This is Your Relationship

I’ve been reading about Stephen Hawking and the frenzied debate he incited between physicists over the nature of information, information as a piece of matter that exists as a comprehensible nugget of space that is able to be read in light of his theory on black holes. I know, I know: it sounds boring, but I’m going somewhere with this so just hang for a bit because what follows is an explanation of the state of love that directly effects the dating habits of our dear Alex.

[All this information is paraphrased from a lecture given by Leonard Susskind, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University and the author of The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics]

In 1981 Hawking stunned the scientific community when he announced his belief that all information that falls into a black hole ceases to exists, becomes nothingness when that hole evaporates, because it was fundamentally antithetical to the prevailing belief (derived from Newton’s laws of the universe that we were all forced to learn in Freshman physics) that information, while it may become unrecognizable, is never fully eradicated. In other words, the prevailing understating was that information was eternal, and Hawking saying it wasn’t pissed a lot of people off and catalyzed them towards proving him wrong or, at the very least, providing their community with an alternative theory. And, amazingly enough, they found a compromise.

In order to understand that compromise, a deeper definition of black holes should be proffered. A black hole is an impassable drain in space from which nothing escapes because it sucks matter in at a rate faster than the speed of light. At some point, black holes evaporate, not into vapor, but into particles (because that would be too easy). As always, a horizon exists between harmless space and the kiss-your-ass-good-bye space that makes up black holes, and that horizon is piping hot due to quantum jitteriness (don’t worry, I don’t fully understand what that is either) so it scatters everything into a million different particles before it actually crosses over into the black hole. Now, say I’m watching my ex-boyfriend floating into a black hole (awww, poor dear). It will appear to me that he’s taking forever to come to his eventual demise, and his pleas for help will get deeper and deeper because sound is compressed by the black hole. When he finally hits the horizon, a process that will seem like a nano-second to him, it will look to me as if he is permanently lodged in a thick layer of sediment that accumulates at the crossover point when in actuality he will have passed through that horizon. What happened to him? Did he pass through or is he stuck in this boiling horizon goo? Well, both (I know!!!). He’s still with me in the universe I inhabit, but in a completely different format, gone forever and lost to a slowly evaporating abyss, because it’s all a matter of perspective. One of Einstein’s crucial imperatives was that the sequence of events is irrelevant in deference to the position of the observer.

But how does that make sense, you ask? The holographic principle. That’s right, it’s just like when Princess Leah requests assistance from Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. The horizon that particalized, if you will, my ex-boyfriend is a hologram; it’s a two-dimensional film covered with scrambled markings that appear meaningless, but can encode into a three-dimensional image if correctly perceived. When I think he’s stuck in the horizon goo, he’s actually passed through and projecting this holographic image of himself back to me as he falls into the black hole in one piece. So, the black hole is a holographic image, as is the universe, as are people, as is the love that people believe is eternal. See, I told you I was going somewhere with this.

 

Literally a Love Hologram

It’s easy to become jaded in this sick sad world, especially when it comes to the realm of romance. For me, however, it’s a bit comforting to know that everything is so fucked up because of a difference in perspective, not actual universal realities. Questions are able to be answered. Questions like: where does the love go when a relationship has ended, when it crosses the horizon into the break-up black hole? The answer is: everywhere, it’s smashed into a million different particles that we are able to see again if we choose to look at it in the right light, and can even be collected and reunited if we choose to expend the massive amount of effort that’s required to rebuild a love that’s scattered. Which is a scary notion, no? We are never really able to shake a love that once was because it’s continually floating around us: the hope, the hurt, the happiness, the hologram of a shared life.

I think these omnipresent love particles are prohibitive for Alex. Since she sees her past floating all around her, she continually attempts to either date men who are the exact opposite of her ex (hence her penchant for musicians), or she tries to replace him. Either way, she’s left dissatisfied with what she finds in her present because it cannot be her past. Unfortunately, self-awareness is possessed by few, and she has no idea she acts this way. She had no idea that when she started dating Caleb, the man who wouldn’t put out, she was chasing a hologram.

And, unfortunately, our time is up for today, so you’ll have to wait until next week to get the gory details of the man that would float around Alex in a formative fashion for years to come.