The Mountain

At a recent lecture in Stockholm, Professor Stephen Hawking proposed a solution to a long-standing problem in physics, known as the Information Paradox.

Black holes have always posed a problem for physicists, in that they appear to obliterate anything that  passes beyond the Event Horizon - loosely speaking, the outer boundary of the black hole. It's a contradiction, because one of the fundamental laws of the physical universe is that no information is ever lost.

Hawking's proposal is succinct, and also follows back to his own earlier proposal from the 1970s, now termed Hawking Radiation, a strange, quantum mechanical effect peculiar to black holes.

Hawking believes that the information contained in particles about their state is not lost. Rather, the information is retained in the form of a hologram, effectively, a two-dimensional representation of the particle, within the closed circuit of Hawking Radiation at the Event Horizon. Because it's position is thus known, the information can be extrapolated backwards or forwards in time.

This containment, and, correspondingly, transmission of information, Hawking terms Super Translation.

Recently, I climbed a mountain, or at least attempted to do so. I had set off with a small group, the leader of which was a young woman about twenty years of age. Others in the group were in their 30s, all fit and able, all some thirty years younger than me.

We had begun in the heat of the day, with temperatures about 30 Celsius (mid-80s F in old money). The climb began across rough terrain - loose shale underfoot and jagged rocks preventing firm, flat footfall, with low-growing scrub pine and palmetto dragging across feet and legs at every step. The terrain became rougher as the incline became steeper.

There were a couple of three minute breaks, but even after only ninety minutes I was falling thirty or forty meters behind the others. Although reasonably fit for my age, my age itself was an exponential factor in the group. A little further on, and I called to the leader that the pace was too fast for me, and I would have to stand down. Having assured themselves that I would be fine after a short rest and a little water, they continued the ascent, soon out of sight beyond a rocky ridge.

I sat on the edge of a stony outcrop, looking down the mountain at the return route- also difficult - and, farther, out to sea with its brilliant greens shimmering against a cobalt sky.

That the group disappeared could be likened to them falling through the Event Horizon. That I remained in that spot, with knowledge of the group, its members - among them the Italian guide, or the German mechanical engineer from Cologne who had two days earlier proposed to his girlfriend at a beauty spot on the lower slopes, or the Spanish couple who were worried that they wouldn't be back in time to collect their son - placed me in the position of Super Translator, a keeper of particular knowledge, locked within the invisible Horizon, as now, projecting myself backwards and forwards in time.

At no point is information lost. It shifts and shimmers in strange arrays, both past and future winding through, ascending, descending, moving farther, deeper.