), that could be both 0 and 1 at the same time. This allows the quantum computer to perform many computations simultaneously.

How does this help to explain black holes?

The recent research by Professor Samuel Braunstein suggests that information can escape from black holes - conventional thinking, including that of well-known scientists such as Stephen Hawking, has always seen black holes as a point of no return, from which nothing can escape.

Professor Braunstein used the basic tenets of quantum mechanics, the theory of light and atoms, to give a new description of how information can leak from a black hole. The implications of this research could be revolutionary in physics - suggesting that gravity may not be a fundamental force of nature.

How could this revolutionise physics?

If, as the research suggests, it may be possible to escape the immense gravitational pull of a black hole, then gravity may simply be one of the emergent properties within a deeper theory that could explain this.

Quantum information theory would be the likely candidate for the source of a new theory on gravity - which is now being studied here at York.

So computer science isn't just about computers?

No - computer science is about much more than computers. Studying and research it can involve you in the very fabric of the world. It encompasses not just the things you see around you, like laptops, mobile phones, cars and washing machines, but can also explain how things work in the universe.

If computing is about manipulating information, and information is physical, then the laws of information processing must restrict and confine how objects behave in the real world - for example, whether information can escape from a black hole.

The paper 'Black hole evaporation rates without space-time' by Professor Samuel Braunstein and Dr Manas Patra appeared in the August 12, 2011 edition of Physical Review Letters.

Department of Computer Science