Dear @anna, yes, the electron is pretty likely to be the last “remainder” of a black hole. Before it becomes an electron, the black hole may be a W boson that decays into an electron and a neutrino. Before it was a W boson, it could have been a much more excited string state… – Lubos Motl Feb 28 ’11 at 8:18
     
… the conclusion that black hole microstates are continuously connected to (other) elementary particle species – there’s no qualitative difference – doesn’t really depend on specific features of string theory. It’s a general fact that strings just confirm and make more specific.

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— Mar 1 ’11 at 15:20

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2014.07.21 Monday ACHK

Are elementary particles ultimate fate of black holes?

From the “no hair theorem” we know that black holes have only 3 characteristic external observables, mass, electric charge and angular momentum (except the possible exceptions in the higher dimensional theories). These make them very similar to elementary particles. One question naively comes to mind. Is it possible that elementary particles are ultimate nuggets of the final stages of black holes after emitting all the Hawking radiation it could?

Yes, black holes are special kinds of elementary particles. That’s how they have to be represented in every consistent quantum theory of gravity. This representation of a black hole becomes especially useful and important for small black holes – whose mass is not much larger than the Planck mass.

And indeed, a black hole evaporates, which is just a form of a decay of a heavy elementary particle, and when it becomes very light, at the end of the Hawking evaporation process, it is literally indistinguishable from a heavy elementary particle that ultimately decays into a few stable elementary particles.

However, a difference that you seem to neglect is that black holes actually carry a large entropy

S = \frac{A}{4A_0} k_B

where A is the area of the black hole’s event horizon and ( A_0 ) is the Planck area ( A_0=\hbar G / c^3 ). The constant ( k_B ) is Boltzmann’s constant. This means that there actually exists a huge number of microstates

N = \exp(S / k_B)

and a single black hole, with a fixed value of mass, charges, and spin, is just a macroscopic description of the ensemble of N “microstates”. In reality, the black hole carries a huge information – the world distinguishes which of the N microstates is actually present.

It is these “microstates” that are really analogous to types of elementary particles. But the number of particle species that macroscopically look like the black hole of given mass, charges, and spin is not one: instead, it is huge, approximately N.

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— answered Feb 27 ’11 at 16:45

— Lubos Motl

2014.07.18 Friday ACHK

Als 4 days ago

I’m happy to see that you still work on string theory. Do you intend to start publishing again?

Lubos Motl Als 3 days ago

No, I do not.

Kimmo Rouvari Lubos Motl 3 days ago

Why? (just curious) Obviously you have ideas and something to say.

Lubos Motl Kimmo Rouvari 3 days ago

I just virtually never had a real pleasure out of this process which has something like dozens of consumers in the world in average and which is laborious and demanding various formalities. This part of what I would be doing was always more or less just work and I was doing these things as a part of the package for the salary.

I am not getting the income for that, I am not a communist who would think it’s really right to do the expert work for free, so I won’t do these things. I think it’s common sense and it’s very simple.

I am sufficiently frustrated when I just report on someone’s excellent paper and the feedback is 100 times less excited than the feedback following some anti-science rant by a worthless sithead … And that’s something I may ignore because it’s just not my business.

— Lubos Motl

2014.07.15 Tuesday ACHK