# What information is lost to a black hole? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 3, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-information-is-lost-to-a-black-hole/733371 "2015-10-03T15:33:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-information-is-lost-to-a-black-hole/733371/21 "2015-10-05T21:11:53Z")
Kip Thorne has won every one of his wagers that did not depend on human agency, and lose every one that did. But Hawking’s proposed solution is one of the most hand-wavy papers I’ve ever seen published. And that’s saying something, for a man who can’t move his hands. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2015, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-information-is-lost-to-a-black-hole/733371/22 "2015-10-05T22:20:09Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > So how does this wave function handle stuff like radioactive decay or Hawking radiation? I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that these were truly random. Hawking radiation is related to QM’s interaction with black holes, so we don’t have really great answers for that. Radioactive decay can be described by a wavefunction of an alpha particle that is confined to the nucleus but has a small chance of appearing outside the nucleus. The wavefunction gradually evolves from a “very likely to be in the nucleus” wavefunction to a “not very likely to be in the nucleus” wavefunction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-information-is-lost-to-a-black-hole/733371.md?page=1)