17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
The Deutsch paper I quoted before was where I first heard of the Bekenstein Bound which Eric Hughes mentioned. According to Deutsch: "If the theory of the thermodynamics of black holes is trustworthy, no system enclosed by a surface with an appropriately defined area A can have more than a finite number N(A) = exp(A c^3 / 4 hbar G) of distinguishable accessible states (hbar is the Planck reduced constant, G is the gravitational constant, and c is the speed of light.)" The reference he gives is: Bekenstein, J.D. 1981 Phys Rev D v23, p287 For those with calculators, c is approximately 3.00*10^10 cm/s, G is 6.67*10^-8 cm^3/g s^2, and hbar is 1.05*10^-27 g cm^2/s. N comes out to be pretty darn big by our standards! Hal