For decades, physicists have wrestled with one of the deepest puzzles in modern science: the "black hole information paradox." Now, a new theoretical study suggests a possible solution — one that could also shed light on another major mystery, the origin of the mass of fundamental particles.
The paradox traces back to the work of Stephen Hawking in the 1970s. Using semi-classical calculations, Hawking showed that black holes are not completely black. Instead, they emit a faint radiation that slowly drains their energy, causing them to shrink and eventually disappear.
That result created a serious problem. According to quantum mechanics, information cannot be destroyed. Yet if a black hole evaporates completely, all information about the matter that fell into it appears to vanish as well. This apparent contradiction became known as the black hole information paradox — a problem so deep that it has driven theoretical physics for nearly five decades.
A 7-Dimensional Solution
A new study led by Richard Pinčák and published in General Relativity and Gravitation proposes a radically different outcome. The researchers suggest that the answer may lie in the geometry of a higher-dimensional universe.
The team investigated a version of gravity known as Einstein-Cartan theory, formulated in 7 dimensions on a mathematical structure called a G2-manifold with torsion. Unlike Einstein's General Relativity, which describes spacetime as something that can bend or curve, Einstein-Cartan theory also allows spacetime to twist — a property known as spacetime torsion.
According to the model, torsion becomes especially important at the extreme densities associated with the Planck scale. Under those conditions, it generates a repulsive force that works against gravitational collapse. The researchers found that this repulsive effect can stop the final stage of Hawking evaporation. Rather than disappearing completely, a black hole would leave behind a stable "remnant" with a predicted mass of about 9×10⁻⁴¹ kg.
How Remnants Store Information
If a black hole never fully vanishes, what happens to the information it contains? The researchers propose that the remnant serves as a long-term information repository. In their framework, information is stored through a spectrum of "quasi-normal modes" — essentially, long-lived vibrations of the torsion field inside the remnant's geometry.
Their calculations suggest that a remnant left behind by a black hole with the mass of the Sun could store approximately 1.515×10⁷⁷ qubits of information — exactly sufficient to preserve the information needed to resolve the paradox.
A Connection to the Higgs Field
The study also reaches beyond black holes and into particle physics. The researchers argue that reducing the geometry from 7 dimensions to the 4 dimensions of our everyday experience naturally produces the electroweak scale — approximately 246 GeV, the energy scale closely associated with the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles their mass.
As a result, the same geometric mechanism that prevents black holes from completely evaporating could also provide a geometric explanation for the mass hierarchy problem, one of the long-standing challenges in particle physics.
How to Test It
If extra dimensions play such a fundamental role, why haven't scientists observed them directly? According to the study, the particles linked to these dimensions would have masses of roughly 8.6×10¹⁵ GeV — about seven orders of magnitude beyond what the Large Hadron Collider can reach.
However, the theory does produce concrete predictions that could be investigated through astronomical observations. One possibility involves stable black hole remnants themselves. With a mass of 9×10⁻⁴¹ kg, these predicted "Planckian relics" could contribute to dark matter. Detecting their gravitational effects would provide direct support for the theory.
Additionally, traces of the proposed 7-dimensional geometry might be preserved in the Cosmic Microwave Background or in primordial gravitational waves from the early universe.
By connecting black holes, quantum information, extra dimensions, and the Higgs field within a single framework, the study offers an ambitious attempt to address multiple outstanding problems in fundamental physics at once.
