Some of you may have noticed that I enjoy writing about the question of what happens when you fall into a black hole. At the recent FQXi meeting in Vieques, Puerto Rico, "quantum mechanic" Seth Lloyd talked through this problem and discussed a way to potentially escape a black hole, first proposed by Horowitz and Maldacena, which uses quantum teleportation to smuggle information out--but also violates some quantum laws, in return.
Here is Seth, describing it in his inimitable style. He also explaining why, if you are unlucky enough to cross an event horizon, you shouldn't try and fire up the engines of your rocket and accelerate away from the singularity...because you'll only die faster.
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For more about the debate over the fate of an unfortunate astronaut heading into a black hole, here's Anil Ananthaswamy's story about Steve Giddings' research, "Black Holes: Paradox Regained." There's also a story I wrote for Nature last year on the firewall debate, based on the work of Joe Polchinski, Don Marolf, Giddings and others, which pits general relativity against quantum physics--and tries to answer whether the space traveller would be spaghettified, as traditionally thought, or burnt to a crisp at the event horizon. And a follow-up discussing Stephen Hawking's take on the whole issue.