Famously, classical general relativity tells us that black holes “have no hair”: the mass, electric charge, and angular momentum of the black hole are the only parameters about the black hole measurable by us “outside the horizon” observors. Silly me it was only today while exercising that I realized that it might be interesting to ask if black holes can carry a charge from a non-abelian gauge theory. While I was pondering this, the other thought I had was that maybe if the theory of nature has multiple gauge fields, not just just the U(1), SU(2), SU(3) we know, but other higher ones, then this the “hair” produced by these theories might help explain the information paradox for black holes. Amazingly, this is deeply related to the content of some ideas about string theory and black holes!
Update 11/14/03: and of course, embarrassingly, there is this famous paper as pointed out by Ben Toner in the comment section.
O brave new quantum world!
Dear sirs,
I have some ideas, and I think if these ideas can be used with the facilities you have, there will be a great benefit for the mankind.
This means that a great part of today’s technology and a variety of scientific fields will be affected.
With using this idea the whole world will encounter a huge mutation in a few years, and there will be a new season in science.
It should be mentioned that your the first organization I have contacted.Please inform me about your comment on this matter.Thank you.
Yours Faithfully,
Adel Mohabatian
You may be interested in
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v67/i15/p1975_1?qid=7f44ff54a1c78bc1&qseq=4&show=10
It’s always terrible when you start hawking a great “new” idea that your boss turns out to have had ten years ago.
One of the worst cases of this I’ve had was a very embarassing case as a first-year grad student. I spent several hours talking to a well-known senior physicist about his work. I understood bits and pieces, but was mostly pretty clueless as to what was going on.
A week or so later, I had a brilliant idea. Worked it out. Went and explained it to my senior colleague, and got a very odd look indeed, and no comments.
After a few hours reflection, I realized that my “brilliant” idea was exactly the point of what he’d been saying to me a week earlier š The main difference was that he’d worked it out in about 50 times more detail. My subconscious had, presumably, taken its cue from that discussion.
Of course, what’s even worse is when you start hawking a great “new” idea that you had ten years ago. Boy, I’m looking forward to that beginning to happen in a few years.