Lecturer: Prof. Raphael Bousso (Berkeley)
Abstract:
Jacob Bekenstein was the first to treat black holes like material objects, allowing them to contribute to the entropy of the universe. By recognizing that Einstein’s seemingly classical theory of gravity is able to count its own quantum states and those of matter, he forged a profound relation between spacetime geometry and quantum information. Today, his insight is driving a golden age of progress. Gravity has been used to show that the universe behaves like a hologram; that information escapes from a black hole; and that what we perceive as energy density is really a change in the flow of quantum information.