Theoretical physics has been in crisis mode ever since 1974, when Stephen Hawking argued that black holes destroy information. Hawking showed that a black hole can evaporate, gradually transforming itself and anything it consumes into a featureless cloud of radiation. During the process, information about what fell into the black hole is apparently lost, violating a sacred principle of physics.
This has been an open problem for more than 45 years, but the pieces started falling into place in 2019 through research that I was involved in. The resolution is based on a new understanding of spacetime and how it can be rewired through quantum entanglement, which leads to the idea that part of the inside of a black hole, the so-called island, is secretly on the outside.
To understand how we arrived at these new ideas, we must begin with the inescapable nature of black holes.
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