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Mutability

What conservation laws do black holes respect? Not many. Mass-energy, angular momentum and electric charge are the only properties of what falls in that remain properties of the black hole itself. That means that all other "conserved" properties of matter, like baryon number, are " mutable" in the final analysis.

One consequence is that protons might experience gravitational decay in which they collapse into a very tiny black hole, only to immediately explode into (probably) a positron and some gamma rays. The estimated lifetime of protons against such a fate is years, which is not too worrisome.

Other consequences are more interesting, but only philosophically: the interior of a black hole [with which we can never communicate] may have entirely different properties - or even different "Laws of Physics" - than what we drop into it. Wheeler has taken this idea much further than I can follow, but it does make for interesting thinking. Good luck.


Jess H. Brewer - Last modified: Mon Nov 23 16:43:41 PST 2015